Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - When to Deload/Rest and Why

Episode Date: September 23, 2015

In this episode I talk all about "deloading" and/or taking time off the gym: how to know when you should, why it's necessary, how to do it right, and more... ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: How to Prevent Overtraining With the Deload Week: http://www.muscleforlife.com/deload-week/ How Much Cardio You Should Do (and How Much Is Too Much): http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-cardio/ How to Measure and Improve Your Body Composition: http://www.muscleforlife.com/body-composition/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because

on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more

about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast, and let's get to the show. Hey, it's Mike again from MuscleForLife.com. Welcome to a new episode of my podcast. Thanks for downloading it and taking the time to listen to what I have to say. So today I want to talk about deloading and taking time off weightlifting and off exercise and so forth

because it's something that I've been running into with people. Um, I guess it's been a fairly frequent thing. It just kind of finally popped into my head that this is something that I have written a bit about, but I haven't spoken about it very much. Uh, and, and it causes problems. And, uh, you know, I, I've, I've been there myself, not wanting to take time off. Like, I mean, this is that, that's really usually, that's really what I want to talk about is not, not so much taking too much time off, but not wanting to take any time off or not wanting to reduce the intensity of your training and just wanting to go hard, hard, hard, as long as you can possibly can basically, which

isn't necessarily a bad tendency. I mean, that's, that's, that's definitely the way that I am. Um, but the problem is if you take that too far, then it becomes counterproductive. And if you don't recognize it for what it is and you don't address it correctly, um, it could, the problem not only can get worse and worse, or, I mean, it will get worse and worse, but you can, what you'll end up trying to do, like you might try to then switch programs. You might try to switch diets. You might try to switch supplements. You try, you're going to try things that aren't going to address the actual problem, which is just, uh, where you're, you're kind of getting into the realm of, of

overtraining. So, um, first just, uh, I guess as a, as a, as a quick, my own little experience with this or my own bit of experience with this is, uh, years and years ago when I used to just do like stupid bodybuilding workouts that I would read about in magazines. Um, it was a lot of higher rep stuff, not a lot of comp, heavy compound stuff. So I wasn't doing a heavy deadlifts every week. It wasn't heavy squatting, heavy pressing. Um, it was, I was doing a bit of that stuff, but it was usually lighter weights, higher reps. And it wasn't always first in my workout.

Sometimes you would be starting your chest workouts with lighter weight flies and stuff. And by the time you even get to do your bench pressing, let's say, you're kind of fatigued from what you've already done and it's higher rep and blah, blah, blah. Um, you're kind of fatigued from what you've already done and it's higher rep and blah, blah, blah. And in that time, uh, I don't, I didn't really have any systematic way of, of taking rest. I, I don't, I didn't really take much rest at all because that type of training one, it doesn't result in as much muscle damage as heavier weightlifting, especially heavier compound weightlifting because of the nature of compound exercises, they involve many muscle groups and therefore cause, you know, quite a bit of muscle damage to more than just, let's say if you're doing flies, it's kind of like your pecs and your shoulders a little bit. Um, whereas something like a deadlift is like

basically everything in your body except for your pecs probably. Um, so at that time I didn't, I, if I took time off, it was kind of just random, um, more just circumstantial what was going on in life. If I was going to be going out of town, then I would take a few days off. Or if I got sick, I would take a few days off, stuff like that. But it wasn't, uh, there, I didn't have any sort of structure and it worked out fine. I mean, that, that, that period when I was training like that didn't really work out fine because I didn't make much in the way of progress. But I didn't run into any issues of overtraining. And so where during that time period, though, the one time I can remember when it was bad and when I needed to take time off. I mean, I hadn't really experienced this before, but I just knew like I can't work out.

It's just not working anymore. I mean, I hadn't really experienced this before, but I just knew like, I can't work out. It's just not working anymore. It's when I was training with this one dude who, I mean, looking back now, he was on, on definitely on drugs, but he, I mean, he said he wasn't or whatever. I didn't really know what to even look for at the time. And because also his style of training was super high volume workouts. Um, I mean, I don't even remember how many sets I was doing, but it was ridiculous. The amount of sets I was doing per workout. So it was like a body part split with you're doing a bajillion sets, lots of drop sets, lots of super sets, and like an hour and a half kind of straight,

maybe two minutes in between sets and just go, go, go, go, go, go. And I remember like by the end of those workouts, I wasn't just physically exhausted. I was mentally exhausted. Like I couldn't even – of those workouts, I wasn't just physically exhausted. I was mentally exhausted. I couldn't even – our chest workouts would end with like I was failing at push-ups. I couldn't even get 10 push-ups. You know what I mean? So training at that intensity, I remember four or five weeks of that kind of ran me into the ground.

