Deloads are necessary to avoid serious injury and manifest the gains you earned from putting your body under extra stress. Without them, the body will not adapt and get injured. 

 

Before we go into the details of why you need to deload in powerlifting, let me ask you a couple of questions:

 

These are essential questions to understand yourself better and be more likely to succeed. Research shows that people who write down their goals and reflect on them are more likely to achieve them. When was the last time you did this, if ever? This is one of the main differences between the rich and the poor. The rich proactively design the lives they want to live while the poor wait for others to tell them what to do. Many think about their lives in this way:

 

If you put what you want at the center of attention you will chase your own tail. What you want changes hundreds of times a day. It highly depends on who you are with, what you do and where you are. If your world circles around this you will chase all rabbits at once and catch none. Your resources will be spread thin and time scattered between too many activities. Something interesting happens when you flip the running order of these questions on their head:

 

This way you will focus on what matters most to you long term. The goals you will pursue will be long term and more fulfilling. Your actions and thoughts will become more connected and success will follow. If you want to know how this works on a psychological basis check out Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Simon Sinek's TED talk on the golden circle will change your life.

 

 It all starts with changing your daily habits. A good way of doing this is to start a journal. The best one I could find is the self journal from best-self. You can check it out via this link.

 

Powerlifting is the sport of the total. Your total consists of three lifts. These lifts are the bench press, squat, and deadlift. For each of these, you get three attempts to establish the best possible weight. Your best attempt will be counted towards your total. Based on your total you will be ranked against the other competitors in the field.

 

A big difference between lifting on the platform and in the gym is that you will get judged. Three referees will give you commands and observe your attempts from different angles. Two out of three have to agree that you performed according to the standards of the Federation you compete in. You need at least one qualifying attempt for each lift. Otherwise, you will be disqualified.  

 

Your total usually splits into 40/40/20. Your squat and deadlift will contribute 40% each while the bench press will cover 20%. Based on these numbers you can see that you might be interested to develop strong legs to be successful in powerlifting.

 

The first one to two years in powerlifting you will spend on programs which work with linear progression. This means that you will increase the weight per exercise in each workout and not fail any repetitions. This is due to being new to the sport and making use of the novice effect. The novice effect says that when you are new at something you will improve in leap and bounds. Once you reach a more mature level it will become harder and harder to increase the weight. Rather than increasing weight workout to workout, you will move to increase weight week over week or even month over month.

 

At some stage, you will stop to improve with programs like Stronglifts 5x5 and Starting strength which are based on linear progression. A good sign of this is when you start to get minor injuries from lifting on a more regular basis. I personally get a tennis elbow from bench pressing too much when I quit Stronglifts 5x5 after a year. This is where deloads come in. As our bodies need time to recover and rebuild you sometimes need to take one step back to make two steps forward. More professional programs will have you deload every three to four weeks so that you can get at the next cycle refreshed.

 

Deloads are necessary to avoid injury and give your body time to manifest the gains you made from training. Your body adapts to the stress you put it under when you rest. As a beginner, an overnights sleep is usually enough to get this in. Once you progress the fatigue that builds up needs more time to exit your system. Marathoners, for example, usually recover for two weeks after their 42km endeavor.