THREE COMPONENTS THAT ARE KEY TO MAKING PROGRESS: DELOADING, TAPERING, WAVING (PART 1)

THREE COMPONENTS THAT ARE KEY TO MAKING PROGRESS: DELOADING, TAPERING, WAVING 

Once you start doing forced reps or negatives or strip sets, you’re introducing more fatigue into the equation. Now, something must give in order to still make sure that the downward curve of fatigue is still met with a sharp up curve of recovery. This is something you saw in 365 in phase 1 using the strong-15. That the assistance work has to take a sharp turn down once the intensity load starts to rise. Likewise, now when you turn the perceived intensity up, the volume of the big lifts must take a downturn.

Our programming has to account for the overall load across the training spectrum and in life. That means managing recovery through the things we do outside the gym (more sleep, less stress), and the way we spend our time in the gym when we find ourselves in recovery debt for too long (the common term for overtraining).

DE-LOADING

 I am not a fan of pre-planned de-loads. I never have been. The traditional de-load schedule generally went something like this... 

• Week 1 - train 

• Week 2 - train 

• Week 3 - train 

• Week 4 - de-load

Personally, this never made any sense to me.

I feel like anyone should be able to train for 6 weeks at a MINIMUM without a break. Three weeks of training is really nothing, and I could never figure out why someone would need a break after three weeks. I wonder if these guys are the same ones that had commitment issues with women and felt the need to change girlfriends every month as well.

I can remember training for months and months on end, all out every session, three to four times a week. I mean, taking every set to failure and then doing rest/pause and going heavy as hell for high reps. I made a tremendous amount of progress during these times because my will to get better and get stronger/bigger was very strong.

I did all of the necessary things I needed to do in order to make that happen. My sleep was on point for months, my eating was solid, my desire was like a raging inferno that burned me up inside. I reached this point because I had been in a state of stagnation for so long, that I pretty much willed me to get better. I didn’t want to take a break because mentally, I never felt like it. My body felt good, and my mind was focused. For the life of me, I could not comprehend guys taking a week off, or a down week after only three weeks of training.

It was during this time that it really hit home to me, that the longer you can stay in the gym without taking a break, the faster progress will come. I know it seems like a “duh, no shit” revelation however really grokking that entire philosophy became paramount.

PROGRESS, MEANINGFUL PROGRESS, IS GENERALLY SEEN WHEN YOU CAN STRING OUT LONG TRAINING CYCLES.

You build a big base by staying in the gym for as many weeks, months, and years as possible without a break. Even if you aren’t progressing as fast as you’d like, being in the gym and putting in HONEST hard work will eventually net you progress.

Is there a time to take a break, of course?

BEING FULL, AND BEING HUNGRY 

Take a moment to think of a time when you ate so much you regretted it. It is probably sometime during Thanksgiving or Christmas or some other holiday associated with eating until your guts felt as if they would explode.

Afterwards, you generally unbutton your pants, go sit on the couch, and succumb to the food coma.

I think everyone has experienced this a few times in their life. That point where you literally could not put another piece of anything in your mouth. You are as full as you can tolerate. It is not a pleasurable feeling. Certainly, the thought of trying to cram more food into an already overloaded stomach doesn’t seem like a great idea. I’ve always felt like mentally, training is far more productive when you’re hungry rather than full. The days where you are antsy to squat or deadlift, or press heavy. Generally, it is during those days, weeks, and months that the most significant progress is made. There is a great balance of stimulus and recovery that keeps you “hungry enough” so that mentally, and physically, you don’t find yourself wanting to go lie down on the couch.

However, it is inevitable that if you train long enough, you’ll find yourself dozing off into a “carb coma” of training. It is that moment when you’re loading the barbell and you realize, you’ve been going hard at it for months now, and you’d rather be anywhere else than the gym right now.

You’re full.

When you reach those phases where you are no longer “hungry”, then you should take a break from training.

Losing your hunger means losing your zest and enthusiasm for being in the gym and giving real effort. Some will tell you to push through this, and that you need to “quit being a little bitch”. I cannot tell you how many advanced guys I know that have fallen prey to this advice when they were younger and regretted it later. There will always be times over your training life that you need to give the body some room to grow. This cannot happen without rest.

To add a caveat to that, however, you need to put things into perspective. If sleep is good, and eating is on point, you’re not missing lifts, and you haven’t been training very long since a previous layoff, then yeah you may just need to cowboy up or chalk it up to a bad day at the weight pit. However, if you have not felt hungry for weeks on end, then it is a good time to take that nap and let hunger eventually restore itself.

When you reach the point where you’d rather be at home grinding your ass groove into the couch than loading the bar, and this feeling lasts for a week or two, you have two options. You can de-load, taper, or wave.

TAPERING

Tapering in the base building model means you will essentially cut training in half, and return to week 1 of your base building programming until bar speed returns.

If week 1 of your programming had you using 350 for an EDM on the bench then this is how the first week of tapering would look. Bench – 1x1 @ 350 (EDM), 1x8 or AMAP @ 245

For squats, you’d simply cut the 5x5 to a 2x5. For Dead-Lifts you would cut it back to 1x3 instead of 3x3.

 Stay with this lowered volume approach until you feel bar speed and explosiveness return on a regular basis. When bar speed starts returning you have two options as well. You can increase volume back to the normal base building model with more volume, or you can stay with tapering by keeping the sets low, but move up the base building ladder in terms of intensity. You’d simply go through the normal 10-week base building phase in terms of intensity used, but the volume would be half of what the normal model presents.