Episode 19: When to Deload Your Workouts
Deloading your workouts allows your body to catch up on recovery while resensitizing your muscles to training. It can also help relieve the symptoms of overtraining and reduce your risk of injury.
Hey there š I'm personal trainer Jayd Harrison, and in this episode, I explain the concept of 'deloading,' which is a period of training where you reduce the intensity of your workouts to prevent over-training syndrome.
Over-training syndrome occurs when your body cannot keep up with the damage caused by intense workouts, which leads to slower recovery, decreased performance, and a higher risk of injury.
I cover how to tell when your body needs a deload period by noticing the signs of over-training, which include:
recurring aches and pains
decreased performance during workouts or competitions
feeling unmotivated to train
feeling like you need more sleep or rest than usual
tightness in the muscles that doesnāt seem to get better
an erratic appetite (sometimes you feel super hungry, other times you may have no appetite at all)
trouble sleeping (even though you feel tired all the time)
If you start to notice the signs of overtraining, consider planning a deload period in your training by reducing your workout intensity by 40-50%. You can even take a week off from training altogether (or longer, depending on the severity of your overtraining syndrome, you may need as long as a month to deload. This allows your body to heal and become resensitized to the training stimulus, leading to better gains in the long run.
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Jayd (00:00):
After you have added on so much weight and so much weight and so much weight and so much volume, so much volume, so much volume, you're going to reach a tipping point. Most of us reach a tipping point where your body just cannot keep up with the amount of damage that you're doing in your workouts, and when you reach that point, then your body is going to get slower at recovering and you're going to have a harder time recovering and your body's going to start to exhibit a lot of these other symptoms that are usually associated with over training syndrome.
(00:36)
Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I am Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I'm a health coach and personal trainer and I've created this podcast to help you to build a body that you love and live a healthier lifestyle. In this episode, we're going to talk about how to notice when your body's giving you signs that it's time to deload or when you are getting into some over-training syndrome territory. We're also going to talk about how to deload and things that you can do to prevent your body from needing to deload in the first place. Now, if you do any kind of intense exercise like lifting heavy weights or doing some kind of a sport, it's likely that at some point you're going to need to deload and you may start to develop some symptoms of over-training or overreaching. It happens to everybody, so it's a totally normal thing, but you want to be prepared for how to respond to it correctly so that you don't over exhaust your body and put yourself at an increased risk of injury. And before we get started, make sure to hit the follow button and subscribe wherever you're listening to or watching this podcast. And also keep in mind that I have an email newsletter that you can join at my website that's jd gaines.com. This email newsletter will give you notifications of when new podcast episodes drop, as well as other things that are going on in my community. You can sign up for that in the link that's in the show notes. Now without further ado, let's get started on the episode.
(02:07)
Okay. We do need to talk about deloading. Not everybody has to deload. It's not something that everybody has to do, but it is a thing to be aware of. If you spend time with people who train hard, who lift heavy weights, you'll probably hear the term deload where they'll be like, you ask them what are they training today? And they might be like, well, I'm on a deload week or I'm deloading right now. And a deload is a planned period of time where you are lifting or you're doing your training program at a reduced intensity or reduced volume, and the point of the deload is to give your body some time to catch up on healing essentially. So a deload might occur anywhere between every four and six weeks to just whenever you feel like it, but it's a planned period of time that you are reducing your volume, reducing your intensity.
(03:04)
A general rule of thumb, you can reduce the intensity or whatever it is that you're doing by 40 to 50% or even more. Some people will take an entire week off of lifting altogether when they deload. There's no one size fits all of how you should deload, just like there's no one size fits all question when it comes to when or how often you should deload, but it is something that you want to keep in your back pocket as an option for yourself if you start to notice your body showing symptoms of overreaching, non-functional overreaching I should say, or if you suspect that you might be kind of venturing into some over-training territory. So that's in essence what a deload is. It's a planned period of time where you're still working out. Maybe if you are working out, you're going to reduce the intensity by 40 to 50% or even more and you're just can still work out, but you're just not pushing yourself because the priority during a deload period is to allow your body to catch up on the rest and the recovery that it's maybe not been able to keep up with over the course of your training block.
