Exercise planning always emphasizes consistency, so if you miss a few workouts, you might give up completely. But new research has found that even after taking a 10-week break from strength training, it takes almost no time to get back to where you left off. Interesting new insights into the mechanisms of muscle memory have been uncovered.
Researchers from the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland looked at how taking a 10-week break in the middle of a 20-week strength training schedule affected muscle size and strength loss. The study found surprising results.
In this study, one group of 22 participants trained twice a week for 20 consecutive weeks, focusing on strength and muscle size. In the second group, 22 participants did the same routine for an initial 10 weeks, then stopped completely halfway through the study, returned to twice-weekly training at the 20-week mark, and continued for another 10 weeks. .
What they discovered was surprising. Although muscle size decreased, strength did not decrease as much as expected, and when he resumed his training routine after the break, “it took just a few weeks to get back to where he was before the gym break.” ”
“In the first few weeks after the break, progress was very rapid, and after just five weeks of retraining he was already at his pre-break level,” said Eri Halonen from the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences.
Additionally, those who trained consistently for 20 weeks saw a slowdown in growth after the first 10 weeks, while those who took a break quickly caught up and improved on several metrics by the end of the study. Sometimes it even surpassed it.
This is the first time researchers have compared a “retraining” routine to a continuous model.
“After 20 weeks of continuous group training, progress clearly slowed down after the first 10 weeks,” Halonen added. “This ultimately meant there were no differences in muscle size or strength development between the groups.”
The participants ranged in age from their late 20s to mid-30s and were physically active, but had never participated in any long-term strength training program.
Previous research has shown that short breaks during a workout program don’t put people back to square one, but such widespread breaks had not been tested. Interestingly, maximal muscle strength was better maintained during time away from training and declined at a much slower rate than expected.
“This may be explained by the fact that changes in the nervous system may be more permanent than changes in the periphery of the muscles,” Halonen said.
Unsurprisingly, muscle size decreased after the break, and it took about five weeks to return to the same level as the continuation group, but due to injury, vacation, illness, or other factors such as the COVID-19 lockdown, muscle size decreased. That’s good news for those who are worried about what might happen. It means starting from scratch after the holidays.
“Of course, the break slows down your progress somewhat, but it was reassuring to know that you could reach your pre-break level surprisingly quickly,” points out Halonen.
The researchers will now examine how muscle memory works at the cellular and molecular level to gain new understanding of how the body retains changes caused by training.
“The physiological mechanisms of muscle memory are still not completely understood,” said senior researchers Juha Hulmi and Juha Ahtiainen. “Our next step is to study more deeply the cellular and molecular changes in muscle that may explain this phenomenon.”
As the researchers state in their study, “While training continuity is an important fundamental principle in physical activity, our results suggest that recreational RT (resistance training) practitioners, e.g. This suggests that you shouldn’t worry too much about taking a 10-week training break once a year, as long as the RTs performed are effective and regular. ”
The study was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports.
Source: University of Jyväskylä
