THE QUICKEST WAY TO GET YOUR GAINS BACK... After a training break.

Whether it's because of 4 weeks in Thailand, 6 weeks in beer gardens or a year in truffle-shuffle-town because life has got in the way, getting back on track doesn't have to be painful. Today we'll learn how to strategically rebuild all the muscle & strength you lost as quickly as possible.

After a training break, most people don’t want to hear the ‘slow and steady’ advice, you want to know how to get back on track in a few weeks. Understandable & there’s nothing wrong with thinking that way, as long as you set a comeback plan in a structured, intelligent manner. Approaching your return to training too hard is almost guaranteed to fail because it only considers the stimulus side of the muscle building equation, without the consideration of recovery.

Remember, in order to build strength/size we need a stimulus (lifting weights) to cause some amount of stress. It is the recovery from that stress that induces a positive adaptation (building more muscle so our body doesn't feel so stressed next time). That means the recovery is as important (if not more) for the regrowth, so you should try to find a balance of stimulus & recovery to maximise muscle adaptation. That balance is a bit tricker to find after a training break because your ability to recovery has taken a hit.

Here are 3 comeback principles you should be focusing on:

1. You can grow like a new lifter

Other than taking steroids, which I don’t recommend, the only other way to experience newbie gains twice, is to stop lifting for a long time & then start again. Keep in mind, you’ll experience newbie gains in the sense that you’ll quickly get back to where you were, not past where you were before.

This is because of the very powerful muscle memory effect. Research repeatedly shows that it’s much easier to rebuild lost muscle than it is to build new muscle from scratch.

2. Expect to have lost some strength if you took more than 2-3 weeks off

In 2013, a meta analysis of 27 studies looked at changes in strength & power in elite rugby players. They found that when training ceased for seven weeks, there was an average decrease in strength of 15%, although there is some variability in this number in each study. The authors made the conclusion that strength could be retained for a max of 3 weeks before dropping.

Another 2007 study put subjects on a 10 week program, performing only leg extensions in the 4-6 rep range, & then had them stop lifting for 3 months. Participants gained significant strength in those 10 weeks, but after three months (about 13 weeks) of detraining, their strength decreased back to where they were at week 5 of the program. In other words, they lost half of the gains they had made. From this we can infer, you won’t have lost anything close to all your strength gains, even after several months off.

Gaining strength is a skill like playing a sport. If you take months off from taking free kicks, chances are your strike is going to look & feel a little off the first time you touch a ball again. The same goes for lifting weights in the gym, so forget your old numbers, they do not matter anymore. Start keeping a log of the weights you lift in those first 2 weeks & you’ll see your numbers increase rapidly. As a general rule, you can expect it to take roughly half the time you took off the gym to get to where you were. So, if you took two months off, it would take you about a month to get your strength back.

3. Choose exercises wisely (muscle soreness is your enemy)

So what should you be focussing on? The main target is finding movements that won’t get you too sore. This is important because soreness is the devil on a comeback program! Soreness goes up after a training break, but it doesn’t do anything extra for hypertrophy & reduces your ability to perform. You’re probably going to get sore just by simply training again, but your goal should be to minimise it as much as you can by prioritising exercises that cause less muscle damage. This means avoiding exercises that load muscles in a highly stretched position (e.g. Romanian deadlifts). That’s not because they’re more dangerous or ineffective, but because other exercises can stimulate the glutes & hamstrings equally well, without the same recovery cost, at a time when your recovery is already low. Step ups & leg curls would be good replacements. Focus on movements you can “feel” working the muscle well, without also having you feel completely wrecked several days after.

This means that machines & cables are your best friends right now because they tend to be lower impact than free weighs. No need to shy away from compound exercises like squats & deadlifts, it’s just important to re-introduce them gradually. Build bridges to where you were with incremental progress each week (edge on the cautious side initially).

In general, a simple approach that emphasises linear progression will work best. When you eventually encounter a plateau, you can to start methodically tweaking variables upwards like volume, intensity, frequency & exercise selection to keep driving progress. If you want help with programming your way back in, drop me a message & I'm always happy to help!

Elliot Hutchinson // 11.05.2025

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