This will improve your gains and reduce fatigue

Summary

Menno Henselmans critiques the traditional practice of deloading in fitness, which often leads to less optimal gains due to its reliance on arbitrary timelines. He highlights the benefits of reactive deloading, a method that adapts based on real-time feedback and addresses fatigue more effectively. By focusing on active recovery and localized fatigue rather than systemic, Menno offers a smarter approach for sustained improvement in fitness training.

Highlights

• Menno Henselmans debunks common misconceptions about deload weeks in fitness training and emphasizes the need for smart fatigue management 🤔.
• The traditional monthly week-off deload is largely ineffective and based on arbitrary calendar cycles 🗓️.
• Proactive deloading every month can potentially hinder gains and is impractical due to unpredictable fatigue factors 🔄.
• Henselmans advocates for 'reactive deloading', where adjustments are made based on real-time performance feedback 🔍.
• Research supports the idea of localized muscle fatigue, debunking systemic fatigue myths 💪.
• Being sedentary actually slows recovery, whereas active recovery promotes faster healing ⚡.
• Habits are crucial for long-term fitness success, and drastic changes in routine can disrupt progress 🚶‍♂️.
• Speed work with light weights can aid recovery while maintaining neural adaptations ⌛.
• Menno provides a course link for those interested in advancing their physique-training knowledge 📚.

Key Takeaways

• Traditional deload weeks are based on arbitrary timeframes and are not scientifically backed for improving long-term gains 📆.
• Reactive deloads, based on performance feedback, are more effective in managing fatigue and promoting sustainable progress 💡.
• Muscle fatigue tends to be local rather than systemic, so deloads should focus on individual muscle groups needing recovery ⚠️.
• Active recovery is more beneficial than complete rest for faster healing and sustained performance 💪.
• Creating consistent habits in training and nutrition aids significantly in achieving fitness goals effortlessly 🔄.

Overview

Fatigue management is crucial for long-term fitness gains, but the traditional approach to deloading is flawed. Menno Henselmans introduces the concept of reactive deloading, which adapts based on one's real-time performance rather than a pre-planned schedule. This method ensures that recovery efforts are precisely targeted where needed, rather than following arbitrary calendar cycles.

Furthermore, Menno contests the notion of systemic fatigue, emphasizing that muscle fatigue is local. Therefore, a smart deload should address specific muscle groups rather than the entire body. The importance of active recovery is highlighted, as inactive rest may slow down the recovery process and disrupt established fitness habits.