(04:26)
Okay, so that's kind of an essence what a deload is. Does that make sense? Some coaches will plan deload periods in their training programs where they'll say they have your program that you train continuously for four to six weeks progressively overloading, and then at week five or at week seven, they'll plan a deload where you will reduce intensity in your workouts for that week or you might not lift at all and you might do some mobility or some recovery type workouts during that week. Other coaches or during other programs, a deload would be recommended, not necessarily by terms of how many weeks have you been training, but more along the lines of how does your body feel. There's certain symptoms that your body will exhibit when it's time to deload, when you are approaching non what's called non-functional overreaching. So in order to get stronger over time, we need to overreach.
(05:35)
We need to constantly be giving our muscles more load than what they're used to and push them to do more than what they currently can. And when we push our bodies with heavier weight or higher volume than what they're used to, that triggers the adaptations in the body to get stronger. So it's like we're doing a little bit of damage to the body when we're working out and we're overreaching in our workouts by pushing with more weight or more volume. We create microscopic tears along the muscle tissue and also, but our ligaments also receive some damage and other tissues also receive some damage. As long as you are able to balance out the amount of damage that you do to your body and your workouts with adequate rest, then you shouldn't really need to deload. Some people never deload and those are the people who maybe only workout two or three times a week where they're lifting only two or three times a week.
(06:38)
They're getting for every week like four rest days, three or four rest days, and for them, that's long enough for their bodies to recover and repair the damage that's done during their workouts. But for people who are on more frequent training programs where they are working out five, six days a week, sometimes even four days a week, you can need a deload with only one or two rest days per week after you have added on so much weight and so much weight and so much weight and so much volume, so much volume, so much volume, you're going to reach a tipping point. Most of us reach a tipping point where your body just cannot keep up with the amount of damage that you're doing in your workouts, and when you reach that point, then your body is going to get slower at recovering and you're going to have a harder time recovering and your body's going to start to exhibit a lot of these other symptoms that are usually associated with over-training syndrome.
(07:36)
So or when it's time for you to deload, here are some of the symptoms of that. One is you get recurring aches and pains, especially in your joints if you are getting all these little minor injuries and it just keeps popping up. It's like one thing right after another, or you have this nagging little injury that just keeps happening again and again and again and again. These are signs that either your training program itself is too much load for your body or if you have been doing that and now all of a sudden if you've been doing that training program and it was fine for a couple of months and then all of a sudden you're having trouble recovering, it may be time for you to do a deload. If you notice a decreased performance in the gym, all other factors are accounted for. Nothing else has changed, but you're all of a sudden just having a really hard time moving the bar or adding weight to the bar and increasing your performance in that sense, then that may be a sign that your body is having a really hard time keeping up with the load of your workouts.
(08:43)
If you are suddenly starting to feel really unmotivated to train, you just really don't want to do your workouts or you start dreading doing your workouts again, nothing's really changed. You've been following your program, you've been eating and just all of a sudden you're just like, I just don't want to do this anymore. That can be a sign that you're overreaching and you're entering into what we call non-functional overreaching zone. So we need a little bit of overreaching just to get the muscles to adapt, but there comes a point where it's not functional anymore because your body can't keep up with it. If you feel like you need more rest and you feel like you need to nap all the time or a lot more than you usually do, this is also a sign that your body is entering into that non-functional overreaching zone or that you might need to deload if you have this ongoing tightness in the muscles and it's just like no matter what you do, you cannot get them to relax and you can't get them to loosen up.
(09:46)
This can be a sign of inflammation that just isn't going away in your body, that inflammation isn't going down. That's a sign of overtraining and overreaching, and you may need to deload. Your appetite might also be suppressed. So even though your output has the same, and maybe in the beginning of your program you were eating a lot and you had a lot of an appetite, you were growing so much muscle. When you start to enter into that non-functional over training zone, you often will experience a drop in your appetite along with other things, a drop in your libido. Again, just feeling really tired. A lot of people report that they just feel heavy, especially in their legs. They just feel really, really heavy, just like, oh my God, just moving, just walking just feels so hard. That's another sign. And then another sign of over-training or entering to that non-functional overreaching where you may need to deload.
