Deloading is used in all strength sports except bodybuiding (and this has been changing during the last 5 years.
Here is a good article
Loading the Organism
By Matthew Perryman
For
www.EliteFTS.com
Use of concentrated loading and the conjugate sequence system
As I touched on in my introductory article on periodization, the body is an adaptive mechanism that requires consistent application of diverse stresses in order to reach new physical states. How to apply and manage this stress is a topic of much debate and discussion, mostly because there?s so many ways to do it. This is compounded by the fact that it?s very much an individual thing. No two approaches will yield the same effect on the same person, or even between multiple individuals.
However, with that in mind, there are certain general methodologies that can be used in a general sense to shape a more specific plan. This article is going to touch on one of them, a more advanced method in some ways but also a more fundamental one. Applied properly, it can work for intermediates as well as for the advanced.
Concentration of loading
Concentration of loading is nothing more than centering a given volume of work into a specific block of time. This can be done over the course of a week, a month, or several sequential months. For example, in a given week, full-body sessions could all be clustered across Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with Friday through Sunday for rest. Over the course of a monthly mesocycle, entire weekly microcycles can be focused towards the development of a single quality. The idea of concentrated loading is to accumulate fatigue with a high volume of work, which builds up the quality in question.
The utility of concentrated loading is the effect of a high volume of a specific stimulus. Basically, the body gets to work with a particular type of training and is forced to adapt by the volume of work. Any concentration block, which is a period of high stress, must be accompanied by a period of lowered stress for restoration and full realization of the training effect. This generally involves lowering the volume and frequency of sessions, along with a slight drop in intensity.
The analogy is like pulling down on a rubber band. The more you pull on it, the larger the snap will be when you release it. Concentration blocks gradually pull the rubber band over a period of weeks, so that when the fatigue is dissipated with rest, the adaptation is a much greater snap.
A weekly microcycle should be designed to take advantage of the various stresses on the body, but not all sessions should be equally difficult. Fatigue effects are fairly specific, so sequencing work in order to exploit this is a good idea.
Some examples of this are as follows.
A four day routine:
Monday ? medium
Tuesday ? high
Thursday ? low
Friday ? medium
A three day routine, a la Bill Starr:
Monday ? high
Wednesday ? low
Friday ? medium
Or using the basic Westside template:
Monday ? ME squat
Wednesday ? ME bench
Friday ? DE squat
Sunday ? DE bench
In this example, you can see that the highest stress days?the ME days?are grouped early in the week and with a day separating them. The somewhat lower stress days?the DE days?are performed later.
In much the same way, a monthly mesocycle should vary stresses as well. Some weeks will impose higher stresses than others. See the following examples.
Four week mesocycle A:
Week 1 ? medium
Week 2 ? high
Week 3 ? medium
Week 4 ? low
Four week mesocycle B:
Week 1 ? medium
Week 2 ? medium
Week 3 ? high
Week 4 ? low
Four week mesocycle C:
Week 1 ? high
Week 2 ? low
Week 3 ? high
Week 4 ? low
Three week mesocycle:
Week 1 ? medium
Week 2 ? high
Week 3 ? low
A true concentration block will emphasize volume over intensity and frequency over recovery.
The restoration block lowers volume, frequency, and intensity. The peaking block increases the volume and frequency slightly while increasing intensity. The restoration and peaking phases can overlap strongly, especially when the stress periods are short, and are typically called a tapering period.
Shock loading
Shock loading is a means of using a very high stress on the body in order to cause an adaptation. It?s very much related to concentrated loading blocks, but with a key difference?the stress comes from both high volume and high intensity. The idea isn?t just to accumulate volume, but to actually overstress the body.
This, as you can imagine, is very difficult and not truly necessary for anyone short of an advanced athlete. More straightforward methods of concentration will work for beginners and intermediates if desired, although in the case of a beginner it?s certainly not necessary. The idea is to increase frequency, volume, and CNS output via load intensity. In other words, many maximal attempts are taken along with a dramatically increased amount of overall volume. This causes a vast depletion in the body?s adaptational reserves, the biochemicals responsible for the everyday functioning and repair of the body.
