A deload is a planned easier week. Less weight, fewer sets, or both, usually for seven to ten days.
It is not a break from training, and it is not a reward. It is the part of the plan that lets the hard weeks keep working.
Signs it is time
No single one of these is conclusive. Two or three together usually are.
- Loads you handled comfortably a few weeks ago now feel heavy at the same reps
- Warm-up sets feel worse than the working sets
- Sleep gets worse rather than better after hard sessions
- Joints ache in the same places session after session
- Motivation drops specifically for training you normally enjoy
- Your logged volume is going up while your performance is going down
That last one is the most reliable and the easiest to miss without records.
How to actually do it
Two common approaches:
- Keep the weight, cut the volume. Same loads, roughly half the sets. Good if you want the movements to stay sharp.
- Keep the volume, cut the weight. Same sets, around sixty to seventy percent of your usual loads. Good if joints are the problem.
Either way, keep training. Stopping entirely for a week tends to feel worse on the way back in.
How often
Many people do well with something easier every fourth to eighth week, but the honest answer is that it depends on how hard you train, how well you sleep and what else your week contains.
Planning one in advance is better than waiting until you need one. A deload you scheduled costs you a week. One you were forced into by injury costs considerably more.
Reading your own data
This is where a training log earns its place. Volume, strength over time and how sessions felt are all recorded in Frog Fitness, so the decision rests on what happened rather than on how you feel on one particular Tuesday.