Speed work can be employed during deloading to maintain neural adaptations without incurring additional fatigue. Menno's methodology allows for flexible adaptation to unexpected lifestyle factors affecting recovery, promoting a sustainable and effective approach to fitness training progression.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Smart Training & Deloading To achieve long-term gains in training, it's important to train both hard and smart by incorporating fatigue management. Many people incorrectly handle this with deload weeks. This chapter will teach a more effective way to deload for better fatigue management and improved long-term results.
• 00:30 - 01:00: What is Deloading? The chapter 'What is Deloading?' explains the concept of deloading in strength training. Deloading involves reducing the weight or intensity of workouts to allow the body to recover. It can range from reducing the weights used during exercises to taking a complete week off from training. The main purpose of deloading is to alleviate physical and mental fatigue, promote recovery, and enhance performance in the long term.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Problems with Monthly Deloading The chapter discusses the drawbacks of implementing monthly deloads in training routines. The main argument is that aligning deloads with the Gregorian calendar is ineffective. The author identifies a "Gregorian calendar bias," explaining that our lives' reliance on calendar periods doesn't mean training and nutrition should follow the same structure. There's no inherent need for monthly deloads simply because a calendar month has passed.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Difficulty of Predicting Fatigue The chapter 'Difficulty of Predicting Fatigue' discusses the challenges associated with predicting fatigue and the practice of deloading in fitness training. The speaker argues that deloading every month can be too frequent and may actually hinder progress. The unpredictability of factors such as sleep quality, stress levels, and injuries makes it difficult to determine when deloading is necessary. The speaker suggests that an auto-regulated approach might be more effective, allowing adjustments based on current conditions rather than predetermined schedules.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Need for Auto-Regulated Deloading The chapter discusses the concept of auto-regulated deloading in training. It argues against the traditional method of predetermined deload periods and suggests using a system that can detect fatigue and implement deloads accordingly. This approach is based on research indicating that trained individuals recover from workouts much faster than the duration of traditional deloads. For instance, recovery from habituated workouts typically occurs within 72 hours, even after intense training sessions like ten sets of bench presses. The chapter aims to clear up confusion around literature on recovery times.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Recovery Time Misconceptions The chapter titled "Recovery Time Misconceptions" discusses the differences in recovery times between untrained and trained individuals following intense exercise. It highlights that studies often cite long recovery periods (such as a week or more) because they typically involve untrained people who can experience significant muscle damage. In contrast, trained individuals benefit from the repeated bout effect, which makes their muscles more resistant to damage and in need of shorter recovery periods.
• 03:30 - 04:30: Training Recovery for Trained vs Untrained Individuals The chapter discusses the differences in recovery times between trained and untrained individuals after a workout. It highlights that trained individuals recover faster due to their acclimatization to the exercise, benefiting from what's known as the 'repeated bout effect'. This adaptation results in less fatigue compared to untrained individuals. Research indicates that with moderate training loads, recovery for these individuals can occur within a day, which supports the efficacy of full-body high-frequency training programs. The chapter emphasizes a common underestimation of the body's recovery capability, which is often contradicted by studies demonstrating the benefits of extremely high-volume training.
• 04:30 - 05:30: The Local Nature of Fatigue The chapter 'The Local Nature of Fatigue' focuses on the concept of fatigue in the context of physical training, particularly addressing the misconception of systemic and CNS (Central Nervous System) fatigue. The author challenges this widely held belief, explaining that scientific research supports the idea that fatigue is primarily local to the specific muscles involved in activity. The chapter argues that fatigue in one muscle group, like the biceps, does not influence another, such as the quadriceps. This notion underscores the localized nature of muscle fatigue, muscle growth, and stress regulation within the body. The chapter appears to build upon the author's previous work, including video content, to further debunk the myths surrounding systemic fatigue.