And I was trying to come and work out. I'd be very tired, and I had no interest in being in the gym. I was weak. I just did not want to be there. So I just figured, well, I guess I'll just take a week off, I guess. And then I was fine. So that was kind of my one experience. And that's with that higher rep training.

If the really, really high volume stuff, like, of course, there is a point where you can just beat the shit out of yourself so much that you, you do need to, you know, you would need to take some time off. And depending, for me, it was about four or five weeks. Like I said, maybe it was six weeks. For you, it could be longer. It could be shorter. It kind of depends on your body and your diet and whatever. where, where, where it has become now taking time off and resting and what's called deloading,

which I'll talk about is a, is a regular thing in my, in what I do now, because when I started emphasizing, when I switched over to emphasizing heavy compound weightlifting, uh, over all the isolation stuff, over all the high rep stuff, drop set, super set, I found that it became necessary to take either shortened weeks or where you dramatically reduce the intensity, the amount of weight that I'm lifting in my workouts. Maybe not the volume, maybe I'm doing around the same number of reps, but they're much lighter. It's more just getting a pump, going through the movements, practicing form. And that became a necessary thing when I started doing a lot of heavy deadlifting, squatting, bench pressing, overhead pressing. Uh, and you know, I, in, in my bigger leaner, stronger program, and also with thinner leaner, stronger for, for, which is for women, I recommend either taking a week off or, uh, deloading,

which is just reducing the intensity of your workout, reducing the amount of weight that you're doing. You're doing easier workouts, basically. And really what you're focusing on is you're doing the same exercises, but you're focusing on lighter weight, fewer reps, and you're focusing on explosive movements and just practicing form, just really getting the feel of the movement. And so doing that every eight weeks or so, some people, it really depends on your diet. You'll find that when you're in a calorie surplus, you can go longer without having to take a break. And I do recommend that people take a break and like, I'm bigger than you're stronger every eight to 10 weeks. Same thing with feeling you're stronger, but, um, you,

you need to also just kind of pay attention to your body. If you feel where you'll know it is when your sleep starts getting disrupted. So you start, you're not sleeping as well anymore. You are having energy issues in the day of low energy. You're having low energy in your workouts. You're weaker in your workouts. You're not interested in training. You don't feel, you don't have any sort of, you know, sometimes you have that, when you feel good, you have that mental edge. You're in there, you're training, you're enjoying it. When you start, when your body needs a break, and this is more related to the nervous system than it is the muscles, you just feel, I mean, you've had it before. Your workouts drag.

You don't want to be in the gym. You know, you're counting your sets down to be done. Watching that rest timer, like right when it hits, you know, whatever, you're just wanting to, you just want to get out of there. Right now, of course, just because you have a workout like that doesn't mean that, Oh, you need to deload or whatever that happens to everybody. Some workouts are just shit for no apparent reason. It doesn't even make sense. Well, okay, fine. You know, you maybe next time kind of thing, but it's when it becomes, uh. And it just starts to, it's kind of like a lethargy or a fatigue that just kind of sets in.

And you may also find that you're hungrier than usual. So these are all just cues that mainly related to hormones that your body just needs a break. And in my Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program, which is similar to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program, which is similar to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. It just is periodized. So you're doing some very heavy weightlifting. You're starting your workouts with a couple sets of very heavy weightlifting.

And then you are moving into some moderate weight and then some higher weight. That, because of the nature, it's that very, the heavier your training gets. And especially when you're doing these big exercises, like if you're doing heavy isolation, barbell or dumbbell curls, like that, no, that's not obviously not in terms of like systemic stress. That's not nearly as bad as heavy deadlifting of course, or heavy squatting or heavy overhead pressing. So the more muscle groups that are involved and the more weight that you're pushing or pulling or squatting, uh, the more frequently you're doing that, the more frequently you're going to have to back off and give your body a break. Um, so in beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, I recommend a deload week every five on the fifth

week. So you're doing four weeks of training and then you're taking a week of recovery really is what it is. Some people actually prefer to just take a week off completely and that's fine. I don't like it because I find one, I just kind of like working out. It's a good way to start my day. It's a good routine. I just like it. So I like to go in there and do something.

