Have you ever heard of people scheduling a light weight workout routine in a week of otherwise tough training? Or maybe you’ve thought about inserting a deload week into your program? Why not just rest completely? Or simply train hard all the time? And how do you know when it’s best to back off and for how long?

These are key questions that will impact the level of results intermediate and advanced lifters can expect to see.

Check out the video because I elaborate on everything there, but here’s the short version:

WHY LIGHT Weight WORKOUT Routines Work

Light weight workout routines are sometimes better than a total day off from the gym because they provide some the opportunity to practice (remember, lifting is a skill that requires technique and coordination - both of which only get better with practice) and stimulate the nervous system without over-taxing it.

What do I mean by that?

If you’ve ever taken a week or two off from the gym, then you know that when you come back to training everything feels heavier and more difficult than it did before. But is one week really enough to get weaker? Not exactly. Think of it like this: your blade got a little dull. While you’re made of the same steel as before and you still have an edge, you’re not going to stay razor sharp without some honing. To perform at your best, your nervous system needs frequent stimulation of reps under load. This teaches your body to fire on all cylinders and is like putting that final edge on a sharp blade.

But if you lift too heavy too often, your body can’t recover and you perform worse.

Suppose someone can handle one very taxing squat workout per week, otherwise their knees ache and progress actually get’s worse in the long-run. One solution would be to do another one or two light weight workouts per week to stimulate the body and practice the movement without taxing it’s recovery ability.

WHAT CONSTITUTES A LIGHT weight WORKOUT routine?

There are multiple ways to set up a light weight workout routine, but for now let me put this diagram up (not made by me). This will give you some practical ideas about how it can be done. If you remember this short article , you know that rep-range tax people differently so you’d want to individualize this. But generally you’d do a few sets at in the light+ to moderate zones keeping the number of total sets/reps on the lower end.

WHAT ABOUT LIGHT OR DELOAD WEEKS?

I did another article on that recently and it’s a crucial thing to master. Read this to find out how to customize your training weeks and deload weeks effectively.