(10:52)
Another sign is trouble sleeping. So if you feel tired all the time, but you have trouble getting to sleep or you have trouble staying asleep or you have trouble getting restful sleep, all of these are signs that your body is struggling to keep up with the amount of damage that you're doing to it in your workouts. Again, I want to just make super clear, we need to give our muscles more than what they're used to in order to stimulate growth, in order to stimulate strength gains. And as long as you're able to adequately balance that out with rest because it's when you're resting that your body actually rebuilds the tissue and makes it stronger. But if you're not balanced out with adequate rest, then you can start to venture into that non-functional overreaching and that non-functional overreaching is when you're pushing yourself and you're kicking your ass in the workouts or you're getting your ass kicked in the workouts and it's not actually doing your body any because you're not actually doing the repairs, what makes you stronger?
(11:58)
It's the repairs that make you stronger. It doesn't matter how hard you push yourself in the gym if you cannot adequately balance that out with proper rest. So again, for athletes who are only working out two or three days a week with resistance training and then they're getting three or four days of rest every week, they rarely need to deload because that's plenty of rest for them. So they're balancing out the effort that they're putting in the gym with adequate rest. But for the people who are working out four or five, six days a week, that's where after weeks or months of training, you can start to exhibit these symptoms of overreaching, non-functional overreaching, or even further into over-training syndrome, which can have many long-term negative effects, negative effects on your gains and on your health. One thing that I didn't mention before is mood instability is a big part of over training, irritability, agitation, just not having a lot, not having a lot of patience, just feeling really irritable if you're a person who menstruates, sometimes over training can feel like that irritability right before you're going to start your period or when you're on your period.
(13:19)
That just heightened just like everything is just too much. That's something that you can also experience when you are in that non-functional overreaching or if you are actually fully in over training syndrome. Another thing that also tends to accompany over training is what's called bradycardia. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. I've never actually heard the word spoken out loud. I've only ever read it. Bradycardia, Brady, bradycardia, hold on. Let me see. That's different from what I thought. Bradycardia. So bradycardia is when your resting heart rate is super low, so a normal resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute, and if you resting, heart rate is normally somewhere between 60 and 100 beats per minute, but then you're getting all these other symptoms of over-training syndrome, and then your resting heart rate is also really, really low. This is another sign that you could be over-training.
(14:18)
Another sign is tachycardia, which is when your heart rate is higher than 100 beats per minute. If your heart rate is doing something different from what it normally does, then that can be a sign that you're in over-training syndrome. The thing about over-training syndrome is it's not really something that someone can diagnose in the moment. It's usually something that's diagnosed after you have actually rested after a period of time, either a week, two weeks to a month of resting and then your symptoms go away. That looking back, you can get diagnosed with, oh yeah, you had over-training syndrome, lack of mental concentration as well. There's cognitive effects to over-training syndrome, and we'll talk a little bit more about the mechanics of what might be going on in over-training syndrome and why it affects us in these ways. But there's cognitive effects related to feeling irritable suffering, depression, agitation, but also lack of mental concentration.
(15:27)
So taken altogether, if you are feeling like shit in your workouts and you're eating the way that you should be, or at least you're trying to follow your macros, you're eating the amount of calories that you should be eating and nothing has changed. First of all, you do want to make sure that you check with your doctor to rule out any kind of illness, particularly any kind of thyroid illness because thyroid illnesses can cause these symptoms as well. So you want to of course get your blood drawn and get tested. That's always kind of like best practices is checked with a doctor and gets some blood tests, but if everything comes back normal and there's no other underlying issue, and you also know, Hey, you know what? I actually have been training pretty hard for the last at least four weeks and nothing else has changed and I'm getting all of these symptoms. Why don't I take a week to deload? And you try that, just give yourself a week. Sometimes you're going to need longer, though. Some athletes, especially depending on how deep into over-training syndrome you are, some athletes need to take as much as a month off, right?