When a large stress is applied to the CNS or the peripheral neuromuscular system, inflammatory compounds called cytokines will affect the body as a whole to create a ?suppressed? state. The CNS will tend to inhibit itself in response to high outputs, and the body as a whole will suffer fatigue symptoms. In effect, both the CNS and the muscles can be overstressed, with differing local effects (i.e. CNS inhibition or eccentric microtrauma) but identical systemic effects.
When given a period of lowered volume and frequency to recover from this state of overstress, the gains realized are much more pronounced.
Delayed transformation
As discussed before, the after effects of any given training stress are crucial to planning. This is just as true inside a given week as it is across a monthly mesocycle as well as between those cycles. This becomes more obvious in the context of the fitness-fatigue model. After a period of high stress work, it takes a period of lowered stress to realize the adaptations. This is fundamental to training in this way.
The sharper the contrast in volume and intensity, the sharper and more pronounced the adaptation. Remembering the analogy of the rubber band, it?s easy to see why this happens. A four week concentration block gradually accrues fatigue. A one week shock cycle rapidly accrues it. In both cases, there?s a period of rest following whereby the state of the athlete rapidly supercompensates to a new level, stimulated by the large amount of work.
The conjugate sequence system
The conjugate sequence system is a means of planning that exploits the after effects of concentrated and shock loading to create a powerful adaptation. It uses 4?6 week phases of strength loading to tax the body?s reserves. A short restoration phase is performed for 1?2 weeks, followed by a phase of moderate volume and high intensity in order to peak the specific quality required.
This is simply a more extreme extrapolation of what is outlined above, using variations in the training load to vary the stress on the body. However in this instance, the emphasis is on entire blocks of training oriented towards either high or low stress, instead of just workouts or training weeks.
Here?s an example:
Weeks 1?4: Three sessions per week/part, 75 percent average intensity, 150 reps per exercise/week, focus on increasing volume/density
Week 5: Two sessions per week, 70 percent average intensity, 60 reps per exercise
Weeks 6?8: Two sessions per week/part, 85 percent average intensity, 80 reps per exercise/week, focus on increasing intensity
Along with the volume and intensity, the content of the load changes as well. Maximal effort, dynamic effort, and repeated effort methods are sequenced accordingly. For a bodybuilder, varied subsets of the repeated effort method can be used (i.e. 4?6 reps, 8?10 reps, etc.) as well as specialization of different body parts.
Using the Westside template again for a strength-oriented athlete:
Weeks 1?4: Four sessions per week (2 ME, 2 RE), 120 reps
Week 5: Two sessions per week (2 ME), 60 reps
Weeks 6?8: Four sessions per week (2 ME, 2 DE), 80 reps
In fact, Westside has a method used to peak the squat for a meet that takes advantage of this as well called the circa-maximal phase. This phase takes advantage of the effects of both volume and accommodating resistance by using very high band tensions over five week pyramid phases, then high bar weight followed by a taper to the meet.
The circa-max phase taken from Paul Childress and Jim Wendler (all weights are based on a 900 lb squat):
Heavy band speed-strength phase
Week 1 ? 3?5?2 @ 275 + 2 strong bands/side
Week 2 ? 3?5?2 @ 300 + 2 strong bands/side
Week 3 ? 3?5?2 @ 325 + 2 strong bands/side
Week 4 ? 3?5?2 @ 275 + 2 strong bands/side
Week 5 ? 6?2 @ 405 (straight weight)
Circa-maximal phase
Week 6 ? 5?2 @ 405 + average band/strong band
Week 7 ? 5?2 @ 435 + average band/strong band
Week 8 ? 5?2 @ 465 + average band/strong band
Week 9 ? 5?2 @ 405 + average band/strong band
Week 10 ? 5?2 @ 405 (straight weight)
Regular band tapering phase
Week 11 ? 5?2 @ 465 + blue band
Week 12 ? 5?2 @ 435 + blue band
Week 13 ? 5?2 @ 405 + blue band
Week 14 ? 5?2 @ 405 (straight weight)
Week 15 ? 5?2 @ 405 (straight weight)
This cycle exemplifies the concept as put into practice by a powerlifter. The heavy band phase conditions the body to the workload and the specific demands (i.e. high force output and high rate of force development). The circa-max phase taxes the body with a combination of weight and bands to create extremely high stimulus. Then, the tapering phase leading to the meet removes some of the stress, allowing the body to adapt.
