Time Off From the Gym

Basically I'm hitting sort of a weird point in the gym.

I'm gaining strength everywhere but my bench. Now I'm actually finding myself hitting the point of failure halfway through my 2nd and 3rd bench sets (I do 10 reps a set for 3 sets), and it's kind of frustrating since I haven't increased my weight in 2 weeks.

I'm also fatiguing quicker at the gym, taking more time between sets and exercises.

I was thinking with next week being Thanksgiving, maybe I just need to take a week off. I haven't had a solid week without lifting since June.

Do you think a week off will help? I never work the same muscle group more than twice a week.

what are you eating? do you follow pre and post workout nutrition?

Yeah, sounds like time for a deloading week. You should take one every 12 weeks or so, actually - I had mine about 7 weeks back and set new PR's in all my lifts for three weeks straight when I got back to lifting.

 'Course, I didn't take one until a friend of mine threathened to come over and impound my weights if I didn't take the week off.

 Doing it as active rest seems to work the best from what I've read - get involved with something physcial and active that's a far cry from your normal training - play some pickup b-ball or soccer, shovel the driveway, that sort of thing.

I follow pre and post-workout nutrition. I eat a cup of rolled oats (dry weight) with 1/4 cup of raisins before working out (sometimes I add some eggs, but it's hard for me to put all that down at 5 am). I down a scoop and a half of whey and an apple immediately after my post-workout shower.

I guess it is time for a deloading week. Do you think it's ok to do cardio during a deloading week? I usually do 30 mins of cardio 3 times a week. 

If it wasn't I'd be in deep trouble myself :)

 Though I think it's also neccesary to deload from your regular cardio at reasonable intervals - I haven't come across any real hard-and-fast rules on the interval for cardio deloading, but I think it makes a sort of sense to stick to the same schedule for both.

 So in practice, your deloading week would be a week of doing different-from-normal cardio - go swimming if you run, take up biking if you swim, that sort of thing.

 That's assuming you aren't a hardcore endurance athlete of course; I have only the faintest notion of how bikers, swimmers and runners structure their training :)

So do you think walking in the park for like a half hour at a casual pace would be a good substitute for the elliptical?

 For deloading purposes, yes - as I understand it the idea is to do something completely different and lower intensity than your usual schedule to give your body time to catch up on repairs.

 So walking sounds about right for that, though given how much you burn on the elliptical I think that taking a light jog around the park would also fall into the "lower-than-normal" intensity bracket.

Personally, I'd just do the walking if I had the self-discipline to take the prescribed rest :)

Alright 1 more question:

I'm going home on Monday. I just did upper body lifting today, and the next time I'd normally do it would be Monday. I was originally going to lift Monday and then not do upper again until the following Monday, but now I'm wondering if I should just skip Monday and wait until the following Monday? In effect, give myself a week and a half of instead of just a week?

     Just a quick word of advice though, Apples aren't great post workout. They have high fiber and a lot of fructose.  Might want to try finding some bananas or mellons if you want fruit post workout, little more glucose and higher GI then Apples. 

     Also for the deloading week,  I usually throw in some bodyweight exercies to get the blood pumping through my muscles but at the same time not doing enough cellular damages to warrant a great deal of recovery.  Plus it helps me from feeling lazy.

 

I know apples aren't the best, but I'm not a huge banana fan, and they always make me ridiculously hungry after I eat them.

In the FWIW category, the sports mentioned tend to be oganized around seasons.  For example, my 12 yr old daughter is a swimmer.  Her winter (Short Course) season starts in August.  She starts with practice every day (M t F) for an hour.  That builds to 2 hrs a day 6 days a week by mid October and continues through then end of March.  Swim meets are usually 1 or 2 a month and they are Fri, Sat, & Sun.  My 7 yr old has the same season but she only practices 1 hr a day 3 days a week.  April is a month off, no swimming.  May starts Long Course and it continues through July.  August is a month off.  During Long Course they have two practices a day 6 -8 am and 4 -6 pm .  They don't always go to both because they are also on another summer swim team.  They both play soccer between swim seasons, spring and fall. 

Cycling around here has about a 7 month season for outdoor road bikes.  Typically one would start riding the mountain bike outdoors in Feb./March and switch to the road in April.  By November road riding is limited and it is normal to take the month of Dec. off the bike.  January is time to start on the trainer or out on the mountain bike weather permitting building back up to April.  Winter is also the time for cross training and weights.  Disclaimer: This is just one example, not all cyclist follow this kind of schedule.

I don't know what runners do.  But I think it is fairly normal to take as much as a full month off during the off season.

 Yeah, when I did my deloading the program ends on a Friday and started again on a Monday, so it was more like deloading for 9 days than 7.

 So that sounds about right - Terrier has a point as well with the bodyweight exercises, just doing a little something to get the blood moving every now and again is good.

