You will not lose muscle from day to day. After what time do you lose muscle, strength or power?
The current period is mostly associated with home training, when we try to knit a whip (sorry for the expression) at least thanks to rubber bands or exercises with our own body. Heavy weights, our training routines and a good number of one-arms, it's all up to date. That is, if you do not have your own booster. You may be afraid of losing your muscles, but fortunately science brings us quite nice news. What about our strength, flexibility, performance or muscle mass?
Muscles & strength
Muscles are quite resistant to atrophy and loss of strength. In this research, there were 20 men with an average age of 20 years and, of course, they enjoyed strength training. They completed a 4-week training program in the style: 4 weeks training + 2 weeks break from training + 4 weeks training. It turned out that two weeks of non-training did not cause loss of strength or muscle. In further research, they looked at 33 untrained participants. They compared 8 weeks of training (12-24 sets per quadriceps) with 8 weeks of reduced -volume training volume (only 8 sets per quadriceps). Although the volume of training was reduced by 50%, their strength was maintained. Ok, what about hypertrophy? They maintained most of their muscle mass even at a volume of only 8 series per muscle part (quadriceps) per week. That doesn't sound bad at all! In another study, they covered it for 3 weeks and the conclusions were similar. To quote this: "Evidence suggests that brief (approximately 3 weeks) non-training in people who are accustomed to exercising regularly does not cause significant muscle loss and, in addition, may experience an even greater stimulus in terms of hypertrophy after entering a training regimen."
Here, untrained individuals did 27 series on their feet almost to failure per week (3 exercises for 3 series, 3 times a week), while the training lasted 16 weeks. Later, this period was interrupted by a non-training period lasting 32 weeks (more than half a year), which had two approaches, and thus 2 groups. The first approach meant reducing the volume of work by 1/3 (ie to 9 series per week and practicing only once a week). The second approach meant reducing the volume of training by 1/9 (ie 3 series per week). In young individuals (20-35 years) this second approach caused the size of the muscles to be maintained, but in the older ones (60-75 years) it was a bit worse. More positive news for younger students! Similar results were recorded here, ie the loss of muscle did not take place, but we are already talking about the period of (only) three weeks mentioned several times.
Take a look at a systematic review of 27 studies in trained subjects. We talk about those who have been working for at least 3 years and participated in either some collegial or semi-professional sports activities. Simply trained athletes. The consensus from these data suggests that maximum strength may be maintained for up to three weeks of untraining, but will begin to decline significantly from about the fifth week. Other research confirms the results and speaks of a period of four weeks of inactivity, when the force is maintained and only then can it decrease. If you are a beginner, you also do not have to be extra worried. Research in this group of people is similarly positive, and the literature consensus speaks of a two to three week break, when strength is still maintained. Negatives are evident from about the fourth week. An old study on powerlifters with a training experience of about 8 years showed that their type II muscle fibers decreased by about 6% after two weeks of non-training, but their body weight remained the same.
At the end of this section, however, it should be added that there are individual (epi) genetic differences between muscle hypertrophy and atrophy, so we cannot completely generalize whether you and your buddy will be exactly the same. Probably not, and someone will be worse off. However, be sure to try at least some activity, because we have data that muscle loss is greatly accelerated when people are totally passive (bed rest or limb immobilization).
If you say that all this is bullshit and science deceives us, because you look smaller after only four days without a gym, calm down. During the break, the amount of glycogen in the muscles also decreases, so yes, you may look smaller, but it may not be a loss of muscle mass. And it is clear that the psyche will also play a role, when we will probably all put the "fact" that we are worse off, and then we will see ourselves in the mirror anyway.
Conclusions on strength and muscle mass in points:
We can maintain strength without training for about 3-4 weeks, but gradually it disappears during this period. Of course, only temporarily and we can take it back relatively quickly. It should not be forgotten that there is a difference between an ordinary exerciser and a powerlifter who has been systematically preparing for a competition and his personal record.
The muscles begin to atrophy after about 2-3 weeks, but at least for beginners they can return very quickly. Since we know that muscle memory exists, even in advanced exercisers, our "gainzzz" will return in a relatively short time.
If your efforts are high, you can train (even for months) with a smaller volume of training (by 33-50%) and maintain muscle mass.
During the first weeks, you look smaller due to a reduction in the amount of glycogen in the muscles, it is not a loss of lean muscle mass.
Aerobic performance, endurance or flexibility
When you're locked up at home, VO2max catches the most. The maximum rate of oxygen consumption (an indicator of aerobic performance) in trained individuals can experience losses of 6 to 20% and the time to depletion can be reduced by about 7 to 25% over two to four weeks. Endurance performance can be reduced by 4 to 25% after three to four weeks. When it comes to cardio, it seems to suffer more than our muscle mass or strength. Fans of crossfits and other endurance athletes should definitely not rest on the seat more than they should, but they should maintain more intense activity even during quarantine.
In terms of flexibility (flexibility means how muscles and joints are flexible), research shows that four weeks of untraining reduced the flexibility of the hip, torso, shoulder and spine by 7.4 to 30.1% for physical education students (men and women).
Conclusions on the cardio side and flexibility:
Endurance gradually decreases from 4% to 25% over 3-4 weeks
Maximum rate of oxygen consumption decreases by 6% to 20% in highly-trained athletes after about 4 weeks without training
Beginners can maintain endurance for at least 2 weeks without training
Flexibility decreases after about 4 weeks by 7 to 30%
How to put it all into practice?
Tired of training at home? Neither do I, believe me. The situation is not easy for anyone, but perhaps we are not capitulating, we are in it together. At least try to make a temporary exercise according to your current possibilities. It won't be a real nut, but it's always better than nothing. If you have a temporary fit at home, then use it, because you have more than 90% of people. However, if you exercise with rubber / your own body, they will cough up some specific repetitions. Ideally, you will focus on as many repetitions as you can to get close to failure. The question is, do you have any idea where your limit is, as you have not been used to training with this style yet. Well, be sure when it burns, you're still not at the end. It should be noted that for most (all) a certain daily physical activity is important. Not only for physical health, but also for mental health. Therefore, involve parents, siblings or children and do not just sit on the couch. Of course, everyone in terms of physical fitness.
And what about the diet? We will look at calories in the following article. Pay attention to mobility, flexibility and have enough sleep, which also has fingers in storing fat or losing muscle mass. Wash your hands, nose the drape… and… we are already on another topic :)
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