Also, notice the structure of the phases. During both the heavy band and circa-max phases, the load increases linearly for three weeks, then drops for two weeks. Band tension is present for four weeks then removed on the last week. This further aids in deloading and restoration. Overall tension stress would therefore be low-medium-high-low-really low by the week. The tapering phase does exactly the opposite, going high-medium-low-really low-really low, which gradually removes the stress on the body.
Note that the volume is kept static, using changes in the load intensity as well as bands to change the stress on the body. Methods like this are fairly advanced to be sure, but display how there?s more than one way to skin a cat.
Remember how I stated before that the fitness-fatigue model was nothing more than the expansion of the supercompensation curve? You can start to see why now. The concentration block and the restoration/peaking block take on the qualities that were once ascribed to workouts and rest days.
Dr. Zatsiorsky notes that recent methodology has taken to designing cycles with 2?3 targeted motor qualities but using frequent changes between those targets. Everything else is maintained with retaining loads. These so-called half-mesocycles are two weeks in duration and are concentration blocks in themselves, albeit short term. This approach provides an efficient means of changing the training stimulus and allowing for the sequential development of multiple qualities over a given interval.
Autoregulation and management of volume
The general plan for a week and month is easy to establish. But what about individual workout sessions? As with all these approaches, this will be dynamic as well. However, there needs to be a way of providing a baseline and thus a way of adjusting volume up and down. This is easier said than done with the predominance of cookie-cutter routines.
However, there are ways to do it. I?ll outline a few.
* APRE: The APRE method used a 3RM, 6RM, or 10RM in the original prescription, though any particular rep-max could be used in practice. The first three sets are 50 percent, 75 percent, and 100 percent, respectively. The fourth set is done based on the performance of the third set. If the range is 1?2 reps up or down, the load is kept the same. If the reps are 2?4 down, the load is adjusted down. If the reps are 2?4 up, the load is adjusted up.
* Daily max: The idea of the daily max supposedly originated with Bulgarian Olympic lifters. The idea is that the lifter warms up, and then attempts a non-psyched max. This is important because it provides a means of regulating stress by monitoring neural output. After a few attempts at the heavy weight, the weight is reduced, and the work sets are performed. This is where the volume control comes into play, by manipulating the drop-off and the amount of effort placed into the sets.
* Escalating density: This is a volume based method, similar to the above approaches, but setting aside a period of time to achieve as many sets as possible based on a percentage of a heavy set. Escalating density is based around the idea of increasing the work to rest ratio, in which more work is done per given unit of time.
* Ladders: Also a volume based method, the lifter starts with a single rep, then rests, then does two reps, then three reps, and so on. A basic ladder will start with a 1, 2, 3 set. Means of progression include adding sets to the ladder, such as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and adding ladders.
* Wave loading: A means of fluctuating sets within the workout to achieve a higher volume of work. The number of actual heavy sets may be lower, but the total amount of work done is much higher. For example, assuming a 300?5 max, the sets may go: 255?5, 275?5, 295?5, 260?5, 280?5, 300?5, and 285?5. This allows for much more volume with a heavier weight than simply keeping the weight static.
What all of these plans have in common is a test to find some sort of daily maximum, then a percentage of that maximum is used for the working sets.
Ideally, on the base weeks and especially on the unloading/restoration weeks, neural output will be kept low by keeping the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) low. In other words, you don?t want to be doing any sets that are mentally demanding. However, on the stress weeks, it would be advised to psyche up for the maximal sets and make more than one attempt at a maximum.
The stress placed on the body and the nervous system is what you?re after so exploiting it is a good thing.
