Takeaway Points:

Taking a break or having to ease up on your training doesn’t mean that you’ll immediately lose all of the gains you’ve been making. It takes longer than we think to lose the strength, muscle, and endurance we’ve built. Even when do we lose some, it’s not as difficult as we think to get it back.
Maintaining your physicality requires less time and effort than when you were actively trying to build strength or endurance. Retraining also usually happens fairly quickly because your body does have muscle memory from all of the work you had put in previously.
It’s most important to figure out how you can keep moving consistently, even if it might be in lesser capacity than your full training routine.

(Note: This is an updated version of an article originally published on 4/13/15. It has been expanded and brought in line with modern formatting standards.)

Detraining

Detraining is the process of halting your exercise - when you stop training, you’ll start to lose muscle, strength, and endurance over time.

Conventional bro-wisdom tells us that we use it or lose it: if we don’t keep up training a certain physical quality, we lose it sooner or later. Poof. Kaplooey. Things just vanish like that. The truth of the matter is, it’s a lot more complicated.

A lot of folks are concerned that if they take even just a week or two off, it will significantly set back their results. This isn’t really true - it can certainly set you back a bit, but you’ll rarely use any significant amount of muscle, strength, or endurance. The research has generally shown us that losing a significant amount of muscle or strength, in normal conditions, typically takes months.

There are some conditions where you can lose muscle or strength pretty quickly if you stop training. For example, if you’re in the hospital with complete bed rest, it’s possible to lose strength and muscle very quickly. Likewise, if you aren’t able to eat enough and rapidly lose weight, this can certainly cause some rapid strength and muscle loss. But, these are not typically common situations for your average exerciser.

So why is everyone convinced that if they skip one workout, or take a week off of training, that they’re going to ruin their results?

There is one effect which is more immediately noticeable, which is cessation of the repeated bouts effect. This is the effect where, when you exercise consistently, you get less sore because your body becomes more accustomed to that stimulus. But if you ever take a break from training, or try a very different kind of training than normal, you can see this effect go away pretty rapidly, and you can see really powerful soreness.

Often, I find that taking a week off causes no real loss of muscle or strength, but because I’m less accustomed to the stimulus after a week off, I get very powerfully sore, and I can’t quite hit my normal numbers as a result. But then, once that wears off, everything goes back to normal. So, the only real “delay” I see in results in response to taking a week off, is taking another week to get back into the groove, and then it’s all good from there.

Maintenance

Another possibility that’s not often considered is maintenance. Most exercisers aren’t aware, that maintenance is a lot easier than they might expect.

We’ve done a lot of research on the subject of how little exercise you can do while still seeing results. The answer is often a lot less than people might think - often, just 1-2 workouts per week, provided that you’re doing the right things with those workouts. Of course, you will progress faster and more consistently when training more frequently, which is why most people do it.

But there’s another effect most people aren’t aware of - when it comes to maintaining activity, you can maintain muscle, strength, and endurance at a significantly lower amount of training volume, than what it took to build that quality in the first place. In particular, it’s about 1/3-1/4 of your prior training volume.

This means, for example, that if you were used to training 4x/week for 3 sets per exercise, you could do 4 workouts of just 1 set per exercise, or 1 workout of 3 sets per exercise, to maintain. If you were used to running for 4 hours, then 1 hour of running is sufficient.

What if you can’t train in the way that you normally can? For example, a situation where you’re used to heavy barbell lifting in the gym, but won’t have access to a squat rack for a week and can only workout from a hotel. In this situation, bodyweight exercises can be a sufficient training method - they won’t obviously be the exact same, but 1-2 bodyweight workouts, taken to near failure, will still be a sufficient maintenance method when it comes to keeping most of your gains in the short term.

With this in mind, intentionally aiming for “maintenance” style training is a great way to minimize time spent in the gym while ensuring little to no loss of muscle, strength, or endurance over time. This works great in many situations - travel, busy work phases, and when you want to focus on other athletic activities. Maintenance training has another major benefit - so long as you’re training 1-2x/week, you’ll typically keep the repeated bouts effect (from the detraining section above) ongoing, which means that when you do return to more serious training, you won’t experience nearly as much soreness and likely won’t find your training set back at all.

Retraining

Then it comes to retraining: another element the whole ”use it or lose it” argument overlooks is that qualities which we’ve lost through detraining are much easily retrained a second, third, or fourth time than a first.

Many positive adaptations take a long time to make, and when made some of them are semi-permanent, and much more long-lasting than others. As a result, it’s much easier to rebuild qualities which use these adaptations, because some of the work is already done.

This results in a well-known but not-necessarily-super-understood phenomenon commonly called “muscle memory” - people who previously gained a lot of muscle or strength but take a lot of time off, often rebuild it surprisingly rapidly compared to a total beginner.

This is why, for example, I put 70 pounds back on my deadlift in just one month of training after months of detraining caused me to lose 100. This is why I can now run faster, more easily, in less training time, than I did as a thirteen year old kid.

We know that one of the greatest predictors of success in any exercise regimen is the success of past exercise. This is why it’s always infinitely tougher for a sedentary individual who’s never exercised to get in shape, while someone who used to exercise seriously but hasn’t exercised in a while can get back on the boat much more quickly.

Generally, we assume this is because of psychological factors: someone who’s done the work before knows what they’re getting into, and are much better prepared for it mentally. This overlooks, however, the fact that it’s also physically easier for those people to get back in shape, because they still have some of those semi-permanent adaptations working in their favor.

It also partially invalidates a lot of “shocking transformation” stories that we see on the internet. Many fitness pros are well aware of the effect, so there’s an easy way to show off - detrain for a while, take a before picture, spend three months training hard, and take an after picture - sure, they gained an impressive amount of muscle and strength very quickly, but this would not be repeatable by the average exerciser. Unfortunately, many are willing to deceive with these kinds of “transformations”, in order to sell exercise plans.

This is also one reason why steroids can be such a powerful tool for change: since many of the changes made by training are enhanced by the addition of performance enhancers, many of the semi-permanent changes are increased too. While you’ll never be as good off of steroids as you were on them, someone could take steroids early in their training and then quit them, and they’d forever after maintain some of the benefits from steroids even if they never took them again. This could conceivably mean a huge amount of additional adaptations which would never have occurred in their absence.

Not Sitting Still

At the end of the day, the main thing is that in general, a consistent, moderate amount of activity is good for everyone. And, if you want to have exceptional results, a combination of exceptional effort and exceptional genetics is needed.

Use it or lose it may not be entirely true, but at the very least it’s sort of right. But, there are also plenty of opportunities to be strategic about it - don’t worry so much about a bit of time off, strategize for maintenance, and expect that you can retrain quickly when needed.

About Adam Fisher

Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.

During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.

Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.

Follow Adam on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list, if you liked this post and want to say hello!

Detraining, Retraining, And Not Sitting Still

Takeaway Points:

Detraining

Maintenance

Retraining

Not Sitting Still

About Adam Fisher

Enjoy this post? Share the gains!

Further Reading:

Detraining, Retraining, And Not Sitting Still

Takeaway Points:

Detraining

Maintenance

Retraining

Not Sitting Still

About Adam Fisher

Enjoy this post? Share the gains!

Further Reading:

There Is No Goal

The Simplest Way To Get In Amazing Shape