 Question is from KCI and Wojo. Can you go deeper into what a deload week looks like, how to incorporate it into your programming and the purpose and benefits of doing so. Now, before we do that, I'd like to hear your guys' opinion on how important do you think this is for the majority? Like how many people like really need a deload week? Do you think, when you think about all of your clients that you've trained and the average person that's going to consistencies is always the biggest hurdle for clients to begin with? Well, yeah, the value, I mean, see, that's a tough question because when I would train a client, I would go based off of their feedback and I'd know when I'd need to train them easier or lighter or lower the intensity of that type of thing, which is essentially what a deload week is. It's what you're doing with the deload week is you're reducing the intensity, among other things, that's the main thing of the workouts, but you're continually, you're still working out. Now, why the big question is why is a deload week better than just not doing anything? Like if I need to rest, why don't I do anything? Why don't I just sit around and do nothing? Or why don't I just be active? You can just be active and that's better than doing nothing. But the value of doing a deload week is that you're allowing your body to rest, but you're still training the movements. You see, you want to practice movements consistently, but to give your body the ability or the capability to recover and adapt. And you think, well, why is it important to continue practicing the movement? Because you're holding in on that signal. Yeah, and you lose your ability to do the movement exceptionally well when you stop even for a week. So it's like practicing, you know, throwing a football. Maybe you don't throw it as hard, but you still practice throwing it because you want to always remember that skill, always keep it, you know, cemented into your brain. So that's one of the big values of an actual structure deload week. The other value is moving, even if when you reduce the intensity, moving actually facilitates recovery better than not moving at all. Yeah, I think like it, when I think of a structured deload week and win and how to do it, I typically think of like, for example, I'm running MAPS PowerLift right now, and the way the program is designed is like week over week, I am scaling volume, adding, adding, adding, adding. Now I'm guessing that towards the end of this program, I will have definitely, I'll definitely be stretching myself and have a pretty, and I'm also pushing heavier weight, heavier weight, heavier weight, including increasing overall volume. So there's a good chance that after I finished the program, it would be ideal to probably, you know, scale back on the intensity and or volume for about a week. But like you said, still practice. Now, the other way that I think I've used, you know, deloading for clients is actually more for the client who is, they are attracted to the high intensity training like the orange theories and the, you know, those circuit based type of classes that are high intensity for an hour. And they've been doing that consistently and they have a ton of stress throughout their day because of work. They work long hours and they have a very important job and responsible for a lot of things or a lot of stuff going on with their family and they're just getting an overload of stress. And that can happen and build up in a matter of just a week. They don't have to necessarily be consistently been lifting for, you know, months and months of scaling volume. They could just be throwing a lot at the body all at one time, stress wise, and as a trainer, I could see that and feel that from the feedback that they're giving me when I'm talking to them to Sal's point. And so then I would do like a quote unquote, deload week with them and say, Hey, you know, let's do this, let's scale back on some of the intense training that we're doing. Let's do straight sets with longer rest periods. Let's maybe take that, that fourth or fifth day off in the gym. I want you to replace it with something like yoga or just go for a nice walk or hike that day. And so as a trainer, that that's kind of how I've, I think I would say I use deloading on the average client because, you know, not a lot of people are training like some of our power lifter friends or somebody who is or a bodybuilder. You know, if you're one of those people, I would say, you know, programming a deload weekend, knowing that you're scaling up, scaling up, scaling up week over week, week over week consistent, not missing. That makes more sense. Yeah, I think it definitely depends on the time length of training. Like I don't, I don't really anticipate a deload week with a beginner that we're trying to establish like the routine and, and we're progressively overloading continuously from, you know, a baseline where it, you know, we, this is where we're starting from and we need to, you know, increase your skill set. We need to get adapted towards, you know, how you respond to, to lifting weights in this direction. And we can always alter, you know, the weight based off an intensity. I'm going to play with that, but I'm, I'm still trying to scale you up to a point where you're like self sufficient and like your body is pretty well adapted to weight training. And then after that, you know, now we intensify it further. We get into like the immediate, like intermediate to advanced and, and we're, you know, you're doing like a powerlifting program and you are like really stretching yourself. Like that's where I feel like a good