• 05:30 - 06:30: Limitations of Systemic Deloading This chapter discusses the concept of systemic deloading in physical training. It highlights the limitations of using a one-size-fits-all approach where one reduces training intensity or volume across the entire body, even when only certain muscle groups are overtrained. The chapter emphasizes the need for targeted deloading, which involves reducing training stress specifically for the body part that requires it. It acknowledges that different body parts have varying susceptibilities to injury, thus suggesting a more personalized approach to training. An example is given where an individual finds that while their elbows are prone to injury and therefore require more deloading, their hips can handle frequent training without issues.
• 06:30 - 07:30: Disadvantages of Changing Training Frequency The chapter discusses the disadvantages of changing training frequency, particularly through deload weeks. It highlights the importance of maintaining consistent habits in diet and training for long-term success and acknowledges that disruptions to these habits can be detrimental. The chapter also touches on the necessity of adapting training strategies to individual needs, as in the case of being cautious with elbow training to avoid injury.
• 07:30 - 08:30: Importance of Active Recovery The chapter titled 'Importance of Active Recovery' discusses the significance of maintaining a lifestyle where routines such as training and nutrition operate on 'autopilot' to achieve success over time. It highlights a common misconception, supported by outdated medical advice, that taking complete rest is the best way to recover. Contrary to this belief, the chapter emphasizes research findings that support active recovery. Active recovery, as opposed to a sedentary lifestyle, improves blood circulation and accelerates the healing process, demonstrating that staying physically active aids in quicker recovery.
• 08:30 - 10:00: Case Study: Coleman et al. on Deload Weeks The chapter discusses the findings of Coleman et al. on the topic of deload weeks. It explains how reduced activity affects the body's metabolism and connective tissues, such as tendons, which receive less blood flow without sufficient activity. The chapter emphasizes the importance of maintaining some level of activity and suggests that engaging in less intense workouts can expedite healing. It also mentions the possibility of training through muscle damage and soreness by continuing to train other muscle groups while allowing specific ones to undergo deloading. The overarching recommendation is to avoid deloading all muscle groups simultaneously, advocating instead for a selective approach based on the needs of different body parts.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Introduction to Reactive Deloads An introduction to 'Reactive Deloads' begins by discussing the drawbacks of traditional deloading methods. The traditional approach, which involves taking a week off every four weeks, was shown in a study by Coleman et al. to be less effective for both strength gains and muscle growth. The study presented two groups: one used the traditional deload method with a week break after every four weeks, and the other continued training for the full nine weeks without a break. The results indicated that the group that did not take the deload week saw better improvements, challenging the conventional deloading strategy.
• 11:00 - 12:30: Reactive Deload Example & Methodology The chapter discusses the concept of reactive deloads in bodybuilding, emphasizing their role in preventing the deterioration of muscle gains. It suggests that pushing a muscle group to failure, even with verbal encouragement and taking a week off, may not be beneficial for improvement. Instead, incorporating reactive deloads is presented as a solution to enhance physique growth effectively.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Advantages of Reactive Deloading The chapter discusses the advantages of reactive deloading in training programs. Reactive deloads are not pre-planned; instead, they occur when a specific trigger event happens, such as a plateau or regression in performance during a high-volume training program. The simplest implementation method suggested is to deload an exercise immediately if progress stalls or regresses, applying the deload directly to the affected exercise.
• 15:00 - 16:30: Implementation of Reactive Deloads This chapter discusses the concept of reactive deloads in strength training. It uses an example of a full-body workout that includes exercises like squats, overhead press, and chin-ups to illustrate the point. The narrative explains a scenario where performance regresses instead of progresses, indicating that the individual has not yet reached the adaptation phase of the stimulus-recovery-adaptation curve. It suggests that if the training volume is high and not insufficient, a lack of progress can signal the need for a reactive deload to allow the body to fully adapt and grow stronger.
• 16:30 - 18:00: Conclusion & Call to Action The chapter emphasizes the importance of acknowledging when one's body is still in the recovery phase from previous workouts. It suggests modifying or skipping certain exercises if full recovery has not yet occurred, such as the remaining sets of squats. Instead, it recommends engaging in speed work and completing the rest of the planned workout to maintain productivity in other body areas. The key message is to adapt workouts based on the body's recovery state to ensure continued progress and avoid injury.

