{"id":194367,"date":"2026-08-03T15:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T20:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=194367"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:10:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T20:10:29","slug":"lift-less-to-lift-more-when-and-how-to-take-a-deload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/strength\/fitness\/lift-less-to-lift-more-when-and-how-to-take-a-deload\/","title":{"rendered":"Lift Less to Lift More: When and How to Take a Deload"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’ve been lifting weights consistently for over 15 years now, and in that time I’ve learned that no matter how dialed-in my training is, every now and then I hit a stretch where the wheels fall off. I get busy with work and family stuff, sleep goes to pot, or maybe a kid gets sick. Or sometimes nothing is going on in my life, but when I go down to my garage gym and do my warm-up sets, I can tell it\u2019s not going to be a good workout. Weight that should feel light feels like it’s bolted to the floor. I don\u2019t have any pop.<\/p>\n

As a younger lifter, I’d try to push through these times of feeling beat up and tired. It never went well. I\u2019d miss lifts, feel even more beat up and tired, and just end up feeling frustrated and down.<\/p>\n

What I do now when I hit one of those stretches is take a deload: a week where I still show up and train but where I dial the work down so my body and mind can recover.<\/p>\n

The deload is a useful tool to have in your lifter’s toolbox, but a lot of guys don\u2019t use it correctly. Some never take one and end up injured or burned out. Others take them too often and never make any progress. So today we’ll cover when and how frequently to take a deload, as well as what a deload does, how to structure it, and how to get back to your regular programming afterward.<\/p>\n

What a Deload Does<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Every workout produces two things at once.<\/p>\n

First, fitness. These are the lasting adaptations you’re after, like bigger, stronger muscles and a nervous system that’s better at getting the most out of them.<\/p>\n

Second, fatigue. This is a temporary hit to performance from beat-up tissue and a taxed neuromuscular system.<\/p>\n

What you can actually lift on a given day is your fitness minus your fatigue.<\/p>\n

When you train hard for weeks on end, fatigue builds up faster than it dissipates. Eventually the fatigue starts masking your fitness. You’ve gotten stronger over those weeks, but you can’t tell, because you’re lifting with a bunch of accumulated fatigue.<\/p>\n

A deload gives your body and mind time to drain off some of that built-up fatigue so your fitness can shine through once again.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve probably experienced the benefits of a deload without intentionally taking a deload. Maybe you trained consistently for months and reached a point where you felt like you weren\u2019t making any progress adding weight to the bar. But then your family took a week-long vacation where you couldn\u2019t train. All you did was eat, play, and relax with your kids. When you came home and got back to training, it felt like the barbell was just flying off the ground.<\/p>\n

Your vacation gave your body time to get rid of some of its built-up fatigue, allowing you to express the accumulated fitness that was already there from your training.<\/p>\n

When to Take a Deload<\/h3>\n

There\u2019s a lot of competing philosophies out there about deloading:<\/p>\n

Never deload. <\/strong>Some people think that with proper programming, you never need to take a deload. That\u2019s probably true in theory, and maybe some guys are able to do that, but in my experience, deloads usually become necessary during the course of training, no matter how well the program is structured.<\/p>\n

Schedule deloads.<\/strong> Some programs build deloads right into the training schedule. They often prescribe a light week every 4 to 8 weeks whether you feel like you need it or not. If you like structure like that, this is a fine way to do deloads.<\/p>\n

Deload when you feel like you need it.<\/strong> The way I approach deloads is to take them when I feel like I need them. When I feel the need arise, I just tell my longtime coach, Matt Reynolds of Barbell Logic<\/a>, to schedule a deload week for me.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t something I do willy-nilly, based on my mood in a given week. Instead, I look for these specific signs:<\/p>\n

My performance drops, and stays low.<\/em><\/strong> One bad workout doesn\u2019t mean you need a deload. You’ll have off days for random reasons. Maybe you didn\u2019t sleep well the night before, or maybe you had a stressful day of work. Sometimes you can feel flat for no particular reason; maybe it\u2019s something in the atmosphere or the stars. If you have a single bad workout, shrug it off and try again next time.<\/p>\n

But if you have a few bad workouts in a row where you have to drop the weight to get your reps, or you\u2019re missing reps on multiple sets, it probably means it’s time for a deload. You\u2019ve got too much built-up fatigue.<\/p>\n

Everything aches.<\/em><\/strong> If I\u2019m just feeling persistently beat up and achy in my joints and tendons, despite adequate recovery time between sessions, I take that as a sign that I could use a deload.<\/p>\n