deload week will tell you, man, yeah, we need to, we need to now like recover. Yeah, if we tend to think of working out because training exercise is a lot of different values, but the main one that we tend to focus on is on its ability to force your body to adapt. You're breaking things down, you're pushing your body, you're stressing your body, getting it to adapt. And that's definitely one of the values of exercise. But exercise can also be restorative, which is different restorative exercise isn't aiming to break the body down. It's not aiming to force the body to adapt. Restorative exercise is literally, like the word says, helping you restore your own natural abilities, helping you feel better and recover. I've been through, you know, periods in my life where stress was very, very high. During those periods of time, I was not working out in the gym, trying to push my body to build muscle or get stronger. I was going to the gym to keep myself healthy. To keep things feeling good, to help alleviate stress, not to add stress. Because exercise, when you're pushing your body to adapt, you're actually adding stress on your body, not a bad thing when you do it right, by the way, but that is what you're doing. But if your stress is always, is already at a top level, your body's already having trouble adapting to the stress that's being placed upon it. Sometimes you want to do something and you exercise is a good way to do this. You throw something on it that helps your body deal with the stress, which is restorative. And that's what a deload week is supposed to be. When you go into a deload week, it's an easier week of exercise meant to have restorative effects on the body, not meant to push your body to adapt like your other workouts did. And wouldn't you say that that's probably the most common thing, right? I just feel like no one knows this answer better than you, who's listening. You know, what is it been a crazy week for you? Have you been, you know, burning the candle at both ends at work and you've got family stress going on. And then on top of that, you've got this personal fitness goal you've been, you know, cracking away at every week over week and you've been consistent with, you know, learning to, to be, become aware of that yourself and knowing that, hey, maybe this week of my workouts is not going to look crazy intense. Maybe this week's workouts are. I'm going to practice the skill of moving better or doing things like yoga and more mobility and stretching type work, you know, you, you, you have to learn to do it. And as trainers and coaches, I mean, it was our job to try and to, to read that by asking the right questions from clients like, Hey, how was your work? How was sleep last night? You can tell sometime once you've been training for some, you know, someone for a couple of years, they'd walk in the gym and I'd look at him like, yeah, today's going to be a restorative, you know, de-load workout. So, but now here's the deal. It's hard. This is a process of learning yourself because here's what happens. Some people will be like, I don't know when I need to de-load week because sometimes when I'm really stressed and tired, going into a really hard workout makes me feel better. And so they're kind of misreading the signals in which case I would say this, it's probably a good idea to schedule de-load weeks when you're just learning how to read your body or if you have a history of overdoing it, if you're the kind of person that just either ignores the the signals willfully or you just not able to read them very well, structure in your workout, a de-load week. And typically, you know, for some people, it's once every four weeks, once every six weeks, maybe once every nine weeks where you have a week that's in your schedule and you know, no matter how you feel, I'm gonna go to the gym and that whole week is gonna be a de-load week. That whole week's gonna be easier, that whole week's gonna be focused on on restore, you know, restorative type exercise even regardless of how I feel. And if you do it that way, if you structure it that way, you may prevent ever having to do it or forcing, you know, needing to be in that position in the first place. Well, and when you go that route, trying to connect the dots with the other aspects of your life besides your performance goals in the gym, right? So obviously, when you're de-loading, you're not gonna see, you know, bench press go up, you're not gonna see you get the most shredded you've ever had or see major progress. Look at the other things in your life, your sleep, how's that going, your energy levels throughout the day, any sort of cravings you may or may not have. Pay attention at your performance at work, like think about the benefits that you're getting overall health from that de-load week. And sometimes we get so myopic about, oh, this is my fitness goal. Yeah. And, you know, oh, hey, how's this de-load week in a, you know, you know, serve my, you know, big fitness goal that I have. And then you go, Oh, man, I took that week off and I didn't get stronger. I didn't get leaner. That's okay. That's those aren't the only things that you should be paying attention to pay attention to the other aspects of your life and how that de-load week serves you. And then you just learn to kind of do it more on the fly. Here's a good sign that a de-load week was what you needed when you come back and you have better workouts. Yeah. When you come back after de-load week and you're like, whoa, I feel good, man, I feel strong, I feel less pain or whatever. Then you know, like, okay, that was that was something that I was needed.