How To Take A Deload Week ( Common Workout Mistake!)

see the progress you want to see, and that is not taking something called deload weeks. Let's learn everything there is to know about deload weeks right now. So when we're talking about deload weeks, there's 3 main parts of this we're going to cover. Number 1, we're going to touch on what is a deload week to begin with. Number 2, we're going to talk about why do you need to take deload weeks and why is it a mistake if you're not taking deload weeks. Number 3, we're going to quickly talk about how to actually— when and how to take and implement deload weeks into your training. All right, first and foremost, what is a deload week? A deload week is when you intentionally take one week. So let's say for example, in that week you do 4 workouts per week, usually however many, you know, whatever your workout split is during that week, you are going to intentionally back off of the volume and the intensity that you are doing. What do I mean by volume and intensity? Well, let's just say, for example, on a regular week, let's just take squats as an example. You normally do 3 sets of 8 reps at 100 pounds. And again, that's on a regular week. Those 3 sets, those 8 reps, that 100 pounds, that is you pushing very close to failure. Let's say for example, you know, you get done your set and you're like, man, that was really difficult. I maybe could have done like 1, 2, or 3 more reps if I really tried. If you watched my previous video on muscle building mistakes, I can link that up here if you'd like. I talk about that RIR, which is your reps in reserve. On a regular week, you want to be going 1, 2, or 3 reps shy of like truly failing at a workout at an exercise. So that's on a regular week. On a deload week, let's say you're doing the same exercise. You're still doing squats, just as an example. Now you're doing 3 sets of 6 reps at 85 pounds. You're like, wait a minute, I can do way heavier. I can do more reps. I understand that. But during a deload week, you are intentionally backing off of the intensity. That is how much weight you are actually lifting. So again, if you're lifting 100 pounds, let's say you're now doing 3 sets of 6 at 85 pounds. So you've backed off the intensity and you've backed off the volume because you were doing 8 reps and now you're doing 6 reps. This is what— just one example of what a deload week would look like. Because again, intentionally you're not going as close to failure. Intentionally, you're not pushing yourself as hard. You're not lifting as heavy of weight. You're not doing as many reps. And we're going to talk about why you're doing that because you're probably like, Eric, what the hell? In my workouts, I'm supposed to push myself. I thought I was supposed to go hard and, you know, go balls to the walls and all these great things. You are, but stick with us a little bit later in the video. We'll talk about why you need this deload week, but that's what it is. You're intentionally not pushing yourself as hard. Not pushing yourself, not going as close to failure. Now, people often ask me, how much weight should I back off? How many reps should I back off? Usually speaking, you'd like to back off of the weight and the volume. So how many sets and reps you're doing, or you'd like to back off by 10 to 20%. So again, let's just say for example, you were doing 3 sets of 8 reps at 100 pounds. If you're now doing 85 pounds, You've roughly backed off 15% on the intensity right there because, you know, you're, you're blocking off 15 pounds. And then again, you're dropping a rep or 2. So you're dropping the intensity and dropping the volume. Most people think you're doing something wrong when you're doing this. You're not. And we're going to talk about why right now. So let's talk about why you're going to need to take a deload week and why they're Actually beneficial to you seeing more progress. Because again, you probably think like, this doesn't make any sense. I thought I was supposed to push myself in my workouts. I thought I was supposed to lift heavy, go close to failure, all these great things. You are. But here's the deal. There's a 3-step process that your body has to go through in order to actually make an adaptation, make a change. And that's what, that's what you're trying to see. The adaptation is you getting stronger, is you building muscle, is you changing your body. That's the adaptation, the change you're looking to make. But before you can get to that adaptation, you have to first and foremost put a stress that is great enough on your body to actually elicit this adaptation response, right? So the stress is you working out. And again, I say it needs to be significant enough because if 6 months ago you're lifting 10 pounds for 3 sets of 10 reps and today you're you're still lifting 10 pounds for 3 sets of 10 reps, that is not significant enough. Your body has no reason to adapt because it already adapted. It already pushed through that. It already responded to that. That was the stress. You adapted to it. And then if you just keep doing the same thing, you're not going to see any change, which is why it's important to work on things like progressive overload, which I also talk about on this channel if you want to take a peek at it. But You put a stress on your body that's great enough to elicit the adaptation. Then before you can get to the adaptation, you need to recover from the stress. Because if you don't recover from the stress first, you will not be able to make it to that final step, the final stage of this process, which is the adaptation. Because what's going to happen is you're going to put a stress on your body. You're not Going to be able to recover from the stress, which means this initial stress, it's still here. Your body hasn't adapted to it. It's not recovered to it, which means it's not adapting to it. So what's going to happen over time is you just keep adding stress, keep adding stress, keep adding stress. You never recover from that stress, and then you can't ever see change. You can't ever get the adaptations, and essentially you burn out. It's almost like if you were driving your car And you just put your foot down on the gas pedal as hard as you could 24/7. Eventually what's going to happen? The engine is going to rev too high. Your RPMs are going to rev too high and your engine is going to fucking stall out. It's going to explode. It's going to burn out. That's the same thing that essentially happens with your body if you don't take intentional deload weeks. Start to