Am I being lazy or is it time to deload?
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth
-Mike Tyson
Welcome back to another rendition of my gains chronicles. As you may be able to tell by the title, a deload is coming soon.
I thought it might be interesting to look into why I chose to deload now, as I intentionally hadn't pre-planned any deload weeks when starting the block. It certainly was not for lack of progress, as the weights have been continued to hockey-stick. With that being said, the joints are beginning to feel the realities of hockey-stick-like growth.
Muscles have the strange ability to adapt relatively quickly to heavy weights and increasing volumes - and the CNS as well, too an extent - but the joints do not. The joints do have the ability to increase in mass and strength, but at a much slower rate than muscles.
This is the primary reason I chose to deload. I've started to feel the aches that come when your joints are getting consistently overloaded. Random tweaks and discomfort started arising from places where there previously weren't. And considering the typical time to deload for a powerlifitng block is every ~4-6 weeks, I don't feel so bad about considering it now ~8 weeks into the block.
I'm not sure if I'll pre-program the deload next time. I do like that relying on feel allows me to maximize time not deloading, and only take it when necessary. The consequences of this are that - feeling is not really indicative of the actual state of my body (aka feelings aren't real), and I could being taking it too early / too late as a consequence. That consequence comes anyways when you pre-program the deload though, so it's a bit of a wash in that regard.
Progress
Alright time for progress updates. I finished out the block with top sets of:
- Squat: 435x3 @9
- Bench: 290x2 @9 (overshot, should've been 3 reps)
- Deadlift: 475x3 @8
and rep work of:
- Squat: 327.5 for 4x5
- Bench: 230 for 4x5
- Deadlift: 385 for 2x5
Pretty happy with progress. I don't see the top sets slowing down for Squat or Deadlift anytime soon. A little disappointed in the Bench starting to hit a wall so early, but that's the one I'd expect to hit a wall first. The rep work has mostly been a breeze. Feel like I'll be able to continue adding 2.5 - 10 lbs each week for a while.
Looking ahead
I do have the next block laid out at this point, but I'll save that for next time. The SBD will remain mostly unchanged (to keep my "how long can I LP" experiment in tact). But I did rotate out some accessories, modify some rep ranges, and added some additional volume in places.
Deep squats and no thoughts,
Caden