(THE
LESS PAINFUL WAY OF) GETTING BACK IN THE GYM
You
look forward to every training session , your training has been going really
well, your weights have all increased so you know you are getting stronger, your
clothes feel tighter in the shoulders and across the back so you know you’ve
put on some quality mass……..then the dreaded happens……you have to take a
break from the gym!!
Nothing ruins the momentum of a good training run like an enforced break from the gym. Whether it be changed work schedules or personal reasons that prevent you from fitting in your workouts, an injury or illness that forces you to rest or perhaps it’s that holiday you planned months ago, at one time or another all of us find ourselves away from our normal gym or training routine.
A
WELL DESERVED BREAK
Taking a
break from the gym doesn’t have to mean all the work you put in previously is
lost, and depending on the length of your break you should be able to get your
training back to where it was within a month of returning to the gym.
Making gains in the gym is all about being consistent.
Training regularly with high intensity over an extended period of time
will result in muscle gain so the quicker you can get back into the training
groove the sooner you will start to see the results in your body again.
Some people
believe a break is good for the body, but I find the mental and physical pain of
getting back into training after the break just doesn’t make it worth while.
My fear (or should I say intense hatred) of how it feels to start
training again after a break has been motivation enough to never take a
long break. In fact, I attribute a
lot of my muscle gains to the fact that until last month I had never taken more
than 10 days in a row off training. Every
time you have a break your body doesn’t just ‘stand still’ in terms of
strength and size, it actually de-trains, so when you go back to training you
are starting from a point you were at maybe two months earlier.
You then have to get back to where you were two months ago before you
start to go forward. I liken taking
unnecessary breaks from training to
the old two steps forward, one step back so you’ll never get as far ahead as
the person who simply trains.
However, as I mentioned earlier, the inevitable does happen and sometimes you have no choice but to take an extended break from training. Usually this break serves as an amazing motivator; have you ever WANTED to train more than when you CAN’T?? When you finally get back to the gym you are so enthused to train that you just want to jump right back in where you left off.
GETTING
BACK UNDER THE WEIGHTS: WHICH CATEGORY ARE YOU?
After
talking to and observing a lot of people returning to training and from my own
experience I believe you will find one of the following happens when you hit the
gym again:
1.
You feel so refreshed and strong…..until you get
under that first weight and
2.
You feel very strong, your weights have all gone up
(you even start to think
3.
Your body has become so used to resting that you
find it really hard to even get through your workout and you feel like packing
it in and going home. You decide
you like resting more than training. (Often if you’ve been ill you’ll fit
into this category).
If you find
yourself in the first category generally you tend to go into the gym and expect
to do the weights you were doing before your break but due to the detraining
effect you are working much harder to do those same weights. If you have only had a short break (a couple of weeks) once
you get through a couple of workouts for each body-part you will find yourself
pretty much where you were in terms of strength, but you will go through a lot
of pain in the process.
People who
fall into the second category, depending on how long they have been away from
the gym, run the risk of never getting back into a good training routine.
Instead of easing into training gently they push to new limits and in one
workout all the recovery benefits of their rest are gone and they find
themselves worse off than before. They
fall into a trap of missing more workouts to allow their body to recover but
their training frequency is no longer enough to give them muscle gains.
Those in the
third category have the hardest time of all as they have to regain the mental
motivation to train as well as the physical fitness. If you do not want to train because it all feels like too
much hard work it is very hard to motivate yourself to do much more than make a
token appearance at the gym.
Regardless
of which category you find yourself in when you try to get back into training,
by the following these guidelines you will find the transition back to normal
training a much less painful experience.
BREAKS LESS THAN 4 MONTHS
1.
Start training the same number of days
and use the same split as you were doing before you took the break.
2.
For your first week of training, choose 2 of your regular exercises (3 if
you
3.
Warm up thoroughly on each exercise by doing about
30 reps with a very light
4.
Do one less set than you were doing for each
exercise (ie if you normally do 4
5.
If you had less than one month off, only go as
heavy as your second heaviest
6.
If you had more than one month off training (but
less than four), start with a
7.
For your second week of training, add in the rest
of your regular exercises, but again, do one less set and choose the weight as
described in points 5 & 6.
8.
Assess how you feel with the number of exercises
you are doing. Is it time to add
that extra set you were doing back in? Depending
on how long you had off, you may stay with the one less set for two or three
weeks until your fitness comes back. Try
to put the extra set back in sooner rather than later, even if you don’t put
the weight up, as your goal is to get back to where you were with training
intensity/volume.
9.
Assess how you feel with the weight you are doing.
If you are failing on your last set keep your weight the same when you
add in the extra set. If you are getting all your reps out, when you put the extra
set back in, go back to your usual heaviest weight (or second heaviest weight
depending on how long you had off. It
may take a little time for your full strength to come back). Congratulations, you are back in your normal training
groove.
10.
Remember, you will be sore, even with less weight
and fewer exercises. That is
normal. You shouldn’t be that
sore that you can’t move the next day.
I will
assume that you used to do a split program and will want to go back to that
immediately rather than start on a whole body general program.
1.
Forget what you used to do in the gym before you
had the break (at least for
2. It is often a good idea to
a)
change gyms from where you used to train
b) choose different machines or
exercises
so you
don’t have a direct comparison of what you used to do (it may depress
or frustrate you to see how much strength you have lost)
3.
Decide how you want to split your body up.
Four days per week should be
4.
Choose 2 basic exercises per body-part.
Do 3 sets per exercise.
5.
Try to think that this is your first time in a gym and choose
light weights. As I
6.
After 2-4 weeks start to determine what sort of weight you should be
handling.
During
this process is a good time to go up to 4 sets. Pick a time when you found the weight you used on your 3rd
set was too light to do an extra set with a heavier weight.
7.
Once you have determined your ‘working’ weights
it is time to add in some more
exercises for each body-part. Add
them in 1 or 2 per workout for each body-part.
Use your training weights on other exercises as a guide to the
8.
By the time you have the number of exercises you
want in your program and
NOTE:
I have read
that if you are returning after an injury, it is a good idea to take as long as
what you had off due to the injury to get back to your normal level of training.
I have never had to come back from an injury, but this sounded like good
advice to me.