notice this when like, you know, if you've been, if you're somebody who like you consider yourself to work out pretty hard, And then, you know, you ever get to the point where you're kind of just like, you're exhausted, you're tired, you're run down, maybe you're a bit more moody, maybe your sleep is taking a bit of a hit, maybe you're somebody who like you actually look forward to doing your workouts but you have not been looking forward to doing your workouts, maybe you're somebody who, you know, the weights just feel a shit ton heavier, like the same weight that you've been lifting for the past couple of weeks or months Just feels so incredibly heavy. Maybe your injuries are starting to stack up. Maybe your lower back is hurting. Your grip strength— this is another one too— your grip strength is failing. You feel like you can't like grip things as hard or just push as hard in your workouts. All of these are signs that the stress on your body is getting so great and so much, and you're not able to recover from that stress. So you're just stuck in this cycle of like Putting stress on your body, not recovering, putting more stress on your body, not recovering, which is never actually leading you to get to the adaptation, which is why you're probably feeling the way you are feeling. And even if you're not feeling that way yet, trust me from experience, you will. So I think of deload weeks as like this almost preventative medicine type thing, whereas like you don't want to wait until you get high blood pressure or diabetes or cholesterol or have a heart attack or whatever it is. You want to like work out and eat right and do all these things to prevent those things from happening, right? A deload week is essentially the same thing. You're trying to prevent yourself from getting to that point where you're not seeing progress because what's going to happen is you are going to like— it's called overreach. You're going to overreach, which is where you put a ton of stress on your body, but then if you can't recover, it's going to take you a week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks sometimes to get back to the point where Your body can actually start to recover again and make progress. But that 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks, if you just would have taken a deload week as you properly should, which you'll learn how to at the end of this video, if you would have just taken a deload week, then you would have been good. You wouldn't have had a wasted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 weeks just continuing to push and not see any progress. So what we do here is we take the deload week to have something called a Supercompensation effect. What is this supercompensation effect? Again, I want you to think about like you know week one you're working out really hard. Week two you're working out really hard. Week three you're working out really hard. Week four you're working out really hard. You're building up this stress because you're adding more. You know you're doing more weight. You're doing more reps. You're pushing yourself. The stress is building, building, building, building. It's going this way, right? You can't just go this way. Forever. Again, much like your car, you can't just push down on the gas pedal forever and it'll just be fine. Eventually this is going to turn to that and you're going to not see progress. It's almost like a bell curve. You're going up, you're seeing progress, but then there's a point where there's a cliff fall-off. There's a point of diminishing returns. So with this deload week, what'll happen is you're pushing, you're pushing, you're pushing, adding stress. Then you intentionally Don't add as much stress. You don't push yourself as hard. You back off the intensity, you back off the volume. So this week you're not adding stress because you're letting that stress level come down. The recovery part of your body is going to be able to have this supercompensation effect because I want you to think of it like this. There are 2 sides to the equation, right? You have this, that your ability to recover, which is called your recoverability— so you have your ability to recover and then how much stress you're putting on your body. Like we just said, the more you work out, the more you push yourself, the more that stress is going to rise. So let's say, for example, weeks 1, 2, whatever the case may be, early on, your recoverability is up here and the level of stress that you're placing on your body is down here. Cool. You have this portion right here, essentially from right here to right there, you have the ability to recover. You're good. Now, let's say over time what happens is, again, you continue to work out, you push yourself, so on and so forth, then you add a little bit more stress. Okay? Now that gap has shortened. Then let's say again, you continue to work out, you add more stress. Well, now you're even. The recoverability and your stress is now even. Then let's say if you don't take a deload week, you add more stress. Well, what happens now? You have more stress than you do the ability to recover. This is how, like I talked about, you're going to end up stalling out. You're going to end up not making progress. You're going to end up feeling lethargic, exhausted, not want to work out. And you know, Uh, getting weaker, you know, losing strength, that kind of stuff. It's because you're putting too much stress on your body that your body can't recover from. So what happens is, let's say we take away this part right here. You know, we're taking this away now and you're pretty much even with your stress and your recoverability. Let's say you take that deload week. What's going to then happen is you're essentially going to reset Set your stress levels. 