But I also find that I usually come back a little bit weaker if I just take a week off, even if it's just a rep weaker or I have to work a little bit harder. Whereas if I do a deload week, the following week, nothing has changed. Like I can just carry on as if I didn't, you know, didn't even miss a week. And sometimes I come back even a little bit stronger from deloading. So that's my body. Some people are the same. Some people just take a week off and they're fine. Um, and so in terms of like how that's structured, what I like to do for deloading

is, um, so I trained Monday through, well, I'm doing four days right now, actually. So I'm doing Tuesday through Friday. I dropped my arms day because I looking at pictures, uh, especially like from the last couple of photo shoots when I was, um, you know, very lean, I felt like my arms, especially it was like, I think a year and a half or maybe close to two years ago where I was looking at my pictures. Um, and I thought I looked good, but my, my biceps in particular were just too big for my, uh, for my body, especially for my shoulders. Like I don't have small shoulders, but as a natural weightlifter and also like I'm kind of genetically predisposed to have bigger biceps and a bigger chest, that's always in my pre pre, uh, genetic predispositions. Um, and

then it's also been a little bit of biased because when back when I didn't know what I was doing, I used to train them a lot. So it's kind of, there's a combination there. So, um, where I just felt like my biceps were kind of dwarfing my shoulders and not that I necessarily wanted smaller arms, but maybe even a little bit smaller biceps. But what I definitely didn't want was my biceps to keep on growing, which they seem to have a tendency to do. Because when I was training arms regularly, I was regularly getting stronger. I mean, the strongest I got was I was doing barbell curls with 145 for sets of four, I think, maybe five. And I was doing alternating dumbbell curls with 75 with good form,

sets of four or five. And I may have been hammer curling 80s. I definitely was hammer curling 75s. So my biceps kept on getting stronger and growing little by little, and I didn't want that. So I dropped my arms day, basically. And now just doing my heavy pulling and my heavy pressing with a little bit of supplementary arms work. I do, you know, maybe three sets of biceps and three sets of triceps

a week. And now I'm happier with where my, how my arms are looking. So I'm training four days a week when I deload. So, so it's like Tuesday through Friday and then Saturday, Sunday, I don't lift weights, but I usually do some cardio or I'm doing something. I play some golf on the weekend. I do something, you know, that I am physically active on the weekend, but I'm not weightlifting. So when I deload, what I usually do is I take off Monday, Tuesday for sure and see how I feel. now I've had, uh, you know, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I've had four days off instead of my normal two, uh, from, from, from weightlifting, at least from when I stopped my, you know, my, uh, my, my week. And, um, if I usually, usually I'll take Wednesday off as well.

And then, uh, I'll do like an upper lower, like a Thursday, Friday, upper lower. And, um, how, how heavy I go on that kind of depends how I'm feeling to be safe. Quote unquote, what I would say is, um, you, you take your, take your, um, weight that like maybe 70, 75% of your one rep max, something around in your 12 rep type 10 to 12 rep type of weight and do sets of four or five with it. So you're really not even pushing yourself. You're not, this is not, these are not strenuous workouts. You can go through your same type of movements. You can go through your, your compound movements. You're just not doing heavy weight and you can keep your sets around the same. So you kind of just mirroring

your existing workouts, just doing a lot less weight and just practicing on the motions. So, um, usually what I'll do on the deload is that, so if I'm going to be taking off Monday, Tuesday, and then if I go Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, then it's like a push, pull legs type of a setup where again, so I'll do, I'll probably do, if I'm going to do a push, I'm going to do like three lighter sets of incline bench. I'm gonna do three lighter sets of overhead press, three lighter sets of a close, close, close grip bench. And, um, that's probably it. Maybe I'll add in a couple of just sets of dips, body weight, not even the failure, just to kind of get, go through the motions and feel, feel the movements. And then

pulls of course, pull deadlifting. Uh, you know, it's, it's your back day essentially. And then legs is your legs training. Um, and so that's a three day way to do it. And then a two day would be an upper lower, which is similar. Your upper is just your push. And then your lower is your legs plus your deadlifting. Um, and, and again, it's just going through the motion, going through the movements, kind of explosive practicing that just, just feeling the, the, the, the, the, the movement patterns and working on form.

