Deload strength loss

Hello, as I stated in the title upon deloading i felt as my neural efficiency was worse after a deload than it was before. Weights that arent supposed to be really heavy felt challenging.

  1. Can something like this occur because of an improperly programmed deload?
  2. Is this normal? (I am transitioning from a hypertrophy block to strength block)

A possible mistake i could have made is that i reduced intensity a little bit more than i should have. And i took a few extra days of to recover, i felt beat up.

Thank you.

If it’s just a week long deload and you’re still training, I think it’s rather unlikely. What exactly happened?

I had a very good hypertrophy block, hit a lot of mini PRs, and the last session of that block i had one of those, insanity workouts for fun you could call it. (Going nuts on everything - Failure, high intensity)

Couple of days after i felt really beat up and sleepy, had no energy in the gym what so ever, it was time to deload anyways.

I completely autoregulated my deload, slashed the volume did a little bit of squats and deads with weight that was used in hypertrophy work for sets of 3-5, i also reduced the amount of days i have been in the gym. I went 3 times instead of usual 5

Before a deload - 130kg squat 2x5 beltless
At the end of a deload - 135kg squat 1x1 with a belt rpe 6-7 (so, not really easy)

The only thing that makes sense to me

  1. Cumulative fatigue may still be there, i am not 100% recovered
  2. Maybe i reduced the workload too much and lost a bit of that neural efficiency short term

I don’t think this really means anything, though I absolutely hate the last session you did.

I don’t think there’s a lot of cumulative fatigue given the reduction in training volume and intensity and I don’t think it’s plausible that you lost neural efficiency this quickly. More importantly, I don’t think this information should change anything about your programming now or in the future.

Thanks for the input Jordan, and you bet i hate that session even more