Shocking Number of Weeks You Can Stop Lifting Without Hurting Long-Term Gains
Once you catch the weightlifting bug, it’s hard to take time off. But life happens. Whether you need to take time off to focus on your growing family, recuperate after an illness, or just want to take a break and enjoy some hard-earned time off, there comes a time for a workout hiatus.
If you’re panicked that all the work you put into your chest workouts, upper body exercises, or glute exercises will go to waste, relax. A rest period won’t throw off your long-term goals nearly as quickly as you think, according to a new study from the University of Jyväskylä’s Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences.
The research, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, set out to see how a 10-week break from resistance training affected maximum strength and muscle size.
Researchers compared two groups of lifters over a 20-week-long period. One consistently completed a strength training program, while other had a 10-week break midway through.
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The study found that at the end of the 20 weeks, both groups had similar levels of maximum strength and muscle size development.
“For the group training continuously for 20 weeks, progress clearly slowed after the first ten weeks,” said Eeli Halonen from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences. “This meant that there was ultimately no difference in muscle size or strength development between the groups.”
It also stated that maximum strength was better preserved during the break than muscle size, but muscle size quickly returned to pre-break levels when resistance training was resumed.
“During the first few weeks after the break, progress was very rapid and after only five weeks of re-training, the pre-break level had already been reached,” Halonen added.
This isn’t the first study that shows you can maintain muscle strength even if you take weeks off from the gym. According to a 2022 review of 20 randomized and non-randomized trials, individuals who regularly trained their strength to a max capacity maintained their gains even after a 16- to 24-week detraining period.
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Based on these studies and other previous research, it seems we have little to worry about when it comes to occasional time off, especially if training is otherwise regular and progressive during the rest of the year.
All that to say, your gains weren’t made in a day and they won’t be lost in one either.