This will improve your gains and reduce fatigue Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 If you want to make long term gains, you can't just go balls out every time you go to the gym. I learned that the hard way. You get arrested and... What I'm saying is you need to train not just hard, but also smart. That's where fatigue management comes in. But the way most people handle fatigue management with deload weeks is horribly flawed and doesn't make any sense. So in this video I'm going to teach you a better way to deload to manage your fatigue more efficiently and make better long term gains.
• 00:30 - 01:00 First, what is the deload exactly? Well, deload literally means you take a load off so you reduce the weights. However, a way that many people implement it is they just take 100% of the weight off and they don't train. They take a week off and they call that the deload week. More generally speaking in exercise science deloading just means taking your foot off the gas pedal a little bit. It's a very general concept, and the definition that is often used is: “Deloading is a period of reduced training stress designed to mitigate physiological and psychological fatigue, promote recovery, and enhance
• 01:00 - 01:30 preparedness for a subsequent training.” Now, there are three reasons why taking a week off every month is a poor way to implement deloads. First: The passing of a lunar cycle does not fatigue your muscles, m’kay? I call this a Gregorian calendar bias. We have this concept that because our calendar revolves around days and weeks and months, everything in our training, in our nutrition, and everything in our lives in general must revolve around those same periods. However, there is no reason that you would need a deload one month out.
• 01:30 - 02:00 I would say that deloading every month is very frequently and as we'll see in a moment there is research that deloading this frequently typically hurts your gains. Even if you have a more sensible frequency of deloading doing it proactively sounds nice, but actually is very, very difficult to do in practice because you never know in advance when you're going to sleep less well, when you're going to be more stressed, when you're going to develop an injury. In general, how fatigued you are is very difficult to predict in advance. So ideally we want something auto-regulated.
• 02:00 - 02:30 We want something that knows when we are fatigued and then implement a deload rather than setting it and set some arbitrary time point in advance. Second: Taking a full week off or dramatically reducing its training stress is a very long time period. If you look at the research on how long people recover, typically a trained individual doing an habituated workout will recover within 72 hours at the very most. Even after very extreme training programs. Some studies have looked at doing ten sets of bench presses, for example. Now, a lot of people get confused by this literature
• 02:30 - 03:00 because they look at unhabituated stimuli, untrained individuals. And if you look at those types of studies you can see that people might need a full week, ten days or even longer to recover. Because if you get an untrained individual, let's say you just grab somebody off the streets and you have them do ten sets of squats, or you have them do some insane eccentric overloading protocol they're going to get insane muscle damage, and it takes a very long time to recover. That's completely different from a trained individual that has had the repeated bout effect kick in, that has more trained muscles that are more resistant to muscle damage
• 03:00 - 03:30 and then they do a workout that they are habituated to already, so they have the benefit of the repeated bout effect, as it's technically called, then they will recover fast because they will not develop nearly as much fatigue. In some of the research with more moderate training loads we actually see that people can recover within a day and that's also why full body high frequency training can be very effective. In general my experience is that people dramatically underestimate the body's recovery capacity which might also be the reason that people perpetually keep being surprised by the super high volume studies showing benefits of even very high volumes.
• 03:30 - 04:00 The third major limitation of deload weeks is that fatigue is, by and large local. I've debunked the myth of systemic fatigue and the CNS fatigue boogeyman multiple times on my channel. Here's a good video that you can watch around this. But research is very clear that muscle fatigue, neuromuscular fatigue is, by and large almost exclusively local in nature. So the fatigue in your biceps does not affect what goes on in your quads. Muscle growth, fatigue, the whole regulation of stress, stimulus,
• 04:00 - 04:30 recovery, adaptation... All of that is local in nature. It doesn't make any sense to deload your biceps because your quads are overtrained. So ideally we want a form of deloading that does the deload specific to the body part that actually needs it. You've probably experienced yourself that some of your body parts are much more prone to injury. Those body parts might benefit from lower training stresses and more deloading than other body parts. For example, for me, my elbows get injured super easily, my hips pretty much never do. So I can do hip extensions pretty much every day of the week
• 04:30 - 05:00 all the time and my hips will probably never get injured, so I don't have to worry about that. But for my elbows, I have to play it a lot more safe. In addition to these three major limitations of the way that many people implement deloads, there are also two additional downsides. First: deload weeks like this, where you change your training frequency, especially if you don't train at all, will disrupt your habits. Habits are incredibly underrated for long term success. The less you think about your diet, the less you think about your training, the easier things get.
• 05:00 - 05:30 You want everything to run on autopilot as much as possible. If your lifestyle, your training, your nutrition all run on autopilot then success is just a matter of time. The second downside of taking a week off is, ironically, that being sedentary decreases your rate of recovery. Many doctors still have this ancient idea of recovery that if you don't do anything, you recover the fastest. That is completely flawed. Research shows that active recovery works. Our bodies heal faster when we stay active. If you're sedentary your blood flow slows down,
• 05:30 - 06:00 your immune system slows down, our overall metabolism slows down, especially connective tissues like our tendons, they get very, very little blood flow if we're not active. You need to have some level of activity and multiple studies show that if you do less intense workouts you actually heal faster. You can train through a lot of muscle damage, a lot of soreness and keep training other muscle groups when some muscle groups might need deloading. Ideally we don't want to deload every muscle group at the same time. We want to keep exercising and only deload the body parts that actually need it.
