No. 70: Deloading

Hey everyone,

I have to prepare for a Chicago-bound flight tomorrow so I’ll have to make this quick. So, these past couple of weeks I’ve been gradually building up my fitness. I put in 5.5 hours of riding last week, and I’m planning on doing 6 this week if I can fit in riding around my trip. Eventually, I plan on doing 9 hour weeks and conducting my first lactate threshold test at the end of the month to establish training zones for the off-season.  I’ll elaborate more on that after I finish Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible.

Over the last couple months I’ve actually made better progress lifting weights, which I’ve been doing for about three years without any injuries. I think I lift more weights than most cyclists do, and I focus on high-weight, low-rep, compound exercises. After I took my exam, I started off light (about 135 lb squat and 95 lb bench) and gradually increased the weight after each workout, here are my current lifts (in format X/Y, where X  = where I am now and Y = where I left off):

Squat 5×5: 195/220 lb
Bench 5×5: 130/140 lb
Overhead 5×5: 85/95 lb
Deadlift 1×5: 175/220 lb
Weighted Pullups: 5×5 2.5/10 lb
Weighted Dips 5×5: 30/50 lb
Barbell Row 5×5: 115/130 lb
Power Clean 3×5 80/115 lb

I lost a lot of weight (about 10 lb) without exercising during May while I was studying. At the beginning of June, I weighed about 130 lb, and now I weigh about 140 lb. I wrote a while back that I wanted to maintain my weight at 135 lb., but that’s no longer the case and I’m just going to eat and exercise like normal as long as I don’t gain too much body fat. I think calorie restriction was one of the reasons why I got tired and burned out during the spring. I’m kind of bummed out that I stopped lifting right before reaching 225 lb on the deadlift because it’s an important psychological barrier for me and I’ve never done any lift with that much weight before. I’m not worried though, because I know I’ll get there in a few weeks as long as I have patience and stay consistent.

However, I wasn’t always patient – when I was first starting out I would get really irritated if I missed a day of weight training, and after I came back from Summer Break, I put too much weight on the squat (195 lb) and tore three of my tendons (2 knee, 1 ankle). My ankle isn’t sore anymore, but I still have some soreness in the knees. Lately though, they’ve felt really good – I’d say it’s the best they’ve been since the injury. I easily did 195 lb of squatting yesterday, and that level of weight has since become routine for me.

Anyway, this is why I wanted to discuss the concept of deloading, or deliberately reducing the amount of weight after every few workouts. For example, squat progression might proceed as follows:

Workout 1: 150 lb
Workout 2: 155 lb
Workout 3: 160 lb
Workout 4: 165 lb

(deload 15 lb)

Workout 5: 155 lb
Workout 6: 160 lb
Workout 7: 165 lb
Workout 8: 170 lb

(deload 15 lb)

…and so on.

I think it’s a common misconception amongst beginners to think that they always have to lift as much or more than they did during their last workout. This misconception leads to plateaus and unfortunately, injuries, because it doesn’t give the person enough recovery time to build muscle. Also, it’s important to know that muscles recover faster than tendons and ligaments because they have better blood supply. This is why you need to sometimes deload even though you feel like you can do more the next workout. You might be able to successfully execute that extra interval the next day, but you’ll leave yourself at risk for injury later on because you haven’t given your connective tissue enough time to heal.

One of my friends learned this the hard way when he tore his bicep tendon during a dodgeball game, and subsequently walked around for a week with a dangling bicep until his insurance approved the reconstructive surgery. He was able to bench 200 lb before the accident, but tore his tendon when throwing a ball. I asked him how he trained and if he staggered his exercises, and he responded by saying he trained with a monotonic (nondecreasing) progression with respect to weights. I still argue with him about it today, but I insist that if he had taken the time to deload every now and then, his bicep tendon would have been strong enough to withstand the tweak. I suppose we can agree to disagree.

Here’s an example of a hypothetical squat progression over 160 workouts (about a year’s worth of squatting) from 150 lb to 225 lb:

Squat Progression Over a Year

In this scenario, the lifter deloads after every 4th workout. You can see that sometimes, she deloads more weight than other times. In this case she deloads 10 lb after every 4th (but not 16th) workout and 25 lb after every 16th workout. This isn’t entirely realistic (it’s better to deload by percentage rather than absolute weight), as you can progress longer without deloading earlier in the progression. Also, natural progression will most likely not be linear like in the above diagram. During times of heaver training, the lifter won’t be able to progress as quickly and will have to deload more often. However, the above picture should give you a rough idea of the concept.

I’m pretty good at planning deloading over short time periods, but not so much over long periods like months or years. This relates to the concept of sports periodization, which I’ll write more about as I learn more about the subject.
EDIT:

So it turns out my friend Daniel does deload, so I probably didn’t phrase my question very clearly. Anyway, here’s what he said, it’s quite interesting:

“I don’t actually disagree deloading. I do take a recovery week every 4-5 weeks. When you mentioned deloading to me the other day, I thought you were referring to reverse pyramid sets.

“A distal biceps tendon rupture usually occurs when the flexed elbow is traumatically forced straight. This can certainly occur in contact sports such as football, hockey, lacrosse, and rugby. However, it can also occur in recreational athletes or weightlifters or attempt to lift more weight than can be handled, resulting in traumatic tearing of the tendon as the arm is gradually extended.”