Um, so that's how I like to do it. And that's how I recommend it in my books. And when I've written about deloading and whatever, and in terms of how frequently you will need to deload, that really depends on what you're doing. Um, like I've heard from a lot of people that are new to weightlifting that can go for, uh, you know, six, seven months, even without taking any sort of break and feel totally fine. Um, and those people are also usually in a calorie surplus. So these are, that's usually the guy that's starting out relatively lean. And then he starts with like a lean bulk where he's in a slight calorie surplus and he goes six,

seven months, uh, just because he can, because the body's hyper responsive in the beginning, hyper responsive to weightlifting. It's recovering very well. And you have that calorie surplus. So kind of all works together to reduce the need of regular rest or recover or deloading. But on the other hand, I've spoken with quite a few people that were brand new to weightlifting that needed to take that break every eight weeks or so, every 10 weeks, 12 weeks, where they just feel that rundown, kind of all the symptoms that I was giving earlier. And many times those people are in a calorie deficit. So those are people starting out that are overweight, need to lose fat.

So the calorie deficit alone places more stress on the body. So when you have the calorie deficit plus all the training, and in terms of like the, what I'm recommending for exercise and when you, when you want to lose fat, it's definitely on the higher end. It's not, it's not too much exercise, but it's, it's aggressive. You know, um, like some people will say, oh, well you shouldn't lift more than three days a week when you are cutting because you're not going to build muscle anyway. So why bother? And I understand that there's definitely And I understand that.

There's definitely some validity in that. Now, somebody new to weightlifting can build muscle, though, while losing fat. So that wouldn't exactly apply to the person that's new. But for the experienced weightlifter, the only caveat to that is weightlifting burns energy. And it's an enjoyable way to burn energy. Would you rather do more cardio or more weightlifting? Personally, I'd rather do more weightlifting. So yeah, sure. I know I'm not going to be building any muscle in a deficit, but, uh, at least I can still do my workouts and I can feel good and just continue doing my thing and not have

to do more cardio to burn that energy. Cause, um, generally speaking, you know, you want to, yes, you want your calorie deficit to be moderately aggressive, 20, 25% when you're cutting. Uh, but you want to make sure that you preserve muscle and resistance training is very key to that. So three, you know, heavy weightlifting workouts a week, like a push pull legs type of deal is totally fine. That's, that's fine for preserving muscle. Um, but doing a lot of cardio is not. So ideally you want to be doing as much weightlifting as you can do when you're, when you're cutting and as little cardio as you can get away with, basically. Um, and you know, some people will say you don't need to do any cardio. No, that's true. You don't need to do cardio, but it depends how lean you want to get. It depends

on your genetics. Like I've, I've, there are very, I've come across very few people, very few guys that can get below 10% body fat without doing cardio and very few girls that can get below 20%. It just, there's a point where, you know, you get to that point, you have less body fat, your leptin levels are lower, your metabolism, you're not burning as much energy just at rest as you were when you were, when you were fatter. Um, and, and you're dealing with more and more stubborn fat. You just have more and more factors working against you. Your body is, is regulating, is trying to downregulate its energy expenditure. Um, and if you want to keep on getting leaner, you have to keep driving that deficit. And yes, you can, you know, you can do whatever four or five hours of weightlifting a week.

But if you start doing more than that, then you're going to run into these overtraining issues. So what can you do to burn more energy? You can add some cardio because cardio is not nearly as stressful on the body as heavy weightlifting. And I'm a big proponent of high-intensity interval training because you can get a lot out of it, but without having to do a lot. So, you know, you can do an hour to two hours of, of hit a week max, and that's all you need to get as lean as you want to get. You do not need to ever do more cardio than that, as opposed to the standard type of bodybuilding recommendations of like an hour to two hours of cardio per day. That's crazy. Fuck that. You're just not only who has time for that on top of weightlifting, but that you're going to, you're going to, you're going to lose muscle. And you are, if you, if you're doing that plus an aggressive deficit, plus weightlifting, it's just way too much on the

body. You're going to feel like shit. It's just not worth it for, it's not only is not worth, it's just not necessary. Um, you know, high intensity cardio is harder to do. It's not as enjoyable as just like walking on a treadmill. Although, I guess that would be a... If you were just walking for a couple hours a day, that might not be actually an issue. But usually, the bodybuilding type of cardio is like two hours of Stairmaster a day kind of thing. But again, there's even the time factor. If you have... Let's say you're doing 10 hours of cardio a week plus five, six hours of weightlifting a week.

