deload week

[Steve Loeding]

Does anyone schedule deload weeks for their gym in general, or do you advise people to deload on their own ?

[Tommy Alfinito]

No way. Life hands most people deload weeks. You may get sick, take a work trip, take a vacation, kids get sick, doctors appointment, party too much . . .

[Vickie Ellickson]

Tangent, but I personally don't consider time out due to illness or feeling crummy (excessive partying) as deloading.

My assumption is that if the body is combating health concerns, it's not able to fully focus on the repair that is expected of a deload week. You're not working out so technically you're "resting", but I wouldn't think of it as a true recovery. Just my opinion though.

[Brendan McNamar]

I did once when I realized the previous week had been brutal. What I did was program an entire week of WODs that would be easy to recover from.

Focused on Cardiovascular/respiratory endurance with our regular 2 day a week heavy lifting.

Rowing, light weight KBS, running, box jumps, jump rope and so on. It worked great and members felt much better at the end of the week.

If you hear your whole membership base grumbling about being sore and beat up I highly recommend it.

I had zero complaints that the week was too easy. I also clearly communicated what we where doing and why.

[Tommy Alfinito]

My point was that you are going to have more of an issue getting people in consistently then people coming in frequently and having a need for a deload. I sat down the consistent people and explained the reasons and need for rest and when to take that and they are driven enough to self regulate pretty well.

Note: I could see a deload on the strengths and we definitely do these. I just think planning a full week deload on everything is excessive when you are programming for a broad spectrum of people.

[Matthew Wade]

Yes. Our strength work is 3 weeks of heavy max effort lifting revolving around 3 lifts (upper, lower and total body/power) and then a back-off week. The next 4 weeks our strength work will revolve around three different lifts. This is all based loosely on Coach Rutmanns max effort black box ideas.
The 4th week in a cycle, the back off week, we do all team and partner based metcons. Our members love it. It's a week of good work that revolves around fun and team building.
This is a new approach for us and we are just now going into our second 4 week cycle, but we saw consistent increases in the lifts and everyone is liking the more structured approach. They are able to see gains and improvements on a weekly basis and again they love team workouts so having a full week of them was a very popular idea.