(16:41)
Mundo Dia, right? We know him as Diabolic Dia Mundo Fitness, that was his name back when we first started on Twitch, but Dia, I believe it was last year, took an entire month off of lifting because he was just feeling really fucked up. He was getting a lot of recurring aches and pains, and I believe it was his back got really fucked up or something, and so he just took an entire and he was burned out. Yeah, burnout is another word for a deload, which we can get into other terms for it or over-training, sorry, burnout is another word for over-training or that's commonly used. But yeah, so he ended up just taking an entire month off from lifting and just did yoga. Just hung out and he said it was just the best thing that he could do for his gains, and then when he came back to lifting, everything felt so much better and he started also making gains again, because this is one of the things that's another thing that really is a big red flag for me is you slow down in progress that decrease in performance.
(17:57)
You might notice that, oh, I was able to add on more weight pretty consistently or do more reps pretty consistently, and all of a sudden I am just struggling just to get one more rep and I'm struggling even to keep up with what I was doing before. Or you may notice, and this is really important why I say take video of your lifts and analyze them during your workouts or after your workouts. If you start notice, you're getting little technique errors that normally you would never do. You're making technique errors that are not out of character. Why am I doing that? That's so weird that I started doing that. That's a performance, that's a dip in performance, and that can be one of those signs. So when you take all of these things together, if you suspect that you are either in that non-functional overreaching zone or in the more extreme you have over training syndrome, which is more of like a medical diagnosis, it's a good idea to plan a deload period for yourself.
(19:04)
You'll hear over training called many, many things. It's not something that has been studied. I mean there are studies, but it's not something that's been as extensively studied as maybe it should be, and it is such a hard thing to study because some of many of the symptoms are so subjective, and again, it's something that can usually only be diagnosed after the fact because if you rest and you take a deload and then you get better, then it's like, oh, yeah, that was over training syndrome. But you might also hear this referred to as burnout. Burnout is a big thing. I've heard it called burnout staleness. I feel stale. You might hear that. Failure adaptation is another term that's a lot of times used under recovery training, stress syndrome, and chronic fatigue. These are all other terms that mean basically kind of the same thing.
(20:08)
I do want to say, if you do start to suspect that you're developing over-training syndrome or non-functional overreaching, please don't beat yourself up over this. This is something that is so, so common, which is why so many coaches just go ahead and program deload weeks into their programs for their athletes. It's something that I would say, I don't know, a single lifter who lifts more than three days a week who hasn't at one point or another experienced what they might call burnout. So common for example, there was one study that found nonfunctional overtraining happened in roughly 60% of elite male and female runners. It's more likely to happen with elite runners than it is with non elite runners, but it is very pretty common. 33% in non-elite female runners. There was another survey that found 35% of adolescent swimmers had been overtrained at least once.
(21:16)
You know that other terms staleness estimates of staleness were reported five to 30% of swimmers over the course of a season. 50% of elite British elite athletes reported at least once in their careers the duration of your over-training, non-functional overreaching or over-training syndrome really varies. You can take a deload week off, but sometimes that's not always going to be enough for these British athletes. Their episodes, they averaged two episodes over the course of their careers lasting about four weeks. So if you feel like, oh, damn, I feel like what's going on, I feel like shit, my lifts are feeling shitty, I'm tired, I'm cranky. It's so easy to internalize that and interpret it as I'm doing something wrong. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just part of the life lifecycle. Remember, just like everything else, your fitness has different seasons. It's not reasonable to expect your body to be able to give the exact same output 24 7, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, okay?
