Deload weeks: when to take one and what to change

A deload is a planned easy week. You keep training, but you do noticeably less, so that fatigue can drop and the next block starts fresh. It is one of the most common habits in strength training and one of the least studied, which makes it a good topic to be careful about.

This post covers what the research does say, what experienced lifters actually do, and a simple way to deload that you can plan in advance.

What a deload is

In 2023, a group of researchers asked expert strength and physique coaches to agree on how deloading should work, over three rounds of questions (a Delphi study). The consensus definition they proposed:

Deloading is a period of reduced training stress designed to mitigate physiological and psychological fatigue, promote recovery, and enhance preparedness for subsequent training.

Two things stand out. It is a reduction, not a stop. And it is about fatigue in the head as well as the body: a deload that you dread, or that leaves you restless, is missing half the point.

The same paper is also frank about the evidence: deloading is common but under-researched, and how best to fit it into a program is not known. Treat everything below as a sensible starting point, not a law.

How often, and for how long

The best description of real-world practice comes from a 2024 survey of 246 competitive strength and physique athletes. On average, they:

• deloaded for about 6.4 days, so roughly a week,
• every 5.6 weeks or so, with a lot of variation between athletes,
• mostly on a plan made in advance, sometimes adjusted by how they felt,
• and also when performance stalled, or during spells of more muscle soreness or joint aches.

These are competitive athletes, so the numbers describe experienced lifters rather than prescribe anything for you. If you want a starting point, a week every five or six weeks matches what they reported on average; adjust from there.

What to change, and what to keep

The same survey is useful here too, because it describes what the athletes actually changed:

• Volume went down, through both fewer reps per set and fewer sets per week.
• Load went down: lighter weights on the bar.
• Effort went down: sets ended further from failure, with more reps in reserve.
• Frequency stayed the same: they kept training on their usual days.
• Exercise selection mostly stayed the same.

That last pair matters more than it looks. Keeping the same days and the same exercises means the habit carries on and nothing has to be relearned when the next block starts. The deload changes how much, not what.

A worked example

Say your normal week has a chest-supported row at four sets of 10x40. A deload version, using the simplest lever, halves the sets:

Normal  10x40, 10x40, 10x40, 10x40
Deload  10x40, 10x40

That cuts the row’s volume from 1,600 kg to 800 kg while keeping the weight you know. If you also want to lower the load and effort, drop the weight a step and stop well short of hard:

Deload  10x35, 10x35

Do the same for every exercise in the week, keep your usual training days, and you have a deload. When it ends, go back to the normal numbers from before the deload, not to something heavier to “make up for it”.

Is a full week off the same thing?

Not quite, and one trial shows why the details matter. In a 2024 study of 39 trained men and women, one group stopped resistance training completely for one week in the middle of a 9-week, high-volume program, while the other group trained straight through. Muscle size, local endurance and power ended up similar. Lower body strength, though, improved more in the group that kept training.

That study tested a full week off, not a reduced week, so it does not tell us much about deloads as most people do them. What it does suggest is that stopping completely is not a free boost, which is another reason the reduce-don’t-stop approach is the common one.

When to take one early

A planned deload is easy to schedule. The harder call is noticing when you need one sooner. Signs worth watching (the first two echo what the athletes in the survey reported):

• the same numbers, or lower, for several sessions in a row,
• aches that are not settling from one week to the next,
• short sleep, a stressful stretch at work, or feeling run down.

A written check helps, because on a tired day “I’m fine” is the easy answer. Keep a short list and tick it once a week.

One line to be clear about: if an ache is sharp, getting worse, or still there after an easy week, that is not a training question. See a doctor or physiotherapist rather than planning around it.

Questions

Plan it, then forget about it

In Liftorra, the coach (Progress, then Lifts: the coach card at the top) runs a short weekly check of warning signs that you can edit, such as joint pain, short sleep or feeling run down. Tick any of them and it offers a deload for the next week; sessions in a deload week start with fewer sets (60 percent of the plan), on your usual days, with your usual exercises. See planning your week and deload weeks, or open Liftorra. It is free and has no ads.

Sources

• Bell L, Strafford BW, Coleman M, Androulakis Korakakis P, Nolan D. Integrating deloading into strength and physique sports training programmes: an international Delphi consensus approach. Sports Medicine Open, 2023.
• Rogerson D, Nolan D, Androulakis Korakakis P, Immonen V, Wolf M, Bell L. Deloading practices in strength and physique sports: a cross-sectional survey. Sports Medicine Open, 2024.
• Coleman M, Burke R, Augustin F, et al. Gaining more from doing less? The effects of a one-week deload period during supervised resistance training on muscular adaptations. PeerJ, 2024.

How this post was made. Every claim links to its source. Drafts may be written with AI help; each one is checked against the linked studies and reviewed by the person who runs Liftorra before it is published. Spotted a mistake? Write to hello@liftorra.com.