Active Rest Week. How often?

How often do you guys take an "active rest week"?

I'm sure it differs from person to person, age and how often you train. I'm trying to listen to my body and take it from there even thought I must say that taking time off training is realy hard for me to do and the FEW times a year i do it It almost stresses me.

If you do regular deloads then likely every 12th week is fine. Focus on mobility especially that week, but do things you enjoy, the mental break is very useful.

Nic Branson said:

If you do regular deloads then likely every 12th week is fine. Focus on mobility especially that week, but do things you enjoy, the mental break is very useful.

Thanks Nic, every 12 weeks sounds like a good plan. I never realy had a plan for "active rest weeks". Now when i' M doing 12 week training cycles it has become more obvious for me that it would do me good. I've been doing 12 week cycles since the Helsinki seminar and since then my training has become much more structured. I also train more frequent. I do F1 5 times a week H1 2 times a week. Usually do H1 in the morning and F1 at night. I also skateboard twice a week with my old skate budies. So my weeks are pretty packed!

Lately I've been feeling a little worn out. When i feel this i take an extra rest day or two. I' turning 50 this summer, dont know if it's psychological but recovery seems to take longör these days:)

It definitely will, you might consider a 4 day F1 plan and make the other day a mobility only day. Age takes our recovery, learn to manage that and you can keep going.

i always do it during the 12th week.. if i feel to weak also at 8th...but not often

alex87 said:

i always do it during the 12th week.. if i feel to weak also at 8th...but not often

Feeling weak at the 8th week happens to me every now and then as well.

i found that it happens often if sometime i can't complete a template of my schedule and i noticed that repeat it for 2 weeks again is good to complete it. in that situation i could do 5 weeks in a row then 1 week of deload and 3 week for next months before the next deload week. so the second deload week appears to be in the 10th week....and sometime i prefer to rest more then a normal deload week

You may want to make smaller jumps in volume than the template calls for. This is what I have been doing, and it works really well. I have just been going up one rep per week, and it leads to easier progress for me. YMMV.

As a general rule, you never want to increase total workload (particularly volume) more than ~3% per week, so you may want to use each week's goals as more of a check-point.

Joshua Naterman said:

You may want to make smaller jumps in volume than the template calls for. This is what I have been doing, and it works really well. I have just been going up one rep per week, and it leads to easier progress for me. YMMV.

 

As a general rule, you never want to increase total workload (particularly volume) more than ~3% per week, so you may want to use each week's goals as more of a check-point.

the check-point essay makes sense. of course i found that your idea works weel since i moved over full leverage movement, sometime is impossible move into a template with 2 more reps from week to week. i noticed that increase by one reps or one seconds is good as maitian for a longer time the same schedule!

thanks