(22:36)
There's going to be seasons where you're going to need to step back in your intensity because remember, your workouts are only going to benefit you as much as you can recover from them, but sometimes you don't know that you're overreaching until you've overreached. That's the other thing to keep in mind. It's hard to prevent. It is very hard to prevent. You can preemptively handle it if you do say for yourself, oh, I'm going to deload every four to six weeks. I'm going to take a deload week, depending on the intensity and the volume of your program, but that's not always going to be, not going to be 100% surefire way to prevent over-training or overreaching, non-functional overreaching. What a lot of coaches that I have worked with have said is they go by, your body will tell you when it's time to deload, so train according to your program, continue to progressively overload according to your program.
(23:37)
If you're not following a written program, just continue to progressively overload within reason, adding between 10 and 20% to your workload at a time. Safest thing to do is to go by a rule of two. If you can do the same exercise with the same weight and the same number of reps two times in a row, then it's time to progress. If you progress that way, that's a nice way to be a little bit more gradual, which can help to prevent you going into non-functional overreaching. It's just enough overreaching to give your body a stimulus. These are just rules of thumb that you can follow. Again, it's not going to 100% prevent you from needing a deload week, but if you start to notice yourself exhibiting those symptoms that we talked about earlier and you know that you've been training for four to six weeks pretty consistently and nothing else has changed, you've ruled out any underlying illness that might be happening, then it may be time to deload.
(24:40)
Another symptom that we didn't talk about before, but it is something that is observed in non functionally overtrained or overreached athletes is if you find that you are getting sick a lot, this is a big thing. Upper respiratory illnesses are more likely to occur when you are in that non-functional overreaching zone, so that's something that if you're like, damn, I'm sick again, you keep getting this. Upper respiratory infections is a really common thing, but again, the evidence is not super definitive in terms of the study showing that, yeah, this is what happens, but it's not uncommon for that to occur as well aside from needing to deload because you've just been pushing, pushing, pushing in your training program maybe too long, too much for too long. There are other things that can trigger over training syndrome, and I think it's worthwhile keeping these things in mind because I mean, you still probably should take a deload if you end up in Overtraining syndrome. If you end up overreaching, it's probably best practices to plan a deload anyway, but sometimes other things can trigger it beyond just, well, your program is too much and you've been doing it for too long.
(26:06)
Again, if you increase your training load too fast without adequate recovery, that can cause you to enter into Overtraining syndrome. So say your coach gives you a program and you're supposed to be just gradually increasing the percentage of the weight over time or the gradually increasing the number of reps that you're doing over time, and then you decide to go off program one day and test your PRS or something. This could potentially cause you to go over what your body can recover from, and you can put yourself into over-training syndrome, so then at that point, you're going to have a harder time catching up with the recovery that's needed from your workouts. Sometimes the monotony of training, if you've had the exact same program for a really long time and you've progressively overloaded, you've added more reps, you've added more sets, you've added more, you've added more weight over time, and you just haven't changed anything about your program, that can also overtrain you too just by the sheer monotony of it.
(27:10)
If you are a competitor, if you're an athlete and you compete in some way, if you have too many competitions, that can cause you to go into Overtraining syndrome because when you're in competition, you're giving it all you got, right? You're given 110%. Well, if you're given 110%, then you need to recover 110%, but if you've got competition after competition, after competition with not enough recovery time for you to recover and heal from the damage that your body sustains during those competitions, then you put yourself at risk of developing over training syndrome, sleep disturbances, I see this a lot with my athletes who just had kids. If you had a baby, if your wife just had a baby, you just adopted a baby. If you just adopted a puppy or I don't know, for some reason you're just not sleeping, and this is where it can become like a chicken and the egg kind of thing.
(28:04)
The sleep disturbances can cause over-training, which can make it harder for you to sleep, which just continues, but that can make it harder for you to recover from your workouts. Stresses outside of your workouts like personal life stresses, emotional stresses, any kind of stressor at work, these put you at. This makes it harder for your body to recover from your workouts. So if you push yourself really, really hard in your workouts and you're also stress the fuck out at work or you're going through a breakup or a divorce or your kid is sick, these extra stressors make it harder for you to recover and put you at risk of developing Overtraining syndrome. It becomes easier to overreach, non functionally overreach. If you've had previous illness, this is like what we talked about a couple weeks ago on the podcast, coming back to training after being sick.
