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173. Deload Week · Impact Ready

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  Welcome to Impact Ready, a show dedicated to helping you elevate
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  your impact in the world. I'm Steph Safra, your host.
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  Let's explore the power of showing up with intention and
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  energy each day. This is for those who seek to
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  make life truly meaningful. Get ready for impact.
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  Hello team. Welcome to the Impact Ready
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  podcast. I hope you're having an awesome
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  week today. In this episode, I want to talk
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  about the idea of a rest and recovery.
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  I know that a lot of you listening have very full lives.
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  I know that many of you are business owners or you are
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  working very hard at climbing in your company.
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  You have families, you have multiple hobbies that you pour a
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  lot of time into, and that's a really beautiful thing.
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  I love that. I think creating a very full
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  life is a privilege. It's an honor to be able to do
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  that, and it brings us a lot of joy.
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  It brings us a lot of energy and a lot of purpose and all that
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  stuff is amazing. But there's this other side of
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  the coin that we don't talk about as often, and it's this
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  idea of taking a break and taking time to be able to rest
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  and recover from this fullness that we've created for
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  ourselves. Obviously in the Wellness space,
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  people talk about rest and recovery a lot.
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  We talk about self-care very often and we know logically how
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  important it is, but common sense is not always common
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  practice. And oftentimes we think that
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  we're doing those things. We think that we're resting or
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  recovering. We think that we're building in
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  time to care for ourselves. And we're not really, we're not
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  actually doing a great job at it, even though we're going
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  through the motions and saying that we are.
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  A lot of people are saying, Oh yeah, I'm resting, but they're
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  on their phones or they're watching TV or they're sort of
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  just disengaging from their world.
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  A lot of times we're not resting enough for the volume of work
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  that we do in our lives. We aren't sleeping enough, we're
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  not taking breaks, we're not even making time to walk in our
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  day. I think this is an important
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  conversation so we can strike a balance between the action side,
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  the creation, the momentum, the progress, but also the rest and
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  recovery side of things. To be honest with you, I've
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  never been that great at resting, which can seem a little
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  hypocritical considering I'm the one spurring on this
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  conversation, but I'm just being transparent with you.
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  I've never been a great rest recovery person.
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  I know the value in it. I mean, for God's sakes, I teach
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  it to clients. I've taught it to patients for
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  15 years. Every single week I'm talking
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  about rest and recovery to my coaching clients.
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  But ever since I was a kid, I was just kind of on the move.
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  I, I think it's inherently part of who I am, but I've really had
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  to work on this in my own life. And of course, as I've gotten
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  older, I have a whole new appreciation for rest.
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  I look at it much differently now, especially after being in
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  fitness for 10 years and having to navigate different injuries
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  and health crises. Rest has a a whole new meaning
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  for me. But there's something that has
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  helped me more than anything when it comes to wrapping my
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  brain around the idea of rest and actually incorporating it in
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  a smart way. It's an idea that my wife Leanne
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  introduced to me a couple years ago, something that is very well
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  understood in the bodybuilding world, and it's this idea of AD
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  load week. In bodybuilding, you often
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  follow an 8 week lifting program when with your weight training
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  and after that eight weeks it rotates or it changes.
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  And this gives you time to have consistency with certain
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  exercises so that you can actually see progression with
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  those different lifts and you can get better at them and you
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  can get stronger with them. But built into these different
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  programs are certain weeks called deload weeks.
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  And a deload week is essentially a recovery week, 1 full week
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  where you're still active and engaged but resting.
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  Because in actuality, the way that you do your workouts is
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  that you reduce your lifting volume by 30 to 50%, and you
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  also lower the number of sets that you would normally do.
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  The idea is to get the blood pumping with these workouts, but
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  not overtax the muscles because like everything else, muscles
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  need rest, too. Now, coaches will often program
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  in a deload week for their clients when they're not
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  sleeping well, when they are perpetually sore after their
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  workouts, when they're feeling really burned out or stressed.
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  Or maybe they're just seeing their progress, their gains kind
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  of stall or plateau. That's when a coach would
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  incorporate A deload week and it's a chance to let your
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  muscles recover, but also let your nervous system recover.
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  I know what a concept. Let your brain recover and just
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  give space for things to reset. You know, we're not machines and
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  so we can't just go non-stop and expect to see constant gains
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  week after week after week. And I've always known about
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  recovery days, something that we're all very familiar with,
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  taking a rest day intermittently in your week, especially with
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  your training schedule so that your body can recover from your
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  workouts. I mean, that makes a lot of
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  sense to me. I used to take maybe one or two
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  days off a week and I felt fine with that.
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  But this idea of a deload week was really eye opening because I
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  hadn't really ever taken a full week off of my typical training.
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  I always thought that we should be pushing and progressing every
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  single week. And so the first time that
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  Leanne suggested that I do this with her, I was pretty
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  skeptical. And at first, I couldn't imagine
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  that reducing the intensity and the volume like that in my lifts
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  was ultimately going to benefit my progress.