Like that's, you know, who has that time? That's over two hours a day that you're going to be exercising. Um, so that's, uh, coming, bringing this back to, to deloading. It will depend on where you're at with your body. It'll depend also on your sleep hygiene. If you don't sleep, like I don't sleep all that much. I sleep about six hours a night on average, sometimes a little bit less, sometimes a little bit more. And then on the weekends, I try to catch up, but I just physically don't really sleep much longer than that. Maybe I can get it up to six and a half. You know, if I just have no alarm and I mentally know that I don't have to get up for anything, I'll maybe wake up around six and a half hours. mentally know that I don't have to get up for anything. I'll maybe wake up around six and a half hours. Um, so, uh, that is, that's just the way my body is, but there's no question that if I were wanting to maximize my recovery, like if I were doing, um, if I were like really wanting to

push my body and, and, and let's say I wanted to like, you know, get into powerlifting seriously or something, I would need to sleep more. I would think, I mean, just, just from the physiology aspect of sleep alone. Um, so that, you know, things like your sleep, things like your, your diet, um, not just your calorie intake, but your protein intake, your carb intake, low carb dieting puts more stress in the body. This has been proven in, in, in studies that cortisol levels are just chronically higher in low-carb diets. So that's why I don't recommend low-carb dieting really for anything other than people that are very overweight and do not do well with carbohydrates. And by do not do well, I don't mean just magically gain fat. I mean, they eat carbs and they feel like they want to fall asleep, like clear problems with where

their insulin sensitivity and insulin response is so bad that they just need to cut it back. Um, and, and, and generally speaking, if someone's very overweight, even if they're going to do exercise, they're going to improve their insulin sensitivity and their insulin response, which are two things that you really want to normalize as quickly as possible with these people, um, by going on a lower carb diet, even if they're going to be exercising. And I mean, that's just the way it is. But once they have things going and they've lost some weight and their body's feeling good, then they can up their carbs and be totally fine. But so these things like how you're sleeping, how you're eating, what is your diet looking like?

Micronutrient status is going to matter as well. Serious micronutrient deficiencies are obviously rare in developed countries like here in the West, but there are selective deficiencies that are very common, like vitamin D deficiency is common, vitamin K deficiencies, that's common, potassium deficiency is common. So if you are eating sensibly, so if you're getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods, you're going to be fine. If you're eating a few servings of fruit and vegetables a day, like you should be, and on top of that, if you're taking a good multivitamin as well, you're going to be fine in this regard. But that's not all people.

Some people, their diets are pretty wacky, especially people that find flexible dieting for the first time. And they find it via people that just talk about eating Pop-Tarts and being shredded and shit, where every food that they eat is highly processed. It's all packaged stuff. eat is highly processed. It's all packaged stuff. I've run into those people, mainly college students, which I understand. And it can be harder. It takes more planning and more work for them to, I mean, one, meet their budget and two, kind of work with what they have. Sometimes they just have a microwave or I've talked to people that didn't even have a microwave. Um, so, you know, it can be tricky, but where your, where your micronutrient levels are at are going to affect this as well, just because there are so many vitamins and minerals and other substances that

your body needs to do all the things that it needs to do. And when you're, when you're training, uh, heavily and regularly, you are placing more demand on the body. So, uh, macronutrients are not the only thing that it needs to, to, to repair itself, um, and, and recover from the, from the systemic stress that, that occurs when you exercise. Um, so again, what you want to, what you want to be looking at is if you are following one of my workout programs or, you know, another good workout program, a good strength training program, um, or, or a program that involves a lot of strength training, you can figure that this has a good baseline assumption that every six to ten weeks is probably a good,

I know it's a bit of a range, you could even tighten that up and say around eight weeks is where you should be, if you did deload every eight weeks, let's just say this, then it would serve you well. You wouldn't be making a mistake. be, if you took, if you did deload every eight weeks, let's just say this, then you'd be, it would serve you well. You wouldn't be making a mistake. You may need to be, uh, deloading more frequently or, or resting more frequently. And you may not need to be doing it that frequently. It really depends on your body. Um, but this is one of those things. It's kind of like with dieting, you learn your body's calorie ranges, um, by doing it. So you learn that, uh, you know, here, here's your range for,

