Last week most of our athletes went through a deload. Deloads are a pretty common talking point for myself with interns, new athletes, and even outsiders. So let’s dig into the what, when, and how of a Deload!
Deloads are essentially a period of training where we look to minimize adaptive stress on the athlete and allow for complete recovery. The minimizing of stress (or deloading) is important for the athlete because as with all things straight linear forward progress over extended periods of time is nearly impossible, and at a minimum creates a higher risk of injury and / or overtraining.
For my athletes we usually structure a deload every 4 weeks, with exceptions, but in general an athlete should be looking to deload every 3-6 weeks, depending on a host of factors for the individual.
Factors affecting when to deload include:
Max recoverable volume of the athlete
Relative nervous system intensity of associated training block
Relative life stress (school, family, work)
Relative proximity to the competitive season
Relative proximity to upcoming training landmarks
When we look at all of these things for the individual athlete or the group of athletes through the lens of that 3-6 week window we can make worthwhile thoughtful choices on when to deload, and how to best allow for recovery for that individual.
Now we know when to deload, but what's it look like? There are many different strategies to a deload, at our facility we minimize both total VOLUME and total INTENSITY of the strength, speed, and power training of the athlete. (You could in theory only deload one variable of the training process ie: less volume, or less intensity.) However the minimizing of both the intensity and volume of the training opens up an opportunity to focus on movement quality, check in with athletes on how they're feeling, and allow for an excellent adaptive window of recovery.
Adaptive window!? Sounds like hooplah, well in reality the adaptive window, in a very elementary sense is the REASON for the DELOAD SEASON. All training (all stress and stimulus really) fall on an athlete in such a way that the stress or stimulus creates an acute drop in performance, followed by a recovery and adaptive stage to return the athlete to above baseline performance markers.
This is best indicated by what's called an SRA curve or stimulus, recovery, and adaptation curve. When we deload an athlete we deepen and extend his recovery period systemically allowing for a greater potential adaptation on the other side.
So without a deload: you're setting yourself up for potential injury and overtraining but possibly more importantly you're slamming the window SHUT on potential GAINS. If you want to throw cheese, float instead of run on the field, and hit nukes - never deloading is NOT the answer. Trust me!