 Workout nutrition is driving me batty at the moment. I thought Berardi's "solving the post-workout puzzle" article series laid out the right thing to do, and then along comes The Top 10 Post Workout Nutrition Myths and throws a monkey wrench into my understanding.

 I'm trying out Barr's recipe of one protein shake pre-workout, one an hour post-workout at the moment, and it does seem to work reasonably well, but I'm still not sure if that's actually the right way to do things. Any ideas?

i've tried this barr theory two days in a row now, and i find it quite looney.  i'm just so tired by the time i get to eat real food.  the thing is, his article is focused on strength, and i'm wondering if it doesn't work for me bec i do so much cardio?  he does mention endurance somewhere, so i thought it would be okay, but now i'm not so sure.

what if you're a "marathon-runner" (or marathon-ellipticker) and a weight lifter?  i spend hours at the gym every day.  should i try carbs earlier in the day?  i was even thinking of buying protein shakes that have more carbs to see if that helped the pre & post workout nutrition.  any suggestions?  p.s. i'm also supplementing w/bcaa.

 Well, the transition period was a stone beyotch to manage - I've been trying Barr's recipe since last Wednsday and the first three or four workouts were pretty bad. Actually, the first one was terrible :)

 What seems to work the best for me is to only have a half-serving prior to the workout, and to have the other half spread out through the workout itself - if I have the whole serving at once my insulin spikes hard enough to leave me dizzy.

 But I think that the rules are different for weights+cardio compared to pure weights like I'm doing - Berardi has some notes in his series about you needing a lot more post-workout protein+carbs after long-duration hard cardio. So to me it looks like Barr's article may be a bit narrower in scope than Berardi's, which would render some of his advice inapplicable to you.  Or perhaps what you need is to modify it a bit - can't find the reference right now, but I've seen a study that says that for endurance sports the optimum sports drink would have either 1.25% of its calories from protein or simply have 1.25g/dl protein. Wish I remembered which one it was!

 The intricacies of optimising peri-workout nutrition has the potential to drive me even battier than I already am, I think. But if you do weights, then cardio, it's possible that having a half-serving of protein pre-workout, the other half during the weight lifting, and then sipping a protein-enriched sports drink while doing your cardio is closer to an optimum strategy. If so, I think you can safely eat regular food post-cardio without impacting your results.

 And another thing to note is that if you're compromising the fun you're having in the gym it may be a good idea to go back to your old nutrition regime - it may not have been 100% optimal, but 90% optimal nutrition and fun workouts will do serve you better in the long run.

im glad this was posted. I've been getting tired lately at the gym. not going as fast as i used to go. Even though i took 3 days off when i was in ny, maybe another deloading week for me will be good (thanksgiving). Athough I do plan to walk everywhere (not a big town) and im sure I'll do a jog one or two days of my break.

I'll just continue my workout of -30 min elliptical -20-30 min walk or 15-20 min run - lots of abs and stretching (oo it feels good) - weights. mainly arms, but working on legs.

5 more days of intensity.

How's your form and what other chest exercises are you doing?  Are you doing bb bench press or db?  Any incline/decline presses to work your entire chest?

 You might want to switch to a dumbbell press first and foremost.  It increases your range of motion and works the delts and tris a little better than with a barbell.  Just like you can control how much work your triceps do by changing how wide your grip is on the barbell, you can do this with the dumbbells.  You can also switch to a neutral grip like you'd get with a chest press machine but can't achieve with a barbell.  This works the anterior delts and upper pectoral region more than a traditional grip would. 

I do barbell and dumbell bench presses. I also do military presses with a barbell.

melkor - i think you may have a point:  if i end up losing some muscle, i will just have to accept that.  it's tough to imagine myself downing calories at the gym (which is sort of like a calorie-burning temple in my eyes at this point, the only place i'm safe from weight gain); however, i'll keep it in mind.  i WAS drinking only half the protein shake pre-workout, the other half of the shake an hour later. 

today i bought "designer whey" powder bec it's cheaper than micellar.  i'm going to toy around w/things:  today i had to divide my workout into two parts bec of work stuff, so it was 12.15 an hour after my workout.  i had a bag of soy crisps instead of the shake.  i had the shake an hour later.  then i had a can of chicken and rice cakes at 2.30.  in general that felt much better. 

dm84 - my experience lately is that whenever my food is clean, i have a hard time at the gym.  when i eat over my calories, i have all this energy in the morning; but when i have a deficit, my routine takes so much longer and i take lots of breaks while weightlifting.  do you have more energy when you've "splurged" the day before?

I don't splurge that often, and I find my energy level is much higher now than when I ate like crap all the time. When I do eat dirty, I generally feel sick afterwards. Not emotionally sick, but physically ill. Like today I had some birthday cake that someone brought in and I had a headache for a few hours. Once I ate my dinner, it subsided.

It's possible that I'm under-eating, although I hope that's not the case because I seriously can't afford to spend more on food than I currently do.