here's your true surplus range, regardless of what calculators say, because one of the problems, um, with, with trying to calculate your, your total daily energy expenditure, TDE is that BMR, I mean, even just calculating your BMR is a guesstimate. It's not a hundred percent accurate. Um, and then you have on top of that exercise multipliers, the standard multipliers that you'll find in formulas like a catch McCardle and, uh, and others are generally just too high. And that's one of those things just kind of known in bodybuilding circles, uh, where, I mean, I know a lot of, uh, you know, I've just read from a lot of, uh, competitive bodybuilders that, that don't go, they really just don't go higher than 1.35 or 1.4 and they're exercising, let's say 10 hours a week or so. And some of these people are being a bit aggressive with their,

with their calorie deficits. And that's why they do that. Um, but I've worked with thousands of people and I've found that to be a hundred percent true. I've had a lot of people actually come to me saying, Oh, I did my, I worked out my TDE on this calculator on, let's say according to catch McCardle, I'm burning 2,900 calories a day. I'm eating 2,400 calories a day and I'm losing weight very slowly. What's wrong. And you know, you get all the, all the normal mistakes out of the way. They actually are tracking their intake properly. They're not mismeasuring. One cup is not one heaping cup and all that kind of stuff. And it just boils down to they have to eat less food. And I've seen that very, very frequently with people that just go with the standard type of multipliers that are recommended out there.

So in my arc rules, when I'm talking about calculating your TDE, and I've had some calculators actually built just to make it easy for people, the multipliers are just lower. So you learn, though, regardless, any sort of calculation is just a starting point. And then you learn based on how your body responds and you adjust. So even if you used one of my calculators and you've, and you're following it exactly. And again, it's not really my calculator. I'm just taking the catch McCardle and toning down the activity multipliers a little bit. That's all. Um, but so, and you're sticking to it and you're finding that, you know, you're, you're, you should be

losing about, let's say a pound of fat a week and you're losing about a half a pound, then you need to eat less food. And some people that's just the way it is. Uh, on the other side, on the other hand, though, you might be fine. You might find that you're losing a pound and a half, maybe two pounds a week, and you're, and you're feeling pretty hungry and pre-drained. You need to eat more food. And I've seen that as well. It's not as, it's not as common, but I've seen it. It's, it's more, most, most common among Ecto guys, um, guys that have their entire life. They've eaten a lot of food, not, and they have an appetite. It's a lot of, a lot of ectos don't have much of an appetite.

So when they say they're eating a lot of food, it then comes out to be like 2,200 calories. Like that's not a lot of food. I can eat that in one meal without even thinking about it. Um, but I do come across ecto guys that, you know, are eating several thousand calories a day for regular, right. They've done, they've been doing that for a long time. So they have an appetite. They do not put on weight easily. They can eat a lot of food and stay lean. Those guys are generally the ones that need to use a higher multiplier,

and that's knowing your body. So you learn that. You learn your calorie ranges for your maintenance. You learn your calorie ranges for your bulking. You learn your calorie ranges for your, your, uh, maintenance. You learn your calorie ranges for your bulking. You learn your calorie ranges for your cutting. Um, in, in the same way, you kind of learn your bodies, uh, how based on how heavy you're training, how frequently you're going to be needing to deload. And you learn how to recognize it just based on how you feel. Um, and because you know, when you're

rested and your body's recovering and you're feeling good in the gym, that's generally how you should feel. Yes. You're going to have individual workouts that are bad, but generally speaking that your workouts, you should feel, you know, uh, if you're, as long as you're, you're following a decent program and you're making progress and you're eating right, you should be, you know, have high energy levels. You should be making progress in the gym. You should be seeing that you're adding, you're gaining reps over time. You're gaining weight over time on, on the bar. You know, if that you're gaining reps over time. You're gaining weight over time on the bar. If you're bulking, obviously, on your body as well.

You are motivated to work out. You're enjoying your workouts. All of that is the way that it should be. So as those things start falling out, many times it's just that your body needs a break and that you just need to give it a break. that you just need to give it a break. And, you know, I know that, you know, some people, they like to schedule if they're going to be doing weekend trips or if they have to be traveling around, you know, for work or whatever, they try to schedule. Sometimes that means that's an early deload. That's how they kind of treat it. And, you know, this is something that in the beginning, you may want to track how many weeks you are training and then deload. Just put it in