I dread training.<\/em><\/strong> Training is the part of my day that I most look forward to. So when I have a week of training where before every workout I think, \u201cUgh, I don\u2019t want to train,\u201d I pay attention. Loss of motivation has been a reliable sign that I\u2019ve got too much fatigue built up and need a deload.<\/p>\n

Life is kicking my butt.<\/em><\/strong> If I\u2019m not feeling well or I just have a lot going on with work and family, I\u2019ll sometimes take a deload. All of that stuff that happens outside of the gym contributes to your overall fatigue level, so trying to add intense workouts on top of that is just going to exacerbate your overall fatigue. Taking a deload when life is kicking my butt allows me to keep up the habit of training without taxing myself even more.<\/p>\n

How to Take a Deload<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Okay, you’ve decided a deload is in order. So how do you do it? Like a lot of things with fitness, there\u2019s more than one avenue to take, and the one you choose depends a lot on your goals.<\/p>\n

If you’re training for strength: back the weight off a little and cut the volume a lot.<\/strong> The standard prescription Reynolds uses with me on a deload is to reduce the weight on the bar by about 10% and cut the number of work sets roughly in half. So I\u2019m keeping the intensity (weight) relatively high, but backing off on volume (number of sets).<\/p>\n

So instead of doing 5 sets of 5 on bench at 265 lbs, I might do 1 set of 5 at 240 lbs and then just one more set for as many reps as possible.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not dramatically backing off the weight because you\u2019ve still got to keep your neuromuscular system primed even during your deload.<\/p>\n

And according to Reynolds, despite the lightening up, a properly calibrated deload will still feel <\/em>heavy, which surprises a lot of people. You look at the programmed weight that\u2019s 10% less than you were doing last time and think, \u201cThis will be easy.\u201d Then you get under the bar, and it feels just as heavy or even heavier than the weight you were lifting before your deload. Reynolds tells me he actually likes hearing a client say, “How is this still so heavy?” during a deload. You\u2019ve built up fatigue, and it doesn’t instantly vanish the moment you reduce the weight. Don’t get discouraged mid-week of a deload and conclude it isn’t working. It is.<\/p>\n

Also, a heads up: your deloads will get harder as you get stronger. Your reward for pulling bigger deadlifts is that even your light weeks involve weights that would’ve been max-effort lifts a few years back. I’ve called Reynolds to grumble about “deload” deadlift sets programmed in the mid-400s. Even though 450 pounds is lighter than my usual 500 I might do for a set of five, 450 pounds still feels really dang heavy.<\/p>\n

If you’re training for size: cut the volume and back off the effort.<\/strong> Bodybuilding-style training<\/a> generates a ton of localized muscle damage, and staying acclimated to maximal weights matters less. So cut your sets by a third to a half \u2014 if you normally do 4 sets per exercise, do 2 \u2014 and stop each set well shy of failure, leaving 3 or 4 reps in the tank instead of 1 or 2.<\/p>\n

You usually don\u2019t need to reduce the weight.<\/p>\n

Or take the whole week off.<\/strong> Another way to deload is to just take a break from training completely for a week. I do that every now and then. I used to try to keep training while on vacation<\/a>, but now I don\u2019t and just use it as a chance to deload. If I have a particularly busy week of life, I\u2019ll skip my usual lifting sessions and just try to get in a 30-minute walk.<\/p>\n

If you’re worried that a week away from the iron will erase your gains, you can relax. Research on trained lifters shows you don’t lose meaningful muscle or strength even after two to three weeks of complete rest. One week of not training will hardly have any effect on you.<\/p>\n

Whichever way you go, one week is the standard deload dose.<\/p>\n

Getting Back to Your Regular Programming<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When you come off a deload, the temptation is to storm back into the gym and test your newly un-buried strength on day one. Don’t. You’ll dig the fatigue hole right back out. Your first week back, run weights you were handling two or three weeks before the deload, then ramp up from there. Within a couple of weeks you should be at or near your best numbers again \u2014 and often past them.<\/p>\n

One thing to prepare yourself for: your first workout back from a deload may feel a little stale. You might feel like you got no pop. After a week without heavy weight in your hands, the bar can feel a little foreign, and guys sometimes finish their first session thinking the deload was a bust. Give it one more workout. Reynolds says he can’t tell whether a deload worked until a client’s second session back, and my experience matches his. First workout, you feel flat. Second workout, the bar starts moving fast again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been lifting weights consistently for over 15 years now, and in that time I’ve learned that no matter how dialed-in my training is, every now and then I hit a stretch where the wheels fall off. I get busy with work and family stuff, sleep goes to pot, or maybe a kid gets sick. 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