How Long Before You Lose Muscle?
What separates the nice body haves from the nice body have-nots is consistency.
Yeah, taking your ass to the motherfucking gym no matter what!
…but there are times that you just can’t find a way to squeeze the gym — and all that goes with it — into your daily routine. You know, like when you’re laid up in bed with a stomach flu that has it coming out of both ends violently. Or it’s family vacation time and you have to take the kiddies on a road trip to Wally World. Under these and similar conditions, your ability to train regularly will be shot to hell for a number of days.
If that’s the case, take a break.
Yes, you heard me!
DON’T TAKE YOUR ASS TO THE MOTHERFUCKING GYM!!!
But wait, what about your precious gains?
How long before you lose muscle?!
Well, it depends…
After working out regularly, nothing’s going to happen to you during the week or two that you’re away from the gym.
…
Well, nothing except your nervous system recovering and the muscles and connective tissue fully repairing themselves. All of this translates to more growth and strength from the body finally having the chance to rest and recuperate from the demands of training.
So take that break…
…and don’t beat yourself up about it, either!1Yes, spend quality time with your children creating those memories that’ll scar them as adults. Yes, do that without going ape shit about the loss of your gains!!
Yes, lie in bed and plot your revenge on the motherfucker who got you sick. Yes, do that instead of working out and wasting energy that should be spent on your body developing an immune response!!!
One to two weeks of inactivity won’t make you any less unimpressive than you already are.
Indeed, the time off may actually be beneficial. However, try not to let 1-2 weeks of slothfulness snowball into a month, then a year, then a decade.
Get back on the horse!!!
If you’ve been consistent with your training, then taking time off for a week or two isn’t going to do much harm.
The harm is when you allow yourself to get out of routine for too long!
For experienced gym-goers, the problem with extended breaks lies in the fact that since muscle is physiologically expensive for the body to build and maintain, the body will get rid of it when it’s not needed — like, ummmmm, when you stop training. And generally, the more muscle mass you have, the more of it the body will lose. This deconditioning, or muscle atrophy and decreased strength, occurs in intermediate or advanced trainees in as little as 2-4 weeks. The longer before this group of people returns to training, the more that deconditioning will take place. And the more deconditioning that occurs, the longer it’ll take to return to the previous level of conditioning.
What happens to more experienced lifters is in stark contrast to those beginning their fitness journey and who lack any real muscle mass. These individuals can go without training for at least three months without any visible signs of loss to their newbie gains and then use almost the same amount of weight they left off using after watching the training montage in Rocky IV and getting inspired to walk into a gym again.2Another variable apart from training history and muscle mass is age. Research suggests that the rate of loss during a break increases as one ages. For example, a study examining age and gender responses to weight training and detraining discovered that the 65 to 75 year old group of participants suffered a loss of strength at almost double the pace of the 20 to 30 year old group during seven months of no lifting.
By the way, because I know you’re curious, the study also found that sex doesn’t affect deconditioning. Look at that, women are equal to men! Considering this, the danger for someone new to training taking considerable time off isn’t necessarily muscle loss. Rather, the danger is getting out of the habit of making fitness and nutrition part of their day-to-day, as a prolonged sabbatical can lead to difficulty finding the motivation to pick things back up again.
The potential danger of extended breaks from the gym varies, as certain groups are more likely to lose muscle than others and to a greater degree within different lengths of time. Regardless of the individual, though, there’s a shared danger of staying out of the gym for too long. That threat is fat gain.
Gaining fat is a real possibility of stepping out of the gym for weeks on end. This fat gain, however, isn’t from muscle turning into fat. While it’s commonly believed that muscle turns into fat when you stop working out, that’s physiologically impossible because muscle and fat are completely different tissues made up of completely different cells.3To be specific, muscle is skeletal tissue and fat is the connective tissue otherwise known as “adipose” by fitness elitists such as myself. So no, muscle and fat can’t be converted from one to the other. That being the case that muscle can’t morph into fat, that’s not how you can gain fat from not working out. Instead, the potential to gain fat during an extended break is by continuing to maintain the caloric intake of your once active self. Eating waaaayyyyy more than they should and not performing the requisite amount of exercise to burn off the excess calories is why a lot of people become, let’s say, “sloppy” after a long pause from training. That change in body composition is brought on by the muscle cells shrinking from disuse and the fat cells expanding from the same or increased levels of food — NOT the muscles themselves being replaced by fat!!! So yeah, the danger of fat gain exists for all when a long break from working out is accompanied by eating as if you’re still working out.4It’s for this reason that when you have to take a hiatus, you should make sure to reduce your daily calorie intake to match your new activity level. Also, keep your protein intake high.
Wherever you are in your training, you’re more than likely doing yourself a huge favor by relaxing on vacation instead of trying to make the hotel gym serviceable.5Trust me, it isn’t! Or resting on your deathbed instead of going to the gym and contaminating it out of some desperate attempt to score macho points.6Trust me, no one is impressed and everyone hates you for exposing them to whatever you have!
Rest!
It’s an important but criminally overlooked part of the process.
…just don’t let that rest turn into something more and risk undoing the hard work of a few months!!!7If that rest has indeed turned into something more, then you’re going to need help getting back into the gym after a layoff!
Glossary: adipose, atrophy, calories, diet, exercise, fat, fitness, gym, gym-goer, journey, motivation, muscle, nutrition, work out
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