Deloading is a very important application to prevent serious injuries and performance decreases in individuals who exercise intensely. Resting for a while for intensive training individuals creates quite positive effects when done at the right intervals and in a planned way.
What is Deloading?
Deloading means de-load as a word. In exercise science, it is the name given to a low-tempo exercise period to increase performance in intense exercise tempo, complete active rest and prevent injuries.
Is Deloading really a useful technique?
Although this stress situation that occurs with exercise provides a positive development, uncontrolled, serious and continuous stress can harm the individual. The risk of damage increases especially with an intense and prolonged stress environment.
The most important problem that arises in such cases is overtraining. Overtraining seen in athletes who do intense exercise leads to serious performance decreases, injuries and many other mental / physical problems.
Although some athletes prefer to rest without doing any exercise instead of deloading, deloading is actually more beneficial in many aspects such as maintaining strength, technique and continuity of performance. Deloading, ie load reduction period, accelerates the development of the athlete, reduces the risk of injury and protects it from other similar problems in the following ways.
Tissue damage caused by intense exercise
Putting the body under regular pressure such as high weights and prolonged running causes great physical damage. The only way this damage does not cause problems is to reconstruct the damaged structures of the athlete with the correct rest period. Many professional athletes are exposed to this kind of intense pressure, especially during the competition periods, and cannot pass the restructuring period correctly.
In addition, many amateurs unwittingly make an abnormal effort to develop faster. For this reason, injuries occur not only in professionals, but also in many amateurs. In fact, since there is no observer, enthusiastic amateur athletes are more susceptible to injuries due to physical pressure. Deloading, on the other hand, is very important in terms of reducing this damage and providing time for the reconstruction of physical structures.
Metabolic Stress Burden
Exercise doesn’t just cause damage to the skin. In addition to tissue damage that can be seen with many imaging methods, metabolic damage that cannot be noticed without serious examination is of great importance for individuals who are exposed to intense and long exercises. Although all athletes may face problems due to this type of metabolic stress load, individuals who have heavy diets carry the greatest risk.
This type of metabolic load can occur in many different ways. Fluid loss, impaired hormonal order, malnutrition or malnutrition are just three of them. As a result, deloading is a technique that should be applied as it will prevent the damages that intense exercise can cause and increase the benefit you will get.
When Should Deloading Be Applied?
First of all, deloading is a technique that should not be applied frequently in exercise pace. Because frequent and unnecessary rest periods will limit your growth rate. For this reason, it is very important to apply it at the right time. First of all, for deloading, you need an exercise pace that does not include a deloading phase of 3-4 months. If you have exercised non-stop for less than this time, you probably don’t need a deloading phase.
If you have been restricting calories for more than a month, If you have had more than two injuries in the last two weeks, If you feel insomnia, feeling psychological pressure, If you feel constantly tired, unwilling and unhappy to exercise, it may be time to switch to the deloading phase. In addition, while organizing the annual exercise periods of professional athletes, a deloading phase can be applied every four months without the above mentioned findings.
How is Deloading Done?
After you decide to deloading, you need to decide the type of deloading. If you are endurance-based, the exercise component that challenges you is the duration or the number of repetitions. If you work with strength, the exercise component that challenges you is the amount of weight you use. If you are working based on increasing muscle mass, the exercise component that challenges you is the mixture of weight and repetition.
After the determination, we will start by reducing the part that creates intensity in the exercise tempo. If you evaluate the intensity of your normal exercise pace as 100%, you can continue with 70-80% intensity in the first week of the deloading phase and 80-85% in the second week. Fifteen days after the start of deloading, you are ready to return to your normal exercise pace.
Although the usual deloading practices are a four-week process, it is known that deloading phases of two weeks benefit the same. In fact, the most accurate application would be to determine the duration of the deloading phase according to the damage the athlete received from the exercise tempo and the need for restructuring.
You will reduce the number of repetitions or duration and keep other intensities the same, which is the main challenge in endurance, and you will ensure both the protection of exercise performance and the softening of the main stressor. You can create a deloading phase with the same logic in all other exercise types. As a result, the deloading phase is a logical practice to increase performance by reducing the risk of harm in intense exercise pace, and it must be applied correctly.
