I’d been making some great progress the past 3 months hitting PR’s just about every session. I was so excited that I didn’t do a proper de load throughout that time save for 1 forced week off due to family requirements. After another PR set I felt a twinge in my upper glute and finished the session. I ended up taking nsaids and pain meds for 3 days after in order to function.
While my training was great there was a lot going on life wise with new house purchase and lots of stressor surrounding that along with tons of physical work. I didn’t take these into account from a recovery perspective and paid for it with injury.
Just wanted to throw that out there, there are so many different factors affecting recovery the de load after 6 week blocks seems like a great built in protection against stupidity. Guess I should have done the work as written, stupidity will not win out again.
[quote]DanProsser wrote:
I don’t believe in planned deloads. I just let my life decide when I need to take it down a notch.[/quote]
That’s exactly how I was rolling prior to this set back. My training was great so I figured there was no need to scale back. I guess my point is that by the time you feel it’s time to de load it might be too late. This approach may work for you but a lot of people would probably benefit from a week every month and a half where they make recovery a priority, especially those with limited time due to family and work obligations. I used to be a fence sitier regarding the to de load or not to de load conundrum. I just found myself falling off of that fence and landing on the pro de load side.
[quote]DanProsser wrote:
I don’t believe in planned deloads. I just let my life decide when I need to take it down a notch.[/quote]
That’s exactly how I was rolling prior to this set back. My training was great so I figured there was no need to scale back. I guess my point is that by the time you feel it’s time to de load it might be too late. This approach may work for you but a lot of people would probably benefit from a week every month and a half where they make recovery a priority, especially those with limited time due to family and work obligations. I used to be a fence sitier regarding the to de load or not to de load conundrum. I just found myself falling off of that fence and landing on the pro de load side.[/quote]
You got it - you are now smarter and much wiser than the average lifter. And that is one way to become stronger than the average lifter. Congrats.
While doing 5/3/1 three times a week + some conditioning with 6 weeks cycles I’ll be quite beaten up after the last week and really need a deload.
I might have shitty recovery capabilities or some guys just have superhero genetics here. But I can not really understand training without deloading. At least with the template I’m currently doing.
Amen to that. As an old lifter (50 in 2 months!) and still doing 4 days/week 5/3/1, I find that a deload every 4th week, like the original program prescribes, works best for me. The only time I’ll skip a scheduled deload is when life forces me to take time off outside my plan, then I just adjust accordingly.
[quote]DanProsser wrote:
I don’t believe in planned deloads. I just let my life decide when I need to take it down a notch.[/quote]
That’s exactly how I was rolling prior to this set back. My training was great so I figured there was no need to scale back. I guess my point is that by the time you feel it’s time to de load it might be too late. This approach may work for you but a lot of people would probably benefit from a week every month and a half where they make recovery a priority, especially those with limited time due to family and work obligations. I used to be a fence sitier regarding the to de load or not to de load conundrum. I just found myself falling off of that fence and landing on the pro de load side.[/quote]
You got it - you are now smarter and much wiser than the average lifter. And that is one way to become stronger than the average lifter. Congrats.
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