'Cause during your deload week, you don't keep adding stress. Now the stress comes back down and your recoverability— you have so much more ability to recover. You're gonna have what we call the supercompensation effect. We can use this week to overly recover. We can use this week to really supercompensate because, you know, we don't have as much stress this week. So we can fully recover. That's during the deload week. And then what happens now? You have plenty more room to be able to recover. And so you can push hard again because the stress has gone down. You have recovered from that stress. You're back to the point where, remember that 3-step process, stress, recovery, and then adapt. You're back to the point where you can recover from the stress, which means you can adapt. But again, it's not just one linear line. You can't just keep doing more. You have to go— if we're drawing a line and we have a graph, if this is our ability to adapt, right? It's almost like you're going up, stalling for a bit, going up, stalling for a bit, going up, stalling for a bit. That's the process. It's not just one— let me change colors so I can make this a bit more hitful. That's not even a real fucking word, but— Hitful. Let me make it— let me make it a different color. It's not just one straight line up. That'd be nice, but if that was the case, we would all just be like lifting cars and houses with one hand. Like, that's not possible, right? So this right here in the red, you're going up a little bit and then you're kind of like deloading, going up a little bit, deloading. That's how you can make long-term progress. Now, if you don't take a deload week, what's going to end up happening is you'll go up, And then you just go down and you just keep going down because you just simply can't recover from what you're doing. So that is why we take deload weeks to recover, fully recover, and then be able to push more and make more progress. So again, it's probably a different concept for you to think about. Like, what do you mean I shouldn't lift as heavy and I shouldn't push myself as close to failure? If you want to see the best long-term progress, not just in a month or 3 months or 6 months or a year or 5 years, I'm talking the rest of your life. If you want to make the most progress over the long haul, taking the deload week is the best way to go about doing that. All right, now let's talk about actually when and how to be taking your deload week. So this is what I do for all of our clients. I've taught all my coaches this, and this is what we do inside of the clubhouse. I'm like pointing to my breast right here because I had the— my shirt on. I had my clubhouse shirt on. Uh, my clubhouse is just my training program where every single month you get new training programs. You know, I tell you how many reps to do, how many sets to do, exercises, all that good jazz. So this is exactly what I do in my programming. So I'm not like holding out secrets on you here. This is what I do. Every 4 to 5 weeks, we are taking a deload week. Again, I have found this to be the sweet spot where you don't need a deload week until probably about 4 or 3, 4, 5 weeks of pushing yourself very hard. But if you go past that 4, 5, 6 week mark, that's when you're going to get to that point where you kind of fall off that cliff and you have that point of diminishing returns. And now you end up feeling exhausted, tired, fatigued, moody, you know, losing strength, can't lift as heavy, can't push yourself as hard. I've seen this with myself, but I've also seen this with literally thousands of clients. That I've coached by this point who have ran through our coaching program, our clubhouse, all of that stuff. So every 4 to 5 weeks is that sweet spot. Now, I personally combine this with a new program. So I talked about in the clubhouse, every month we get a new program. So let's just say it's 4 weeks. What'll happen is this: the first week of a new program, what are you doing? You have to learn the new exercises, you have to learn the new routine, learn the new movements. You actually literally just can't push yourself as hard as you possibly could when you're in the first week of a new program, because from like a neurological standpoint, you don't have the movement down yet. You're trying to figure it out. You're trying to figure out what weight is going to be heavy, how to feel the right muscles, so on and so forth. And so that's why the first week of every new program that we have inside of the clubhouse is a deload week. And it's like Again, we're mindful of it. We're intentionally trying to like not push ourselves as hard, but on that same token, like you almost have to because you just can't push yourself as hard. Then week 2, you're trying to push harder. Week 3, trying to push even harder because now, you know, you've been through 2 full weeks and you have the movement down, you have the exercises down, you have the routine down, you know how to, you know, do the form. You're confident. You're much more confident. Confident in the routine so you can push yourself. As each week goes by, you can push yourself a lot harder because you're more confident in what you're doing. So week 2, you're pushing. Week 3, you're pushing. Week 4, this is your 4th week on it. You've been really pushing hard. You've been really pushing yourself in the workout that you've been doing. So week 4, you're like going balls to the walls. And then at week 5, you get a new program. That's week 1. That is your deload week. So, and again, some months are 5 weeks, whatever, but that's the concept. You push hard for it. Like I just explained to you, you push hard for a tad, you push hard for a couple of weeks, and then you deload. You push hard again, you deload. This is, in my opinion, the best way to go about doing it because this is how you can line it up with how often you're changing your exercises, which yes, I, I'm a fan of changing your exercises roughly every 4 to 8 weeks, changing your workout program every 4 to 8 weeks. I've done a video on why on this channel as well, if you want to check it out. But this way it lines up with that. And like I said, it prevents you from having that like bell curve where you fall off the cliff and you start to see that point of diminishing returns where again, you're getting exhausted, you're losing strength, you can't push yourself as hard, your sleep is down the gutter. I don't want you to get to that point. So roughly every 4 to 5 weeks is when you should be taking that deload week. And that's basically it for this deload video. Hope you enjoyed. Again, if you want to check out and join us inside of the clubhouse, You can just head to erfclubhouse.com. You'll see inside, you can kind of peek inside of my new app. I'll put some videos here as well. You know, we have an entire app where again, you— we have instructional videos. You can, you know, you can track your weight, you can track your sets, you can track your reps. We again, we have a new workout program every single month that you don't have to think about coming up with or focus on. You can just get the program, get the plan, and go. All the guesswork is taken out. So if you want to check it out, please feel free to. Other than that, thank you for watching and we will chat soon. All right. Thanks, Eric.