(29:00)
You want to do what I call a reload, which is like a deload week, but you're coming back into training after being sick. If you hit the gym too hard, too much intensity, too much volume after you've been sick, you can risk putting yourself into that non-functional overreaching or over-training syndrome, altitude exposure. I have clients and besties who live in Colorado and Colorado is a mountain place and they'll go skiing or something and they'll try to keep their workouts that they do with me when they're at lower, closer to sea level, and then they come back from their trip just totally exhausted because the altitude exposure, the higher you are up in the atmosphere, the harder your workouts are going to be, the harder it's going to be for you to recover from your workouts. A heat injury episode also makes it harder for you to recover, and then also if you have an injury of some type, which the authors of the article that I'm referencing here that I'm pulling a lot of this information from, listed this symptom as, or this trigger as a severe bunk.
(30:13)
If you suffer a severe bunk, if you get hit on the head or you get injured and you have an injury that your body is healing, remember your body's process for building muscle is the healing process. So if you get a severe bonk, if you get hit in the head, if you get an injury, if you get cut, if you get a huge bruise, if you end up in a car accident and there's some kind of other trauma done to your body, it's hard to recover from your workout. So just all of these will necessitate you reducing your workload, reducing the volume, the intensity of your workouts. It's just going to make it harder for you to recover. Note to self, avoid bonks. I'm serious. That's the term they use. It's so funny. Let me pull it up here. This is the study that I'm pulling this information from. Really good study. It's a survey diagnosed with bonk induced ey.
(31:14)
This maybe laugh was reading it like 5:00 AM this morning here, Izzy, I'm not making it up. Potential triggers of over-training syndrome, increased training load without adequate recovery, monotony of training, excessive number of competitions, severe bunk. It's amazing, but apparently this, it comes from this study prevention diagnosis, treatment of overtraining syndrome. I couldn't actually read the full study because I'd have to pay for it and I didn't want to pay for it. I can read the abstract, but I kind of want to pay for it so that I can see the use of bon in a scientific paper. Thankfully, I've only suffered a moderate bonk. Isn't that so funny, Sai, have you ever seen the word bonk used in a scientific paper? So either these people, anytime I see concussion now I'm just replacing it with severe bonk.
(32:11)
Yeah, dude, isn't that so funny? So cute. I love scientists. I don't think I've ever suffered a severe bonk myself. Yeah, concussion or just any kind of trauma, body trauma, whatever. So that's like over training syndrome. What causes it? How to notice if you are over training. Again, it can't really be diagnosed until after the fact, but let's talk about what to do if you do suspect like, Hey, I might be overreaching non functionally, or I might be actually an over training syndrome. Then what you want to do is you want to plan a deload, and a deload can be anywhere between one week to four weeks. It depends on how intense the overtraining syndrome is or how overreached you are. Basically, you deload until your symptoms get better. In general, like a rule of thumb is a global load reduction, global load reduction, meaning overall reduction of the intensity or the energy output.
(33:21)
I talk a lot about deload in terms of weight training, but deload can be also from running or whatever your sport is overall, you want to bring the intensity, bring your energy output down 40 to 50%, sometimes even more. Sometimes you may want to take an entire week off of training altogether or a month off of training altogether. A deload is a good time to try other types of training to focus on mobility work. You could try yoga just as long as it's not a really intense type of yoga because these days they've got yoga classes that are basically strength training classes. You want to avoid that kind of thing. You want to avoid pushing your body. That's the name of the deal, name of the game, that's the name of the game. That's the deal. You want to avoid stressing your body, so everything that you do during your deload time should be more about let's move.
