Quote (kragujevac @ Jan 23 2018 09:10pm)
Depends on a lot of factors as to when deloading is necessitated or useful. If you have a young training age you will not need a deload for quite a few cycles as your ability to recover from the limited total loading and intensity will not build up too much fatigue that won't naturally dissipate between training weeks.
As you get further in to your training career the absolute delta in total volume and load between your first year and when you are years down the line will necessitate deloading and recovery from the systemic fatigue that such training cycles produce.
They are also useful for competition to allow you to dissipate as much as possible for supercompensation to take place in line with comp days so that you are able to express the adaptations youve been training for through your cycles.
Generally, depending on how well you know your body and recovery and how you respond to training variables you can modify either volume or intensity when deloading. If you handle high intensities well you can modulate volume and cut your total work loads in your deload rather than cutting down the intensities you work at. Requires some experimenting and experience but the goal is to recover for a specific reason, either you have plateaud hard in training or need to prepare for competition.
what is systemic fatigue?