-[[[--On Testing, Peaking, and Deloading--]]]-

Hanley

I got a mail this morning asking off one of our RevFit clients asking why he tested out at about 93% of his max deadlift. He was awfully confused because everyone else was pulling PRs and he went backwards.

There's a number of reasons why one might go backwards when testing, and a number of implications when it comes to training.



OVERVIEW OF GAS
Look at the chart - it's a visual representation of Hans Selye general adaptation to stress (GAS) model and will frame the rest of this post. From here, when I talk about training, I'm really talking about stress.

It's a eustress - positive and beneficial, but a stress nonetheless.

You can see that you start "normal" - homeostasis. Then you experience a dip (this is the first few weeks of training when your body is fatigued).

From there, your body starts to recover and get stronger (the up slope) before eventually reaching the resistance phase. The point at which it can't continue to adapt at the same pace.

Then, finally you hit exhaustion (aka overreaching) when everything starts to decline. With lifting, you'll be pissed off, tired, fatigued and won't want to train. It's your body's way of saying "hey back off and gimme a break buddy".

If you keep pushing at this point, you'll approach overtraining, illness and risk injury (aka - don't chase peak strength levels all the time).

PEAK STRENGTH LEVELS
At the top of the the resistance stage there's a point of inflection. That's your "peak" - the point at which your body has handled all the stress it can and adapted to it's maximum current potential.

THAT is the point you want to test at because it's your strongest point. But the kicker is - not every lift will progress at the same rate, and knowing when that peak will happen is as much of an art as a science. Some days you'll nail it, others you'll be a weak or two early, or late.

Testing early is always preferable to testing late because it means you don't hit the exhaustion phase. Last year I peaked about 4 weeks out from a comp and desperately tried to hold the peak for a month.

I was on that downslope, into the exhaustion phase training harder than ever.

The result?

....I was miserable, and didn't train for about a month after the comp, and missed 2+ months of squatting and deadlifting because I was so fatigued physically and mentally. A silly mistake I knew I was making at the time which f*cked me for the first half of 2016.

I'll close this section with the following - what comes after a peak?

A drop. It can be no other way. That means when you hit peak strength levels you WILL appear weaker next time you go to the gym. It's not a bad thing per se, it's just indicative of your entering a new stage of training.

IMPLICATION FOR TRAINING
If you're following along so far, you probably realise all this will have implications for how training is structured and the effect on the body you illicit at each stage.

During the early stages of the stress curve (accumulation in training speak) you recover and adapt quickly, and increase abilities well - so it makes sense at that stage to have a high volume of work and build a strong solid base for the laster periods.

At this stage, it also makes sense to have a larger variation of movements to build muscle and potential, and work on weak points for later on in the training cycle.

As you slow down, you want to start to transition towards more "skills practice" - the transmutation phase where you move to more work on the competition / test lifts at (usually) slightly lower volumes and higher intensities.

...aka more weight, less reps.

Then, finally you have the realisation block (aka 'peaking') where you now try to extra the maximum weights you can from your newly powerful muscles, and you do that by practicing with heavy weights while avoiding becoming overly fatigued.

It's at this stage where most problems happen. Push the peak too hard or try to push it for too long and you'll rush past the inflection point on the curve straight to exhaustion.

How many reps should you be doing to avoid that? Probably somewhere in the region to 15-25 reps at 85%+ each week per lift.

That could be something like day 1 squat/bench: 85% 3x3, 90% 3x1, day 2 bench/deadlift: 90% 4x2 etc etc

...and you probably want to limit 90%+ exposures to 5-15 reps each week too.

RECOVERY
Recovery comes in several forms - neurological (you have to back off the weights to give your nervous system a break), muscular / connective tissue (you need to back off load to give your joints & muscles down time) and movement pattern related.

...movement pattern fatigue is one you don't see people talk about much. If you do 600-800 squats or deadlifts a month, as we do with intermediate lifters, your body will start to break down over time. Not because it can't do it ever, just because it hasn't had sufficient time to recover right now.

That means when it's time to deload after a peaking phase, we change the movements out to ones you haven't used in a while for a few weeks, and in the early stages of the next adaptation phase you'll see more movement variation again.

As comp / test day approaches you'll get closer and closer to more frequent exposure to the competition variants.

So, in order to test at peak strength levels you gotta train hard, be smart and hope you get the timing right. That comes thru experience, experience and more experience.

You can't replace critical analysis and time under the bar.

(PS - the reason why Mark went backwards in this instance is because over 3 weeks he was above 90%, then he did a squat / bench test in the gym, followed with a deload 12 days and then tested DL - it was never gonna be optimal, but we thought since he's a relative beginner he might get away with it.

He hasn't got weaker, he's just not at weak strength levels - there's an important difference)

** This is not intended to be exhaustive - more a beginners guide to some fundamental concepts **

Alf Veedersane

Credit where it's due. You should send that to Greg Nuck0ols because I believe he's in the midst of the second editions of the Art and Science of Lifting and that blended with what he had would be perfect!