(34:17)
Let's get some blood flow. Let's just work on mobility. Let's just keep things moving, but not stress. So we don't want to put stress on the body during this time. Let's see if you don't, you just continue to push yourself, push yourself, push yourself, push yourself. You may think, oh, I'm going to lose all my gains if I do a deload, I can't possibly stop lifting this heavy or I'm going to just lose everything or I'm going to get all the fat back. The opposite is true, especially if you've noticed a reduction or a decrease in your performance. If you're having a hard time executing your lifts or executing your sport with good technique, you're getting sloppy or you're just having a hard time continuing to add on more and more and more and more. Your body probably needs that time not only to heal, but to become sensitive to the training again by taking some time off, either by reducing the intensity of your training, you still do your workouts, but you do at a reduced intensity or you take completely off when you come back to your workout program, when you come back to your training program, your body is going to be resensitized to the stimulus, so you will be able to start making gains again, and if you don't take that time off, if you don't do that deload, you're just not going to make those gains.
(35:42)
So it's like the difference between like, oh, without a deload, you're just going to plateau and probably even see a reduction because when you are in Overtraining syndrome, your body goes from being anabolic. You may have been anabolic and you're going to be more catabolic at that point, meaning there's going to be more breaking down of tissue that's happening in your body than there is building up of tissue, and so you may reach a point where your body starts actually metabolizing the protein in your muscles because it's not able to keep up with the recovery that's going on. So by not deloading or by just continuing to overtrain and over push yourself, you're actually taking your gains and just pouring them out. You're sacrificing gains for that, so it is worthwhile. And then there's other things that can result. Not only will you maybe plateau in your progress, but you also increase the risk of injury.
(36:43)
Again, your body is not able to keep up with the damage that you're doing to your body, and this can lead to serious injury, especially as your form and your technique gets sloppier and sloppier. That's where ACL tears happen. That's where sprains happen. So as you have a harder time keeping up with the recovery and your performance is going down, you're just increasing your risk of injury little bit by little bit, which ultimately if you get injured, then you can't train at all. You might suffer an injury so bad that you have to completely get out of training for however long it takes you, especially if you end up having to have surgery that's going to take you out of training for a really long time, so that's going to cause you to lose more gains than anything. So either you give your body the rest that it needs or it is going to force that rest on you.
(37:44)
So for my boys and girls, then thems who like to chase the pump ego lift or try to prove how much of a badass they are in their workouts, just watch out. That's not training smart. You can only do that for so long, so you want to make sure you're managing your energy and be ready to deload when your body starts to give these signs that it's like, okay, we're overreaching. There's nothing wrong with taking a deload. It's very, very normal. It's what most experienced lifters end up having to do. It's what most elite athletes end up having to do, and by planning deloads, you can help to prevent your body from getting into over-training syndrome and also by just being more intentional and smart about your training and how you schedule your energy output when you're planning out your workout program, making sure that you can work out six days a week, but not every one of those days is going to be a heavy day or a high intensity day or high volume day.
(38:52)
Some of those days are going to be more recovery like days. Some of those days are going to have to be not as energy intensive. If you're giving 100% on all six days of the week that you're working out, then you're probably going to reach over training much sooner. Then if you were just following a three or four days a week, maybe five days a week training program where you have two or three days of rest each week, your body will have an easier time recovering from that and you'll be less likely to need to over or you would be less likely to need to deload. So it's just a matter of the more intense, the more frequent you train, the more frequently you're probably going to need to. Deload is what I would say is a general rule of thumb.
(39:44)
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner Podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. If you would like to hang out with me while I'm live on my Twitch channel, just go to twitch.tv/jaydigains and hit the follow button. If you'd like to join my Coaching Corner Discord community to get even more content and interact with me when I'm not live, go to the link that is in the show notes. For more information on my training programs and other content, go to my website, jaydigains.com, where you can also sign up for my email newsletter. This newsletter will give you notifications when new episodes of the podcast drop and other announcements and coaching tips. Thanks again for watching. I'll see you in the next episode. In the meantime, make sure to eat your protein, eat your veggies, drink some water, and prioritize your self-care.
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Hey there! š Iām Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), and Iām a personal trainer and health coach. I help people build muscle, burn fat, and clean up their diets with my online coaching programs. Check out some of my coaching videos on Youtube, or join me live on Twitch and follow on social media:
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