Taking a Break from Training? New Study Shows It Won't Affect Your Gains in the Long Run
Life. It’s an unpredictable thing that often seems to work against us and our goals. You can have all the best intentions to start a new workout routine for better health and a bigger chest, then along comes a curveball in the form of familial, work or personal stress that results in you ghosting the gym like you do those 50 unread WhatsApp chats.
Still, there’s a lot of talk – and fear mongering – around what happens when you end up taking a break from training. Luckily, most of the research shows that, while gym breaks do obviously dial back your strength and cardio fitness and can leave you heaving at sets you used to do as a warm up, you can regain your performance in pretty fast time.
And now, another study has confirmed that gym breaks are annoying but in no way disastrous for your gains. Conducted at the University of Jyväskylä's Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences in Finland, it found a break as long as 10 weeks didn’t dampen long term lifting and muscle-building goals.
The Study
Previous research has looked at what happens when people stop training, with the main takeaway being that our bodies can maintain muscle and strength over short breaks (under four weeks) but starts to break down during longer breaks. Studies also show that adaptations are easier to get back after a break than they were initially – otherwise known as muscle memory.
However, researchers from Jyväskylä wanted to know whether the ability to rebuild was good and fast enough to warrant us to chill about gym breaks, or whether we should actually worry about time off. So they set up a study in which 55 participants, including both men and women, resistance trained for 20 weeks. The first group performed their 20 week programme continuously, with no break. In the second group, participants did 10 weeks of training, then took a 10 week break before continuing with their final 10 weeks.
They all did two resistance workouts a week involving leg press, knee extension, Smith machine bench press, barbell biceps curls and seated rows.
The Results
The main result was that groups had similar strength gains at the end of each of their programmes. Some of the interesting highlights include:
After the 10-week break, participants lost more muscle than they did strength. Leg press and bicep curl one rep max reduced by 5.4% and 3.6%, respectively, while quad and bicep size reduced by 9.9% and 7.3%.
The re-training group regained their muscle and size after just five weeks of retraining. After 10 weeks of re-training, muscle strength and size had increased significantly more than it had in the first 10 weeks.
Those who trained continuously experienced a plateau after 10 weeks of training. In the first five weeks, they added 17.3kg to their leg press. In the last five weeks, it only increased by 4.6kg.
What This Means For Us
Mainly, it means we don’t need to stress about breaks. The re-training group regained their size and strength in almost half the time it initially took them to get there, while continuous training led to a plateau that meant there was ultimately no difference in muscle size or strength development between the groups.
It does, of course, mean it took 30 weeks for the training break group to achieve the same results, but if you’re in this health and fitness game for the long run then an extra 10 weeks is a drop in the ocean. "Of course, the break slows progress some," says researcher Eeli Halonen, "but it is comforting to know that it is possible to reach the pre-break level surprisingly quickly."
Interestingly, the study also found that we lose size before strength, so you only need to panic for reasons of vanity rather than performance if you see your muscles shrinking during time off. "This could be explained by the fact that changes in the nervous system may be more permanent than peripheral changes in the muscles," notes Halonen.
The Bottom Line
The researchers said that this study should be calming news to recreational gym goers, proving that they shouldn’t be too concerned about an occasional training break. They even wrote that a long break once a year could be fine, as long as resistance training is effective and regular most of the time.
Not to get all cliche about it but, once again, science is on the side of balance and doing things well most of the time rather than stressing about perfection. Take this as approval to skip leg day in favour of family time over the festive period.
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