Alliteration aside, what is a deload? In the sports of weightlifting and powerlifting, traditional training protocols feature a 12-week lifting cycle during which time athletes progressively build their weights. At the end of 12 weeks, they test their lifts. And then they have a deload week – a week in which weights and volume are significantly reduced. Then, they begin another building cycle. And rinse and repeat.

Some of you may also remember Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 program, often erroneously called the Wendler Program (Jim Wendler has written hundreds of programs, not just that one). 5/3/1 features a 3-week build, 1-week deload, for several iterations before testing. The main lift of each day included 3 warm-up sets, and 3 work sets. It was simple, and very time effective, so it became immensely popular in the CrossFit affiliate world as THE strength template to follow. My predecessor used it, and I’ve used it in the past as well.

The biggest problem we encountered? Deload weeks were boring, and didn’t always mesh well with members schedules. If you’re coming back from a week of vacation, do you really need a deload? And it begs the question, why have a deload in the first place?

Deloads are about giving your body a chance to recover. Specifically, your joints, and your nervous system. In sports like weightlifting, powerlifting, and Strongman, training sessions can last several hours, and they require repeated bouts under heavy load. Neurological arousal is also important (aka getting “psyched up”). All of this is done 4-6 times per week. It is A LOT for your body to handle.

Contrast that with the way we lift in class. In CrossFit, we do 1 main lift, and for relatively low volume. Even our “volume” days have no more than 16 reps at our working weights. In order to maintain speed in our conditioning workouts, the vast majority of them use weights under 80%. In our powerlifting and weightlifting programs, given that our clientele are not professional athletes, we focus on at most, 2 main lifts per day, with the rest of the work being smaller, accessory exercises. All of our members have lives outside the gym that need to be considered.

We see it all too often – the training methods and protocols for elite athletes are applied to the average Joe gym enthusiast, whose needs and training volume/schedule are significantly different. If you’re a professional runner, then yes, 80% of your training should be in Zone 2. Similarly, if you’re a high level competitor in a strength sport, you should have regularly scheduled taper and deload weeks. For the rest of us, we have more flexibility. 

Last week, we shared once again an article from several years ago, outlining our programming structure. We use my own twist on the Cube Method, which allows us to heavily undulate lift percentages, so that we don’t spend weeks at a time above 90%. This is significantly less taxing on the system, and therefore we don’t need boring deload weeks, that won’t apply to everyone anyway. 

Instead, we have deload days. Some days, this may mean reduced volume and load for a specific lift. Some days, this may mean a workout where everyone just moves. They are less frequent, and more general, because we are not world class strength athletes (most of us, anyway). 

For my custom programming clients, it’s even more individualized. I’ve had clients build steadily for 6 months without a deload, because they’re training 3x weekly and/or just learning the movements. When performance suffers, then they get a deload. It’s a reaction to training data, rather than a pre-planned phase.

So, to answer the question, do you need a deload week? As with most things, it depends! If you’re a high level strength athlete with dedicated training blocks, yes, they should be part of your program. For us casual gym goers, it’s a less frequent need, and we’ll stick with deload days. I hope that clears things up. See you in the gym!