How Fast Will You Lose Muscle When You Stop Lifting Weights?

If you’ve been lifting weights consistently for a while, you’re either in love with the gym or the progress it gives you. Whichever way you look at it, you value consistency and can see the results of putting in the time to get those results.

That said, life happens. We get hurt, sick, or have to take unexpected trips that sometimes don’t involve gym availability. Or sometimes, we just need a break from it all. Whatever your reasoning, if you’ve ever experienced this sort of hiatus, you’ve likely also experienced the anxiety that comes along with it.

Are you actually losing your gains with each passing second? Is there anything you can do nutritionally to keep from wasting away during your time off? And how much time does it really take after stepping away from the weights before you start to lose a noticeable amount of mass?

Let’s take a look at what the research has shown (spoiler alert, it’s not as dire as you think) and cover how much time it really takes to lose muscle and strength when you stop lifting and what you have to look forward to when you start back up again.

To understand this process, let’s start with the basics.

How Does Weightlifting Cause Muscle Growth?

In order to explain how the body loses muscle when you stop lifting, let’s talk about how the body gains muscle when you do lift.

To speak in very basic terms, when you lift weights, you’re sending a message to the muscles you’re working that they need to get bigger and stronger to bear the force of those weights. You then remove this message, or stimulus, to allow the muscles to recover. Then, when you go to lift weights again using the same movements with the same muscles, the body adapts to bear the force with more ease.

In fitness terms, we call it “progressive overload” when you increase the weight and intensity of the resistance training which tells the muscles they need to get bigger if you’re going to keep this up. When you wash, rinse, and repeat this process consistently with a well-structured fitness and nutrition program, you end up with bigger and stronger muscles by essentially “teaching” your muscles to grow and develop in the way you want them to.

So, What Happens When You Stop Lifting?

To be clear, the definition of “stopping lifting” is ceasing any sort of resistance training for a few weeks, months, or even years. It’s important to make the distinction that this is an extended break, not something like a deload which some people take for 1-2 weeks as a break from lifting.

The truth, however, is that regular weightlifters should deload after a period of intense weight training in order to prevent injury, especially since tendons and ligaments don’t recover as quickly¹ as muscles do, so they are much more likely to be torn or pulled.

But what about a period of rest that’s much longer than a deload week? Not only you, but also your body has to put in a tremendous amount of metabolic effort to build muscle, so it makes sense that it won’t let them go easily. Basically, if it took you months to build it, it won’t take you a matter of days to lose it.

Even the most dramatic studies have shown that catabolism, or muscle breakdown, doesn’t even start occurring until 2 weeks² of doing zero exercise. So, it seems you’re safe with that week long vacation. That said, other studies that have explored this question have been even more generous, with the consensus being that it actually takes 4-6 weeks of no lifting³ to start seeing significant muscle loss.

Source: BOXROX

Now, obviously everybody is going to be different. If you’ve been training for a quite a long time, say years of consistent weightlifting, your body may be a little less willing to let go of the gains it’s held onto for so long. However, if you’re more of a casual weightlifter who isn’t super consistent, a break may be more detrimental.

What Happens When You Start Back?

There’s a silver lining, though. You got back from your long sickness/vacation/injury and feel like you are starting from square one. Luckily for you, that’s not the case. Science has actually shown that even if you do lose some muscle after taking an extended break, muscle memory allows you to gain it back even faster² than you did initially. How is this possible?

The answer lies in muscle anatomy. When you lift weights, your muscle cells multiply⁴ and then get bigger with proper progressive overload. When you stop lifting, these cells will get smaller, but won’t necessarily break down completely⁵. At least not for a few months. So, when you get back to lifting, it’s not about creatine new muscle cells all over again. What happens instead is that your existing muscle cells grow again in size.

As far as strength is concerned, one meta analysis found that you can safely take almost a month⁶ off of lifting before losing any strength progress, regardless of if you’re seasoned or a beginner to strength training.

What to Do When You Can’t Train

As reassuring as all of this is, if you find yourself in a situation where you can’t lift for weeks at a time, it’s still a good idea to put measures in place to prevent as much muscle loss as possible. You can do this by:

• Not being completely immobile. Unless you’re so injured or unwell you’re bedridden, you should still be doing some sort of physical activity even if it’s just bodyweight. Studies have shown that complete immobility significantly speeds up muscle catabolism⁷.
• Continue to meet your protein needs. This is a given. If you skimp on your protein intake, even if you are lifting, the body tends to burn through the muscle to meet its amino acid needs. Still keeping protein intake high is a great way to preserve lean mass.
• Continue to meet your calorie needs. The same with the protein, you don’t want your muscles to become fuel just because you aren’t feeding it enough. It’s totally understandable to have the urge to reduce your intake by a lot because you’re not lifting, but taking this too far for too long is going to cost you. You can also talk to a dietitian about certain supplements that can help reduce the odds of catabolism.

References

1. Yang G, Rothrauff BB, Tuan RS. Tendon and ligament regeneration and repair: clinical relevance and developmental paradigm. Birth Defects Res C Embryo Today. 2013;99(3):203-222. doi:10.1002/bdrc.21041
2. Jespersen JG, Nedergaard A, Andersen LL, Schjerling P, Andersen JL. Myostatin expression during human muscle hypertrophy and subsequent atrophy: increased myostatin with detraining. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2011;21(2):215-223. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01044.x
3. Coratella G, Schena F. Eccentric resistance training increases and retains maximal strength, muscle endurance, and hypertrophy in trained men. Appl Physiol Nutr Metab. 2016;41(11):1184-1189. doi:10.1139/apnm-2016-0321
4. Gundersen K. Excitation-transcription coupling in skeletal muscle: the molecular pathways of exercise. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2011;86(3):564-600. doi:10.1111/j.1469-185X.2010.00161.x
5. Gundersen K, Bruusgaard JC. Nuclear domains during muscle atrophy: nuclei lost or paradigm lost?. J Physiol. 2008;586(11):2675-2681. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2008.154369
6. McMaster DT, Gill N, Cronin J, McGuigan M. The development, retention and decay rates of strength and power in elite rugby union, rugby league and American football: a systematic review. Sports Med. 2013;43(5):367-384. doi:10.1007/s40279-013-0031-3
7. Glover EI, Phillips SM, Oates BR, et al. Immobilization induces anabolic resistance in human myofibrillar protein synthesis with low and high dose amino acid infusion. J Physiol. 2008;586(24):6049-6061. doi:10.1113/jphysiol.2008.160333

This content is originated from https://www.boxrox.com your Online Magazine for Competitive Fitness.