a spreadsheet, train, train, train, train, train, train, train, train. So you can kind of see the pattern. Um, and then, and then you'll know based on what you're doing, how frequently you should be deloading. But if you have to deload early because you're going out of town, who cares? Do it, go out of town, come back and restart. There you go. You didn't really do load. Now you have a good eight weeks to go. If, if, um, let's say at, at the 10 week mark, you have a trip, push it a little bit. I would do it. Who cares? It's not, you know, it's not like, Oh, you should have deloaded eight weeks, but you went 10 weeks and now you're in trouble. Not at all. Unless of course, by the eighth week, you are really not feeling good. Well,

then it, you know, it needs time to, it's time to deload. But I've had that before where just that exact scenario where by week eight ish, where I will be like, I could deload right now. I do kind of feel it, but I'm going to be missing some workouts in a couple of weeks. So I'm just going to keep on pushing it and then I'll take my deload then. And I've done that many times and it's totally fine. One other thing, uh, just random is if you get sick, deload, uh, you know, or, or, or it's a rest. It depends on how you feel.

Like one, if I'm sick, I don't go in the gym just cause I don't want to be or, or, or it's a rest. It depends on how you feel. Like one, if I'm sick, I don't go in the gym just cause I don't want to be a dick and, and get other people sick. I hate when I see people that are like actually sick, like wiping their nose and all like, cause it's so fucking inconsiderate. Um, but you know, so if I'm not contagious anymore, I'm just not feeling like I was sick. I, you have your symptoms for a few days and then you're okay. You're, you're better now, but you're not totally better. Uh, I won't necessarily go and jump right back into heavy lifting. Let's say like it comes down to that later in the week or even the middle of the week where I'm like, all right, I'm better now, but I, you know, I still feel a little bit off.

Um, cause I've, I've actually done that. I've went, just went back hard and heavy and had the sickness come back because we know when, when you put that acute stress in your body, it depresses the immune system temporarily. And if your body still hasn't fully beaten everything yet and you go do that, then I've had it where I've gotten sick again. But what I'll do sometimes if I'm feeling up to it is go just do a couple of deload workouts, do some lighter weight, go through the movements. It's really just to get a little bit of a psychological pick me up or whatever. So, you know, that's another quote unquote, like good excuse, um, to deload, um, doing cardio while deload, like on your deload week, I say personally, I, you know, I, I cut my cardio back.

I do about three, I do about an hour of cardio a week. That's my standard, maybe an hour and a half, depending on how I'm feeling, mainly because I enjoy it. I like to stay lean. That's kind of where I'm at now is I just want to maintain the muscle mass that I have. I want to stay lean. I want to continue training. I want to continue getting stronger, which I'm writing an article for. The next article for Legion is going to be all about strength training, mainly because it's an immediate topical interest of mine, because I'm going to start doing some strength training stuff for my big lifts and then having some accessory work built around it. Um, cause I'm curious, uh, how strong I can get without getting fatter. That's my curiosity. Um, I've obviously done a lot of my own,

my own programs and I've gotten strong, but I'm just curious if I switch to a more, a more pure strength training approach with some more accessory work built around it, what will that get me over the next, you know, three, four months? Um, I would just for the sake of doing it, like to pull 500 squat, 400, and bench 315 for at least a couple reps. Can I get there being lean? Maybe. I'm curious. Am I pulling?

One thing that works really against me is how long my legs are. It's just the range of motion. My range of motion is double. I have to lift that weight double the distance of like some short dude sumo deadlifting that barely even has to move. And then on the flip side, so I have long arms, which would work for me on the deadlifting. Like the ideal deadlift physique would be like monkey arms and stubby little legs because then you don't even have to move basically. But I have long arms but long legs. So that kind of screws me on the deadlift to move basically. Uh, but I have long arms, but long legs. So that kind of screws me on the deadlift to a degree, the long arms screw me on pressing. Cause I have to move the weight a

mile as well. So, you know, first of all problems. Um, but you know, we'll see, I'll, I'll, I'll see what I can, what I can do on that. So anyways, my point was, uh, that with the cardio is I, as I keep it in, because one, I just, I didn't, I enjoy it. Um, I, I, that's when I take some time either to watch a TV show or I'll listen to a podcast. Um, and, and also, I mean, exercising just feels good physically. So there's that. And then, and then it just keeps my energy expenditure up, which allows me to eat a bit more food, uh, and still stay lean, which is always nice. So when I'm deloading though, I'll usually cut it back. I might do one or two cardio sessions. And again, my cardio is high

