More rest equals more gains?!

Have you ever got to the point where you feeling like you’re going through the motions in the gym?

Maybe you feel like progress has stalled

Perhaps there’s some unexplained aches and pains

You’re overly irritable or you’ve lost the drive you had to complete your workouts

I was having a conversation with a member of the gym, about exactly this the other day.

She was just there to ‘get it done’ even though she used to love going and it was the highlight of her day. She’s also got a couple of niggly little injuries that won’t go away…

“Yeah; me too” I thought to myself. Especially when I was playing football twice a week and had all my gym work to do as well.

What you’re feeling and experiencing is known as ‘over training’.

Simply put, you’ve done a bit too much for a bit too long and you need a bit of time to let the body and more specifically, the central nervous system, recover from what you’re demanding of it.

That’s not to say what you’re doing is wrong, you might just need a bit more downtime.

This can come in many forms… an extra rest day per week, a week off whilst you’re on holiday or for those of you that HATE having time off altogether, a deload of week.

Now whilst my preferred option would to have a week off completely, I understand that life doesn’t allow that sometimes, especially with competition prep, life schedules and day to day runnings.

That’s where a deload week can perfectly fill the void.

You go to the gym

You do your normal workout (wait, what…? Bare with me)

You do your normal sets and reps but you cut the weight to anywhere between 30 and 50% of normal.

Sounds pointless? It may well do, but you’re getting the best of both worlds. You’re moving, you’re burning calories (if that’s what you’re after) and most importantly for some people, you’re blowing off some steam and you’re in the gym still.

The body recovers and you get to workout still.

So how do I know when to schedule a break in training or a deload week?

Well as I said before, a lot of it boils down to personal preference. There will be signs and symptoms, like I mentioned previously, such as increased irritability, fatigue and stalling of progress, so keep an eye out for them. However there’s no golden window of opportunity to stop overtraining occurring.

As a general rule, a week off/lower volume week can be scheduled in, somewhere between every 6-12 weeks depending on intensity, volume and training age.

As a side note, I always like to try and schedule my weeks off/deloads weeks in and around holiday time.

The length of holiday usually dictates how I’ll structure this, for example, if I have 7-10 days away, I’ll deload the week before, have a full week of rest whilst I’m away and then I’m back too it.

If I’m away for two weeks, I’ll train hard right up until I go and then have two full weeks off and enjoy the time away with the family.

So next time you feel your mojo is lacking, you don’t want to train or you’re simply running on empty, have a look at resting or deloading for a week or so to allow the body to recover.

You’ll thank yourself on the other side