What is the best way to go about deloads? Drop a couple sets for a at least a minimum dose of growth, as well as lower RPE? I know Mike Israetel recommends dropping fatigue completely and in his program you kind of escalate sets, “overreach” for the final week and deload (usually 5th week). In deload week it is low # of sets and pretty much warmup sets, since you do half of recorded reps in the first week of previous mesocycle. Is there also the mentality to consider? Such as “I really don’t wanna deload, I wanna keep training” vs “Damn I really need to dial things back after this week and recover”. I say this since I returned to the gym about a month ago, have been loving training, and don’t escalate my sets every week unless I have to. I think I’m still at the stage where I find a minimum dose where I grow and try to progress in weight, which has been steadily happening since my return.
I’ve had a bit of knee pain and ham soreness, mainly since I didn’t have anything like heavy RDLS training at home. It was mainly slider leg curls and single-leg RDLs to failure, hip thrusts. Sorry for the long-winded post.
Thanks Jordan, what program would you recommend buying for someone who just wants to maximize muscle growth? I am a lanklet trying to bulk since I came back to the gym last month. I’ve been training for a few years but not sure how productively, took a year off during covid where I was training like a convict at home to keep any gains. Now I’m back in the gym with access to heavy weights and more equipment.
I think you will like the way the templates handle this. I have ran a few of the templates over the last couple of years with some breaks. I think of the way the templates do it as more of an active recovery instead of a deload in the way most people think of it. Volume changes will intensity doesn’t change much so it allows to me add a little weight with less volume in an active recovery part of the next block or template without sacrificing intensity. The way I used to deload was just a wasted week in the gym doing too light of weights to do much and then back to high volume the next week. This has more of a rhythm to it as volume increases, levels off, drops off, then increases again as you go from block to block or template to template. After you have ran a couple of templates you see the flow in the design and how modules fit together in a long term idea.