• 06:00 - 06:30 To illustrate the pitfalls of the traditional approach deloading taking a week off every four weeks, a study by Coleman et al. found that this exact practice reduced strength gains and did nothing for muscle growth. In fact, eight out of ten effect sizes, still not significantly favored the group that didn't deload. So they had two groups, one group took a deload weak in the middle of the training program after four weeks, one week off, four more weeks of training and the other group just went full steam ahead the whole 9 weeks. Interestingly, in this study, the subjects were doing 20 sets
• 06:30 - 07:00 for a muscle group to failure with verbal encouragement and still taking a week off in the middle hurt their gains rather than improve them. The solution is to use reactive deloads. By the way, check this out. A serious course for serious coaches that want to take their physique to the next level.
• 07:00 - 07:30 Click on the link in the description for more info. Probably the best PT course on the entire internet hands down. Reactive deloads are deloads that are not planned in advance, but you do them when some trigger event occurs. There are many ways to implement this. In this video I'm going to teach you the simplest method, which is simply that if you're on a decently high volume training program and you plateau or regress in performance instead of progress on any session, on any exercise then you do the deload for that specific exercise right then and there on the spot.
• 07:30 - 08:00 So for example: you have a full body workout - squats, overhead press, chin ups... Now last time on squats you did 100 kilos times 6 repetitions and this time you want to get 7. Now let's say instead of 7 repetitions which would be progress, you only got 4, a clear regression. That suggests that in your stimulus-recovery-adaptation curve you have not yet reached the adaptation phase and you are not yet at the point where you are stronger, assuming that your training volume is on the high end, not on the low end, and you're not under-training, it suggests
• 08:00 - 08:30 that you are still in the recovery phase, which means that you have under-recovered, you are not yet fully recovered from the last workout. In that scenario, you would skip the remaining sets of squats, or ideally you do speed work. We'll get to that in a moment. Crucially, you keep doing the rest of the workout as planned because just because your quads or your lower back, or whichever body part was for the squats that was not recovered, you can still do chin ups, you can still do overhead presses and still have a productive workout for much of your body. So the simplest method is simply when you realize
• 08:30 - 09:00 that on your first set of an exercise you regress or you stall, you skip the remaining sets of that exercise. It's a very simple way to do reactive deloading, it's auto-regulated, it works very well. Other body parts can keep training as planned. Now, if you want to be a little fancy you can do speed work instead of just skipping the sets entirely. Speed work is a nice way, especially if you care about strength development to still get some stimulus in, still do some active recovery, and still get neural adaptations that favor rate of force development,
• 09:00 - 09:30 still work on your technique without incurring a lot of fatigue. Usually a very easy way to do speed work is to do at 60 to 70% of your 1RM do sets of 1 to 5 repetitions very explosively. The point is basically that you want a weight that is not completely trivial, it does feel like a work weight, but you're only doing a few repetitions with that very explosively so that you don't accumulate any fatigue. If your reps slow down at all, if you accumulate any fatigue that hurts your next performance, you are going too heavy or you're doing too many reps. Speed work should be light, should be very explosive,
• 09:30 - 10:00 but light. Research finds that this accumulates a very little neuromuscular fatigue while still stimulating positive neural adaptations that will benefit strength development. The nice thing about reactive deloading like this... For one, it's fully auto regulated. Second: it's specific to the body parts that actually need it. And third: It allows you to manage fatigue from your lifestyle that you didn't expect. For example, if you didn't sleep as well one day, if one workout just took a little bit more out of you than otherwise, you went a bit closer to failure than you expected to, if you were more stressed...
• 10:00 - 10:30 These factors have been shown in research to significantly affect your rate of recovery and you cannot anticipate them in advance. With this form of reactive deloading you know that when these events occur in your life and therefore you don't recover you automatically auto-regulate your training program and you reduce the training stress. So this is basically a very sustainable way to implement fatigue management in your trainings. And again it's very simple. You just skip the remaining sets of any exercise where the first set,
• 10:30 - 11:00 which I call the benchmark sets, you didn't progress as planned, you actually regressed or you plateaued. That's the very simple way to do it and I'm not going to complicate it too much further in this video. But I want to give you one additional tidbit when you should implement these reactive deloads. Now, the simplest method is to just do it for every exercise that you have. But you want a benchmark of performance that is somewhat replicable and reliable. Some exercises are a lot more consistent than others. Squats, Bench press, Deadlift... They are the power lifts because they're very consistent. You can measure their performance really well
• 11:00 - 11:30 and you know when you got a full rep or not. Now, for something like a cable lateral raise the performance is very inconsistent. If you use a different cable pulley your performance can be very different due to differences in the number of pulleys, differences in the traction, if you step a little bit further away from the cable, again your performance might be very different. These exercises that have very poor terminal consistency, if you will, that are very variable in performance, you probably don't want to do reactive deloads because you might end up deloading half of your workouts.
• 11:30 - 12:00 So you want to do reactive deloads when you have a clear benchmark of performance and you know that if you didn't get that then you probably under-recovered. So reactive deloads are great for most barbell exercises, most dumbbell exercises, compound exercises in general, but you don't want to do them for every exercise if your performance varies a lot inherently for that exercise. All right! I hope this helps you out with fatigue management and making better long term sustainable gains in your training programs. If you like this type of evidence based fitness content, I'd be honored if you
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