By K. Aleisha Fetters, Life by DailyBurn
No matter how dedicated you are to fitness, sooner or later, itâs going to happen: Youâre going to skip a workout⌠and another⌠and another. Maybe you can blame a vacation, a mile-high pile of paperwork at the office or just your run-of-the-mill funk. Whatever the reason, before you know it, youâre out of shape.
Neglecting the gym every once in a while is nothing to worry aboutâafter all, sometimes your body needs to rest and recover. But, when you hit pause on your workouts for more than a week, you might actually be throwing your fitness level into rewind.
How Fast Will You Fall Out of Shape?
You worked hard to get fit, whether by logging regular runs, or striving for new personal bests in your bench press. When your workouts fall by the wayside, how fast you fall out of shape depends on more than just how much time you spent away from the gym. Your overall fitness and the type of workout youâre missing will also impact your losses, says James Ting, M.D., a board-certified sports medicine physician with the Hoag Orthopedic Institute in Irvine, CA.
As a general rule, the fitter you are, the longer it will take your muscles turn to flub, he says. Your physique doesnât like change; itâs constantly trying to achieve homeostasis. So the longer you have been exercising (and the fitter you are), the more time it will take for your body to say, âWell, I guess we donât need to build muscle any more.â
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If itâs only been a week since you broke a sweat, donât stress. Whatever your workout history, itâll take more than seven days for your body to soften. But two weeks? You might not get away with that as easily. One Journal of Applied Physiology study suggests that easing up on your workouts for just 14 days can significantly reduce your cardiovascular fitness, lean muscle mass, and insulin sensitivity. Meanwhile, it can take two months or longer to see complete losses of your fitness gains, according to Ting.
Endurance vs. Strength: Which Will You Lose?
Your body will react differently depending on whether youâre skipping endurance exercise versus strength training, says exercise physiologist and trainer Marta Montenegro, M.S., C.S.C.S.
Thatâs because your muscles contain both type I (slow-twitch) and type II (fast-twitch) muscle fibers. Type I fibers contribute to endurance performance. Type II fibers are more powerful, and their âfast-twitchâ capabilities help you power through high-intensity exercise or strength training.
During your day-to-day activities (like walking, talking, sitting at a desk, etc.), your type I fibers are contributing to the bulk of your efforts. But you really have to work to get your type II fibers to switch into gear. So, when you take a break from exercise, your type I fibers are likely still being used, helping to prevent them from breaking down. But some of your type II, fast-twitch fibers may be rarely, if ever used, if you arenât working out, she says.
That may explain why type II fibers tend to atrophy more quickly than type I fibers, she says. In other words, your max bench press will suffer before your 10K time does when youâre slacking. If youâre taking a break from strength work or high-intensity intervals, youâll notice a huge difference when you finally do go back to the gym.
Endurance athletes arenât entirely out of the woods, though. When you perform regular cardio, your type II muscle fibers gradually change from type IIx to type IIa, Montenegro explains. Type IIa fibers are key to endurance performance: They are powerful, but donât tucker out as quickly as IIx ones, meaning they can help power your long runs. When you take a break from your long runs and rides, this essentially reverses, and your percentage of type IIa fibers decreases, while your IIx fibers increases, she says. So prepare to tire out way faster.
Breaks Arenât All Bad
Before we terrify you into heading to the gym right now, know that itâs actually good for you to skip workouts from time to time. In fact, if you train hard , taking a break can actually help improve your strength, muscle development and aerobic fitness, says certified strength and conditioning specialist Brad Schoenfeld, Ph.D., assistant editor-in-chief of the Strength and Conditioning Journal.
Days off can also improve your mental fitness. âYour body and mind both need time to recover for overall health and in order to achieve optimal performance,â says Ting. âFailing to recognize this and training too hard can lead to fatigue and, ironically, underperformance, the so-called overtraining syndrome.â
If youâre sore more than 72 hours after a workout, youâre feeling ill, or your fitness progress is stalling, it may be time to back off. How long should your break last? âThereâs no hard and fast rule for how long a âbreakâ from exercise should be,â Ting says. âIt may be as short as a few days, but itâs important to realize as well that it can also be up to one to two weeks without any significant detriment or loss in previous fitness gains.â
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Just remember that taking a break from exercise doesnât (and shouldnât) equate to gluing your butt to the couch and Netflix-binging. âTaking up some light activity that isnât part of your typical training regimen, such as yoga or even a long walk or leisurely bike ride, can all constitute a âbreak,ââ Ting says.
How to Jump Back Into Your Workouts
Depending on how long you took offâand lazy you wereâyou might not want to jump back into your workouts, but rather ease into them. If youâve taken any more than a couple weeks off, youâll probably notice some differences. After a month or more, youâll definitely want to get started with a less-intense version of your regular workout, Ting says.
âThe most important thing is to back off a little for the first week,â Schoenfeld says. âChoose a weight where you will be able to stop several reps short of failure on your sets. The following week you should be able to train at your previous level, assuming the reason for stopping wasnât an illness or injury.â Meanwhile, if youâre getting back into running, start at a pace at which you can run comfortably and are able to speak in short sentences. After a week, try turning up the speed.
It can be frustrating to exercise at anything less than your max effort, sure, but gradual is the way to go to prevent injury. The last thing you want is to walk into the gym after a month off, try to squat your âusualâ load, and throw out your back. (Hello, another month off.)
Luckily, when it comes to getting back into your pre-break shape, you do have muscle memory working for you, Schoenfeld says. There are two aspects to muscle memory. One involves your ability to carry out movements in a coordinated fashion. Wonder why your first rep on the bench press looked so sloppy? Itâs because your body was learning which muscle fibers it needed to recruit, and which ones it didnât, to properly perform the exercise.
Then second component of muscle memory involves your cells. âMuscles have satellite cellsâbasically muscle stem cellsâthat help to drive protein synthesis. Resistance training increases satellite cells and these changes remain for years,â he explains. âSo even if muscle is lost from taking time away for many years, a person can regain the lost muscle much more quickly after an extended layoff.â Score.
Exactly how long it takes will vary from person to person, but by and large, you can expect to be back in fighting shape in a few weeks.