On the same note, volume should be curtailed on the base weeks and especially on the unloading weeks while on the stress weeks it should be maximized. This means reducing the working sets on the base weeks while pushing them to the limit on the stress weeks. This too can be adjusted with careful attention to RPE and the amount of the weight drop-off.
Cycle design
Creating cycles based on this approach is relatively straightforward. A mesocycle is on average four weeks long. This is about right for most cases, and conveniently it synchs up with a month. A very basic plan would be to use one of the mesocycles outlined before. Use 1?2 base weeks, a heavy week, and a week down to recover.
Base weeks are moderate intensity/moderate volume weeks. They?re going to push you, but they aren?t all out weeks either. Heavy weeks are high intensity/high volume weeks designed to stress the body. You can psyche up, pop ephedrine, listen to loud angry music, or do whatever gets you going. The idea is to knock off some really heavy work, and do a lot of it. The down week is just a matter of dropping the number of sessions and the amount of work you do. Intensity should stay high, but not so high that you have to psyche up for it. The weight on this week should be something you can just walk up to the bar and do.
This monthly approach is going to be effective for beginners and intermediates (although beginners don?t necessarily need it). As with all mesocycles, two or three qualities at most should be emphasized.
A very simple cycle, and one effective for ongoing progress, is a two week cycle with a very easy means of adjusting the stress. Simply look at the week before and do the opposite. You?ll have two basic weeks?one with a high frequency and volume of work with a handful of max attempts and another with a lowered volume of work and a sub-maximal intensity. This approach works nicely with the half-mesocycles outlined above, where the training emphasis is altered every two weeks.
The two possible advanced approaches for using this method, the concentration of loading cycle and the shock loading cycle, were both touched on above. Concentration of loading is nothing more than expanding the scale of a monthly mesocycle to encompass several months. Instead of having base, loading, and unloading weeks, you?ll have base, loading, and unloading mesocycles.
Here?s an example of a conjugate sequence cycle.
Base mesocycle:
Week 1 ? low
Week 2 ? medium
Week 3 ? medium
Week 4 ? medium
Concentration mesocycle:
Week 1 ? high
Week 2 ? high
Week 3 ? high
Week 4 ? medium
Tapering or restoration mesocycle:
Week 1 ? low
Week 2 ? low
Week 3 ? low
Week 4 ? medium
Shock loading on the other hand uses a specific week of high intensity and high volume loading. The loading block is similar to the concentration mesocycle outlined above, but it?s oriented towards building up to the high-stress week, which is a sharp alteration in the training load. The tapering block is almost identical to the restoration phase.
Here?s an example of a shock loading and tapering cycle.
Loading mesocycle:
Week 1 ? low
Week 2 ? medium
Week 3 ? high
Week 4 ? really high
Tapering Mesocycle:m
Week 5 ? low
Week 6 ? low
Week 7 ? medium
Week 8 ? low
This idea has been popularized by researchers Glenn Pendlay and Dr. Lon Kilgore. Pendlay uses this technique extensively with his athletes with great success. An interesting approach to the method uses a variation of Bill Starr?s classic 5?5 routine. The volume is built up by manipulating the volume and intensity workouts, then switching to a 3?3 approach with reduced frequency when the athlete reaches a peak.
Conclusion
There?s nothing magical about any of this, just an exploitation of the basic nature of the body?s adaptation process. Physiologically, the body responds to high stress with adaptation but only if it?s given the recovery time and nutrients to do so.
Training therefore should be nothing but a mechanism for stimulating the body strongly, then allowing a recovery interval. Planning the times of rest and low-stress work is just as important as the heavy, bread-and-butter workouts.
This is a relatively new paradigm in the West. It is one that contradicts all the ?common knowledge? with regards to bodybuilding especially, but it is a highly effective means of creating workouts.
Matthew Perryman is a student of weight training and sports conditioning with over eight years experience. He has a passion for improving his knowledge and conveying it to others. Matthew is a firm believer in the utility of multiple approaches, using the appropriate tool for the task, and looking beyond the orthodox. More information can be found on his website at
http://www.chemicalinsanity.com.
