"I thought this was a De-load Week"

After every few weeks, we incorporate a "de-load" week to allow our bodies to recover from heavy training.

The reason I refer to it as a "de-load" week is that I remove all max effort, full body movements from the sessions.

In addition, we reduce the training volume from 3x per week to 2x per week.

I have found that these de-load weeks keep us from reaching plateaus too quickly and burning out mentally.

Unfortunately, there are times when the sessions during the de-load week can become rather intense.

I have often heard some of our pretty hardcore athletes saying: "I thought this was a de-load week?"

While we do not perform any max effort deadlifts, we do perform timed circuits to help build our mental toughness.

Below is an example of what we would do on a typical de-load week.

Warm Up

• Jump Rope - 150 touches
• Squat to Lunge (Front to Back) - 3 each way
• Good Mornings - x10
• Leg Cradles - x5 each side
• High Knee Pulls - x 5 each side
• Slow Long Stride Mountain Climbers - x 5 each side
• Jump Rope - 150 touches

Shoulder Savers

• Face Pulls with rope - x 20
• Band Pull Aparts - x 20
• Diagonal Band Pull Aparts x 20 each side
• Band Dislocates - x20
• DB Y,T,W L - x 5 each side

Day 1 Circuit

• Jump Rope - 150 touches
• Pull-ups to 100 (Use as many sets as possible to reach 100 total pull-ups. Do not allow more than 1 minute rest between sets)
• Rest 5 minutes
• Walk-Out + Push Up x15 (Perform 3 push-ups at the end of every walk-out) 
• Jump Rope - 150 touches

Day 2 Circuit

• Jump Rope - 150 touches
• 3-way Bodyweight Ladder Circuit
• Perform 10 rounds of circuits of push-ups, groiners, and body weight squats
• In Round 1, perform 10 reps of each movement
• In each subsequent round, reduce the reps of each movement by 1
• Continue until you get to 1 rep for each movement
• Do not take any rest between reps, movements, or rounds