It happens to all of us.
Injury, sickness, or lack of motivation, there will come a time where we stop working out.
This ‘detraining’ phase can be a rough patch considering that you might lose all
of your hard-earned results.
Fortunately, it doesn’t happen immediately and can be avoided with the right approach.
So, how long exactly can you go without exercise?
If first depends on the fitness type.
Cardiovascular fitness tends to drop off first, with parameters, such as stroke volume, work
capacity, and cardio output, all appreciably dipping just after 10-12 days of inactivity.
VO2max, one of the core measurements of cardiovascular fitness, can drop by as much as 20% in 2 weeks.
Beginners are much more likely to lose everything, where one study found that after 8 weeks of
detraining, their VO2max dropped all the way back to baseline.
Athletes aren’t completely off the hook.
Performance can drop by as much as 25% after 3 weeks, an extremely devastating amount for
any top competitor.
As for strength, it generally takes 3 weeks of inactivity before any significant drops
take place.
Athletes generally can get away with 4 weeks unless their sport requires high levels of
speed, power, and coordination, which dissipates as early as 2 weeks.
Muscle mass falls within the same 2 to 3-week window.
Some believe early losses aren’t actually from muscle, but instead water and glycogen.
In fact, glycogen levels do drop by as much as 50% in two weeks.
And since glycogen retains water, water in the muscle will drop as well.
One study that used more extensive measurement tools found that 3 weeks of detraining resulted
in 0.7 kilograms of lost lean mass, all of which was water.
Visually, you might look smaller, but it’s probably just less water and glycogen in your
muscles, which can easily be reversed.
As for the amount of time to lose actual muscle, it’s hard to say.
To play it safe, we can still go by the 2 to 3-week estimate.
Age is also a factor, where older individuals can lose muscle mass quicker but not strength
or endurance.
Immobilizing injuries will also accelerate atrophy.
And worse yet, if you’re completely bedridden from illness, studies show it only takes 1
week before everything goes bad, even insulin sensitivity.
As far as why this all happens, we don’t truly know.
The best guess it that the body only intends to keep as much muscle as necessary since
maintaining muscle is energy-costly.
In short, you either use it or lose it.
So that’s 1 to 2 weeks for cardio, and 2 to 3 weeks for strength and muscle.
For longer durations, you do have a couple of options.
The first is exercising less.
You can retain fitness by doing as little as a third of what you did before.
Instead of an hour workout, do 20 minutes.
Instead of 3 to 5 days, do 1 or 2.
Intensity should stay the same though, so keep lifting the same weight or running the
same speed.
You can also try different workouts, such as swimming instead of running.
For limb injuries, working out only the good side magically can benefit the injured side
thanks to crossover neural adaptations.
If none of these options work for you, then don’t freak out just yet.
Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to regain lost muscle and strength thanks to muscle
memory.
One part of muscle memory is skill retention.
Just as you will always know how to ride a bike, you will still know how to do a certain
workout efficiently.
The other part is increased myonuclei within the muscle from your initial training.
Once you develop additional myonuclei, which is important for growth and strength, they
remain even after long breaks of inactivity.
When you retrain, you skip the need to produce myonuclei, fast-tracking growth and strength.
And there you have it.
Breaks happen.
And quite honestly, extra rest can be a good thing, especially if you’ve been training
for a long time.
Hopefully the recovery will motivate you once more to jump back on the gain train!
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it depends.
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And as always, thank you for watching!