By: Chris Gates

In Q&A No. 6, we’re changing things up a bit. Normally, we tackle multiple questions at a time in each Q&A, but recently I’ve received some questions that require a really deep dive into a particular subject.

So for this week, we’re diving deep into the topic of coming back to the gym after an extended period away from training.

As always, if you have any questions you’d like answered in a future Q&A feel free to contact me and I’ll add it to the mix!

Q: What recommendations do you have for returning to training after a long layoff? I’m not sure where to start, and it’s hard to manage expectations or know where to jump back in with sets/reps/weight/etc.

This is a great question, and a topical one given the current climate of COVID and flu season bearing down on us. It’s very likely at some point in the near future you may need to take some time off from the gym — whether it be due to illness, or taking time away for the holidays, or even something else.

So what’s the best course of action to get back in the swing of things?

Well, whether you’re lifting weights, running, playing a sport, or anything else, the key is to pace yourself and set realistic expectations as you ease back into your preferred form of training. Let’s put emphasis on the word “ease,” because the answer here is rooted in calculated progression back to the level of training you used to be doing.

In most cases, you cannot immediately jump back into the same routine you were doing before taking a few weeks off, or more. Let’s use lifting weights as our example.

1. If you take a few days off, you’re probably fine. Pick up where you left off.
2. If you take 1-2 weeks off, you might be able to jump right back into the same routine. It’s more likely that you’ll need a week where you re-introduce the same exercises with slightly lighter weight and perhaps slightly fewer reps before diving back into your normal level of intensity.
3. If you take 3 or more weeks off, a gradual progression from lighter loads and volumes to higher loads and volumes is going to be best.

Let’s roll with point No. 3, as that’s at the center of this question. For starters, let’s break down why this isn’t the end of the world — not at all.

You probably lost some muscle. You probably lost some strength. But the great news is your body can still do the type of work you were doing before your absence. That’s right, the term “muscle memory” is actually a real physiological thing and the muscle and strength you built in the past is all there waiting to be rebuilt. Let me explain…

As you train hard and your body builds skeletal muscle, those genes are “remembered” whether or not you continue to build muscle or stop training and lose your muscle mass. This is tremendous for individuals that want to build muscle. The cells and nuclei built during a muscle-gain phase remain even if you stop training and lose the size and strength you once possessed.

In fact, in many cases you can regain that size and strength pretty darn quickly when you start training again. It’s just going to take you putting in the proper amount of work again, with a proper progression, to rebuild that muscle.

My first recommendation is based on the assumption that you tracked your progress in the gym prior to taking extended time off. If you have any type of training journal or notes, then you’re in a great place to get started again.

Dive into your training log and see what types of sets, reps, and weight you were working with before. The solution here is probably as simple as cutting out some sets, scaling down the weight, and getting back into the gym to see how everything feels. Your post-workout recovery is going to be telling and dictate a lot. As you navigate through your first couple of weeks back, here are some things to monitor:

• How sore are you in the following 1-2 days after training a specific muscle group?
• Does that soreness last longer than 1-2 days?
• Is your ability to get back into the gym to train again negatively impacted by soreness and/or fatigue?

The answers to these questions will help logically guide you to the best path moving forward. Let’s dive into an example to make sense of this…

Example:

Say you used to do dumbbell chest presses with 70 pounds for 3 sets of 8 reps. If you haven’t been back into the gym for a few weeks or even a few months, I might recommend you start by doing push ups in your first workout just to get those muscles firing again.

If your soreness and fatigue are manageable after that training session, you could reintroduce the dumbbell chest press in your second chest session and do a few sets where you increase the weight each set.

So you could do something like 30-pound dumbbells for a set of 8. If that is easy/goes well, go up to 40 pounds for a set of 8. If you still feel like you can go up, bump it up to 50 pounds for your next set.

Perhaps you carry that routine into the following chest session, where you start with 50 pounds and feel your way through adding weight to a few more sets again. There’s no one way to assign the weight. It’s really just going to be about you feeling your way through these workouts to determine how and when to progress.

In terms of how many weekly sets you should be doing, we know that somewhere between 10-20 hard sets a week per muscle group is what’s most effective for people to build muscle. But that’s under normal circumstances where you’re training regularly.

We’re in a bit of a different situation here, so I’d recommend starting with fewer sets to start.

If we go back to the dumbbell chest press example, you could do 3 sets of push ups in that first session. In the second session, you could do 3 sets of dumbbell press. If you’re feeling good in your third session, perhaps you could add a fourth set to this exercise.

When you feel confident, you can add in more exercises and sets as well. Maybe after a few weeks of re-acclimating yourself to the gym, your soreness and fatigue is way down as compared to when you started. If that’s the case, you’re probably ready to add in more work!

As you can see through this hypothetical example, there’s no one way to do this. Your body is going to give you a lot of the answers you’re looking for. What will be most important is for you to take a conservative approach and pay attention to your body each day.

Coaching Recommendations, Summarized

My main recommendation is to start slow and build over time. While you’re doing that, pay careful attention to how you feel during workouts, after workouts, and in the following days as your body recovers.

If your soreness is very high, or you feel very fatigued, you probably shouldn’t add in extra work just yet. Wait until your body acclimates and recovers. And don’t worry, it will!

Quite simply, it’s not realistic to think you can take extended time off from training and then jump right back into what you were doing several weeks or months ago. It took you a long time to work your way up to what you had done previously, so it should be understood that getting back to that level of fitness and work capacity is going to take a little bit of time, too.

But like I said, the good news is your body is ready to get back to that level of fitness. It already has the mechanisms built to do the level of work you want to do. You just need to slowly and progressively reintroduce that workload over several weeks.

Let’s close this out with a general framework of how you can work yourself back into things in the gym. I’ll stress this is purely conceptual. The model below is not a prescription for you, but it’s something that can give you an idea of how this progression can happen over time.

Week:	Intensity:	Weekly Sets per Muscle Group:
1	Bodyweight	3 sets
2	50% of previous working weight	3 sets
3	Incrementally add load	3-4 sets
4	Incrementally add load	3-5 sets
5	Incrementally add load	4-6 sets
6	At or near previous working weight	5-8 sets
7	At or near previous working weight	6-10 sets

A few notes to help you interpret this model:

• “50% of previous working weight” means to use half of the load you used prior to your absence from the gym. So if you did 70-pound chest presses, start with 35 pounds.
• When I say “incrementally add load” I’m talking about 5-10 pounds, as your body allows. This goes back to what we discussed earlier in the Q&A about adding weight to your sets.
  • As you add load, do it carefully. And monitor how your body feels over the next 24-48 hours after this training session.
  • If soreness and fatigue are manageable and you recover properly you can continue to add load.
  • If your recovery takes longer than 24-48 hours, you should repeat this session again and continue to monitor your soreness and fatigue.
• Weekly sets per muscle group increase over time. As you add sets you can break those weekly sets up into multiple exercises per muscle group.
  • Example: 3 sets of chest press evolves into 3 sets of chest press and two sets of cable chest flyes.

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I hope you found this helpful! If you have any questions about the content of this article, please feel free to contact me and we can discuss more.

Sometimes navigating your way back into the gym on your own can be daunting, and no matter how many guidelines or recommendations you see it’s hard to make sense of everything. That’s where a coach comes in and can really be valuable. If you’re looking for guidance in a situation like this, I’d love to work with you and get you back in the swing of things. Check out my coaching page and contact me if you might be interested!

Thanks for reading!

CGF