intensity interval. I like to do biking the most. So either recumbent biking or upright biking. And I do about 20, 25 minutes. And currently I'm up to where I go higher resistance, but not super high. Remember the idea is to go fast with high-intensity interval. It's not necessarily to struggle against, like if you're doing a bike-type thing, you're not necessarily wanting to just struggle against this bike where your quads are fried by the end of your workout. It's more that you want enough resistance

to give you something to pedal against so you can go fast and really get your heart rate up and really get yourself breathing. You want to kind of get to, uh, by the end of your higher, 10 higher intent, your high intensity intervals, where you couldn't comfortably hold a conversation, you're breathing too heavily. Right. So I I'm doing, putting my resistance up on my bike. It's like four or five, but it's going to be different on yours. Um, and, and I go for a minute where I'm kind of just pedaling as hard as I can for a minute. And then I'm doing a minute of low intensity recovery minute, minute, and I rinse repeat

like that. And, um, it's pretty tough. It's pretty tough. Uh, so that's, those are my workouts. So if I'm doing like an hour and a half a week, maybe, uh, as my normal hour, hour and a half, I might cut that down to just one or two sessions on my deload, maybe just one plus a couple of deload workouts. Um, just because I don't, uh, that, that type of cardio doesn't put a ton of stress in the body.

It puts more stress than just walking. And but it does put some stress in the body. So I do reduce it, you know, and that's me knowing my body. Some people I know when they deload, they like to cut out all high intensity cardio. And instead they just go they do their deload workouts and they just go for long walks. Um, and more just cause it's enjoyable, you know, instead of those, those workouts were, or those days where they would be in the gym, normally they wake up and just go for a long walk outside. Uh, which, uh, if you live in a place where you can go in a park or something, there's even extra, there's benefits to just being in nature. You've probably

seen some, some, some, uh, new stories that are, you know, talk about research on that, that just going out and being in, in around nature is just good for the body can help de-stress you just that alone. So, um, that, that, that's really what I do with cardio. Um, I try and just running through a list of things that a little random questions, refeeding while, while deloading. Um, it sure, if you like, I mean, if you want to, you don't have to, uh, if you're still, well, if you're going to, you're going to maintain your deficit, uh, here's a two in one. So if you're cutting, yes, maintain your deficit while you're, while you are deloading. Um, well, actually, now that I think about it again, this is one of those things where you kind of want to know your body.

Some people, the main benefit of coming out of a deficit, even if it's just for a week, let's say you just increase your calorie intake. Let's say you don't even necessarily come up to your TDE. You just increase your calorie intake by a couple hundred calories a day while you're deloading is the psychological satisfaction of eating some more food. And then it will alleviate some of the stress in the body. So I'm actually going to say if you're cutting and you're deloading, I would recommend trying that first, eating a couple hundred more calories a day. Throw in whatever. Personally, I'd probably increase my carbs, but whatever you want to eat,

throw that in for an extra couple hundred calories a day, and then you wouldn't need to refeed or anything like that, but you just eat a bit more. And that also will help you come back feeling refreshed and really ready to go the next week. If you're bulking, if you're in a surplus and you deload, personally, I would just maintain that surplus. Because you do a week of heavy weightlifting and you roll into this next week, your body is still going to be recovering from some of those previous workouts. So you just maintain the surplus. I would not go into deficit. I'm not a fan of mini bulks and mini cuts because I've just seen with a lot of people, and I've seen in my own body, they're not as productive as just maintaining a slight calorie

surplus over time. It just doesn't work as well. When you maintain that slight calorie surplus, you get into a rhythm when you're bulking. I've seen it with my body. I've seen it working with a lot of people where you just start making progress every week. Every week, you're gaining a rep or two, which then every couple of weeks, that turns into gaining weight and so forth.

And by throwing in mini cuts, it just seems to screw with that. When you get some momentum going and then deficit, and you maybe you're a little bit weaker that week because you had to cut your carbs and then you come back and you're not quite back and it takes a little bit to get back. And so I'm not a fan of, uh, I don't recommend, you know, bulking and then going into a deload cut and then bulking deload cut. If, if you are just getting sick of eating food, which I understand, then bulk and then eat your, your, uh, maintenance basically for a week while you're deloading,

that's fine as well. And then go back into your surplus. Um, yeah, so I think that's everything. I think that pretty much covers all the common questions and all the back and forth that, that, that kind of, uh, goes on at least in, you know, in my email and stuff on, on this subject. So I hope you found this helpful and I will see you next week. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books

and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.