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  But even though I was a little doubtful, I was totally game to
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  to try this with her. So every day we would go to the
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  gym like we normally did, but we would lift half of our volume,
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  which to be honest with you, a lot of times felt really silly
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  because if you're doing a single arm bent over row at 35 lbs,
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  typically it feels really strange to be rowing 15 or 20
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  lbs for two sets. You feel like you're not really
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  doing anything and you're not breaking a sweat.
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  You're sort of just going through the motions, but I stuck
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  with it. I followed the plan with her.
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  It actually felt pretty good and something really amazing and
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  cool happened. After that week, I went back to
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  my normal training and on my first day back, I think it was
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  an upper body day. I couldn't believe how good I
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  felt. I remember saying to Leanne,
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  Honey, I feel less sore. I felt like everything that I
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  was doing was easier. I was actually lifting heavier
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  than I had prior to taking that recovery week, and it was
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  something that I knew could happen logically because I
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  understand the mechanisms of the body, I understand muscle
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  protein synthesis, I understand biology, but to experience it
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  and feel it in my body was a totally different impact.
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  Here I was, this coach and practitioner who teaches people
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  about rest, learning a whole new thing about the power of rest.
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  It was very humbling, but it was also very exciting, and it was
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  flipping some of my old beliefs in my head, old beliefs about
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  training and pushing myself and working really hard.
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  They were beliefs that were cultural, societal beliefs that
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  I had picked up long ago from playing sports from a really
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  young age. It was almost like some of the
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  ghosts of my old basketball coaches were just sort of fading
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  away from my mind, and I was really excited about this.
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  What I liked about this approach was that it allowed me to take
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  the pressure off and lighten the load while still being engaged.
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  I was still doing the workouts. I had just sort of eased up on
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  everything and like I had said, it felt really good.
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  It wasn't no workouts at all and total disengagement, which I
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  think is something that can actually stall people in the
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  end. It was engagement, just in a
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  lighter way. And so it got me wondering if I
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  could apply this idea to other things in my life, like my work
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  or some of my habits at home. And so the first thing that I
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  tested was a project that I'd been working on.
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  I was creating a course for my other business, Optimize You.
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  It was a nutrition and metabolism course and it was a
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  lot of building content and editing videos and building the
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  course in the back end. It was just required so much
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  time on the computer. I was pretty much sitting in
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  front of my computer all day long.
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  But I was feeling really burned out and so I decided to take AD
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  load week from the project. So for the next week I lifted at
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  half volume with less sets. In other words, I worked about
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  probably half the time on the project.
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  I took much more frequent breaks, I was not on my computer
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  as much, and I just sort of lightened my mindset around the
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  whole thing. The next week came around and I
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  got right back into it and I noticed I was feeling more
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  excited. I noticed that I was
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  enthusiastic about jumping back into that work.
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  I just had a new appreciation for it.
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  I'd actually had some really great ideas during that deload
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  week. So I was pumped to start to
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  incorporate those and play around with some stuff.
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  I was able to think of ways to do things a little bit more
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  efficiently. And so overall, the deload week
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  totally worked when it came to stuff outside of my physical
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  training. And so I wanted to offer this
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  idea to you this week. My challenge is for you to look
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  at the different areas of your life and see where you might be
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  overtraining, where your efforts might actually be burning you
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  out and you might need a little bit of rest and recovery and
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  your deload week can look however you want.
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  Maybe it's a vacation with your wife or your husband because
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  being away from your home environment sometimes is like
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  reducing the volume by 30 to 50%.
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  It might be something that you put into play with your actual
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  physical training, your health, your workouts.
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  Maybe it's something that you want to incorporate with your
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  work or another thing that you're trying to learn, a skill,
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  a hobby, something like that. I know sometimes we resist
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  incorporating rest and recovery into our lives because of the
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  fullness that we've created. I know that we can resist it
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  because society and culture has us feeling like we're going to
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  fall behind if we take time for that.
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  But if I've learned anything from the deload week, what I can
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  confidently say is lightening the load on myself, lifting half
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  the volume and doing less sets allowed me to come back
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  refreshed with new creative ideas and a different mindset
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  and actually lifting heavier. And now it's one of my best
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  tools to keep moving the needle forward on the things that I
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  care about in my life. So test it out this week.
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  I hope this helps. I'm so excited you're here.
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  Thank you for listening. And as always, thank you for
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  being ready to Impact Team. Thanks for listening to Impact
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  Ready. I hope today's episode inspired
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  you to own your impact and recognize that you are powerful.
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  By elevating our energy and awareness, we can create
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  exponential change in this life. If you enjoyed today's insights,
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  share them with a friend and subscribe to the show for more.
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  I truly appreciate you. Thanks again for being here.