If you were to think about the key to getting fit, you’d probably imagine you need to spend plenty of time in the gym. But many fitness influencers assert that taking time away from the gym every six to eight weeks known as a “deload week”— is actually the key to improving fitness gains.
Deload weeks mostly involve toning down the intensity of your workouts. These are typically done during periods of heavy training. The express aim of a deload week is to give the body time to recover from the fatigue and damage that can be caused by periods of intense training.
Intense training or high volumes of training cause us to accumulate damage in our muscle tissues. While this damage is an essential part of the process in improving fitness gains, these improvements can only happen if the body has time to recover.
During exercise, muscles can develop tiny tears, and their fibers can become disorganized after intense training. This causes an inflammatory response in muscle tissues that requires time in an “unloaded state” (resting or doing low-intensity exercise) to resolve. This inflammation is actually important for promoting positive changes in our muscles — leading to improvements in fitness.
But if we train without adequate rest we can cause the muscle to be in a semipermanent state of being slightly damaged. The inflammation doesn’t go away — leading to negative changes — such as our muscles being less able to use oxygen efficiently and poor performance.
By allowing our muscles the opportunity to recover we set them up for success.
Risk of overtraining
Many avid gymgoers may be afraid to take time off from the gym for fear it will cause them to lose their gains. But research actually shows that the genes in our muscles contain a memory imprint — effectively holding genes responsible for muscle growth in a semi-prepared state. This means that our muscles are ready to respond quicker and better to training in the future and promote growth after a period of rest.
Even after long periods of time in a deloaded state (up to seven weeks), your muscular fitness can be restored to prime condition — and even beyond, in some cases. This is true even if you’ve lost some muscular strength during this period. Not only that, but your condition can be restored to its prime twice as fast as it took to get to that level in the first place.