Taking a break from exercise for 10 days may lead to some temporary changes in your fitness level, but it's important to keep things in perspective. While you might notice a slight decrease in endurance or strength when you return, most individuals can bounce back quickly with consistency.
No. You should try to never go more than 3--4 days tops without working out. You will absolutely lose progress very rapidly. You will also lose the ``routine'' and then you will backslide.
Yes, a gap of 10-15 days without exercise can lead to a decrease in strength and performance, particularly if you were previously active. This phenomenon is often referred to as ``detraining.'' Factors Influencing Strength Loss:
No, missing a week at the gym likely won't hurt your progress significantly. It may even be a good thing! A short break allows your body to recover and come back stronger. You might feel a bit weaker initially, but muscle loss takes longer than a week to set in.
Takeaway. Taking time off from intense training is not a bad thing. The present study shows that muscle mass is maintained and strength can actually increase. Next time you are forced to take a week or two off from training, ensure you train hard prior to the break.
Key Takeaways. Skipping a day of exercise won't cause weight gain, but frequently missing workouts may impact your weight management efforts and make it harder to stay motivated. Experts recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise and two days of resistance exercises per week.
Cardiovascular Changes
In the first ten days to two weeks of inactivity/de-training, there is a measurable loss in cardiovascular fitness, but even this level of decrease is only about 2-3% drop in values such as VO2 Max, MAP (maximum aerobic power), or FTP (functional threshold power).
According to Jesse Shaw, D.O., associate professor of sports medicine at the University of Western States, this is typical for the general population, too: It usually takes between three and four weeks to start noticing a decrease in strength performance with a complete cessation of activity.
Some research suggests that you can start to lose muscle in as quickly as one week of inactivity - as much as 2 pounds if you are fully immobilized (3). And another study suggests your muscle size can decrease by about 11% after ten days without exercise, even when you aren't bed ridden (4).
Taking a break from exercise for 10 days may lead to some temporary changes in your fitness level, but it's important to keep things in perspective. While you might notice a slight decrease in endurance or strength when you return, most individuals can bounce back quickly with consistency.
"A lot of people feel and look less tight and toned when they stop working out," he explains. "It's more of a cosmetic thing." When you don't work out regularly, your body composition starts to change. With little physical activity, muscle cells shrink.
After two weeks of not running, studies show that VO2 max decreases by 6%. After 9 weeks VO2 max drops by 19% (sorry, I couldn't find any data on 3-8 weeks post inactivity). After 11 weeks of no running, Studies demonstrate that VO2 max falls by 25.7% from peak physical fitness.
By putting your body through much less stress, it has the chance to rest and recover properly, which will help enhance muscle growth, as well as strength and power. As previously mentioned, many individuals who take de-load weeks will come back to the gym even bigger and stronger than they were previously.
Conclusion. Taking a few months off from strength training can feel scary, but rest assured that you likely won't lose all of your gains after just a month or two of no training. During your extended break, find ways to stay active where you can and focus on eating a good diet.
You'll Become Deconditioned
This process is known as deconditioning. Simply put, deconditioning is a state of physical decline that occurs due to prolonged inactivity. Just as a good training program builds you up, falling off the workout wagon can have the opposite effect—sometimes almost immediately.
Taking regular rest days, and having a bit of time off from your workout regime can be good for your body - a break from the stress gives your muscles time to recover. However, longer breaks from exercise and the gym, whether that's three months, six months, a year or more, can have a greater impact on your body.
The amount of time it takes for your muscles to atrophy depends on your age, fitness level and cause of atrophy. If your muscle atrophy is due to disuse (physiologic), the process can start within two to three weeks of not using your muscles.
3-6 What these studies find is that muscle protein breakdown will sometimes increase in the first two weeks, but then quickly return to baseline (i.e. to pre-disuse levels). Muscle protein synthesis, on the other hand, decreases in the early stages of disuse (somewhere in the first ~10 days) and then remains depressed.
For the majority of people, it takes roughly 130 quality hours to get fit. A lot of people ask me where I got that number. It's equivalent of training hard, an hour a day, 5 days a week, for 6 months. Your hours can't be half-ass hours, either.
Those noticeable physical changes from exercise (be it muscle growth, fat loss, or a lower resting heart rate) depends on the person and their baseline level of fitness. "My [clients] generally see initial changes within four to six weeks, and actual results within eight to 12 weeks," Wilson says.
“It may be as short as a few days, but it's 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.” Just remember that taking a break from exercise doesn't (and shouldn't) equate to gluing your butt to the couch and Netflix-binging.
So even though you may be losing fat, you're gaining muscle. You might feel slimmer, even as the number on the scale rises. “The scale doesn't tell the entire story,” said exercise physiologist Christopher Mohr, PhD, RD. “Since muscle and fat take up different volume, they look very different on the body.”
Although adequate protein throughout the day is necessary, extra strength training is what leads to muscle growth — not extra protein intake. You can't build muscle without the exercise to go with it. The body can't store protein, so once its needs are met, any extra protein is used for energy or stored as fat.