You mentioned something very interesting here, there can be a few things that take place that can initiate this, for myself I have experienced this firsthand many times over.
When coming off of a cycle, or a blast, our CNS is no longer primed and hyperactivated. Therefore it's not unusual, or uncommon to experience strength loss, with our primary muscles, and also including stabilizers, secondaries.
This is where we can sometimes have a tendency to overcompensate, with whatever working weight we have that became accustomed with moving.
@Meetketchup brings up a very good point, and it's a phenomenon that we don't even realize that we somehow walked into, or was getting away with, when it concerns compromising our form when ON.
When coming OFF, everything from the CNS, and other adrenal hormones are no longer firing on all cylinders..
Feeling aches and pains is simply your body's way of saying "let's take a look at a checklist"..
1) working weight, taking into accountability and thinking like an adult reasonably and responsibly when looking at what gains we have made, with strength and so on with our lifts. There's going to be a loss, there doesn't have to be a significant one, We can keep these gains but within reason. There will be a loss, except this, and make your adjustments.
2) DE-LOAD... We cannot be firing on all cylinders all the time, you're going to get burned out. It's okay to deload, scale back a little bit, simply focus on the range of motion, focus more on the mechanics and less on what has diminished.
3) What goes up, must come down. We owe it to ourselves not only for our sanity, but for our sense of well-being the physically and mentally, with taking it easy, and simply just recovering.
The majority of individuals, that often say "if I took gear I'd like like that",
They simply have no clue with what truly goes into it, This is truly a game of calculation, consistency, and long-term planning. People look at the picture and only see the glory, yet they have no concept of what goes in between with the ups and downs, food intake, the adding and subtracting with nutrients and other numbers with training, rest and recovery and so on.
Scale back and DELOAD until it's the next go..
