What's up, guys?
Sean Nalewanyj, on www.SeanNal.com.
And in this video today I want to go over the topic of muscle loss during a lay off.
So maybe you have an injury, maybe you're traveling, maybe you have some family issues
to take care of, maybe you just need a short break to focus on work or school, either way
how long does it take to lose muscle mass during a period of inactivity.
This is actually a really important topic, I think, because a lot of people who take
their fitness program seriously tend to get overly stressed out by the idea of missing
workouts.
When in reality it's usually not nearly as big of a problem as you’d think.
I used to think about this the same way, you know, really neurotic about it.
If I missed a workout I felt like I was doomed and all my games were just going to fall off
my body.
But as I gained more experience and did more research, I learned that that's really not
the case.
Now, if you're a competitive athlete with a set deadline for some sort of competition
or event, then obviously that's different.
Missing training sessions genuinely could have a negative impact in that case, but for
the average person who just trains recreationally it actually takes a pretty decent length of
time before any significant regression happens.
And even if it does happen you'll still regain the muscle mass and strength that you lost
pretty quickly once you get back into the gym.
Now, this is not meant to encourage anyone to skip workouts.
If you want to build a great physique then long term consistency is absolutely key.
But sometimes it's just unavoidable and you have no real choice, and so I want to explain
here what you can realistically expect to happen.
So, to give a concrete answer here, assuming you stopped all forms of training and you're
still eating roughly somewhere around your maintenance calories and you're getting in
enough protein, at least around 0.8 grams per pound of body weight daily which really
isn't a huge amount.
Actual losses in lean muscle tissue probably won't kick in until about two full weeks of
inactivity.
Now, if your diet is complete crap and you're eating in a calorie deficit and you're not
getting in enough protein and it's probably going to happen faster than that.
But assuming you still have a half-decent diet in place about two weeks is probably
what you're looking at and that's just in order for the process to start.
So that's an important thing to keep in mind here.
Two weeks is when the process will start but it's still going to be fairly slow and gradual
from week to week afterwards.
So, even after two weeks, three weeks, four weeks or more, if your diet is on point then,
yeah, you definitely will lose some noticeable muscle size and strength in that time.
But the majority of your gains are still going to be well intact, assuming you've been training
for a decent period of time and you've made some solid gains up to that point.
So one really important mindset to apply here is to remember that if all you're doing is
taking maybe one or two weeks away from the gym it's more of just a pause in your training.
You're not actually going to be going backwards.
You're basically just going to be staying in the same spot.
So there's no real reason to get overly worked up or stressed out about it.
Now, what you probably will notice, though, is that you won't look quite as full or defined
in the mirror.
That's definitely something that I've noticed if we're talking like ten to fourteen days
away from the gym without any training at all.
However, that's not the result of actual losses in dry muscle mass, and instead it's just
from decreases in the amount of fluid and glycogen being stored in the muscle and less
inflammation in the tissue since you haven't been weightlifting.
You'll probably just look a bit smoother and a bit flatter in general.
Not to mention that psychological factors can probably play a role here as well because
it's really easy to skew your own perception of your body based on what you believe.
So, if you feel smaller in your head because you haven't been training then chances are
that when you look in the mirror you're actually going to see a smaller physique in your mind
as well.
So keep that in mind, too.
It could just be your mind playing tricks on you to some degree.
But, yeah, your physique might look a bit off but it's not something to be alarmed by
because, again, it's not actual losses in lean muscle tissue.
And it's very quickly reversible as well.
The other thing you might notice if you take, probably like a full two weeks off or slightly
more, is that your strength might go down a bit as well.
Even that is not guaranteed but depending on what your diet was like and other factors,
it might go down slightly.
Maybe like a rep or two on some lifts, maybe five or ten pounds on those really big compound
movements for the first workout back.
But again, this isn't a result of actual losses in muscle tissue and instead it's usually
just from neurological adaptations.
So keep in mind that strength isn’t just a product of muscular strength but it's also
a learned motor skill as well.
So if you've been out of the gym for a couple of weeks or more, your body can become slightly
less efficient at those movements since you haven't been doing them regularly and so your
strength might go down slightly as a result.
So, to sum this all up, two weeks without inactivity and muscle loss will begin to kick
in.
And it will slowly decrease from week to week after that.
You might look a bit flatter in the mirror but this is not actual muscle loss.
And your strength might go down a bit, very slightly, but this is also not from actual
muscle loss.
So as long as your diet is reasonable the outlook is really not bad at all for short
term training lay offs.
And then the other very important thing to consider here as well is that because of what's
called muscle memory, whatever losses in muscle mass you do experience during that time are
always going to come back at a much faster pace than it took you to originally gain them.
So without going into a bunch of detail here, when you train with weights your body adds
extra nuclei to your muscle cells and then around those nuclei are smaller satellite
cells that build up.
And the number of nuclei within a muscle fiber is one of the main factors that's going to
regulate just how big it can get.
And when you go through a period of de-training what happens is: the satellite cells atrophy
but the additional nuclei stay in place.
And so as soon as you begin training again after a period of inactivity you'll be able
to rebuild that lost muscle mass a lot faster since the basic foundation is still in place.
But bottom line, if you have to take a bit of time off from the gym don't stress out.
It takes two full weeks to start losing muscle if your diet was decent.
It's a slow process from there forward and you'll regain what you lost pretty quickly
anyway.
Building a great physique is all about the long term.
It's about the overall picture and small micro breaks throughout the process are not going
to be a big deal.
So, I hope this was helpful.
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Thanks for watching, guys.
And I'll talk to you again soon.