Consistency is always the focus of exercise plans, which can lead people to give up altogether if they miss a few workouts. But a new study has found that even after a ten-week break from strength training, it took people very little time to get back to where they left off. It has provided fascinating new insights into the mechanism of muscle memory.
Researchers from the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland found surprising results in their study, which examined how taking a 10-week break in the middle of a 20-week strength training schedule affected muscle size and strength loss.
In the study, a group of 22 participants trained twice a week, focusing on muscle strength and size, for twenty consecutive weeks. In a second group, 22 participants followed the same routine for the first 10 weeks, before stopping completely halfway through the study and returning to the twice-weekly workouts after 20 weeks for another 10 weeks.
What they found was surprising: although muscle size decreased, strength did not drop as much as expected, and when the exercise routine resumed after the break, it took just a few weeks for them to get back to pre-gym levels. ‘. .’
Very little muscle strength was lost, even after a ten week break
“The first weeks after the break, progress was very rapid and after just five weeks of retraining, the pre-break level was already reached,” says Eeli Halonen from the Faculty of Sports and Health Sciences.
What’s more, those who trained continuously for 20 weeks saw a dip in gains after the first 10 weeks — and those who took a break soon caught up and even surpassed them in some respects by the end of the study.
This is the first time researchers have compared ‘retraining’ routines with a continuous model.
“With the 20-week group training, progress clearly slowed after the first 10 weeks,” Halonen adds. “This meant that ultimately there was no difference in muscle size or strength development between the groups.”
The design of the experiment (A): The ultrasound probe and leg press icons represent the time points for measuring muscle size and strength. CSA assessment of the (B) biceps brachii muscle and (C) vastus lateralis muscle with ultrasound in the axial plane. (Image C was created for illustrative purposes only.)
The participants, whose ages ranged from late 20s to mid-30s, were physically active but had never participated in a long-term resistance training program.
Previous studies have shown that short breaks in an exercise program don’t set people back to square one, but such a long break had not been tested. Interestingly, peak strength was better maintained during the time off training and declined much more slowly than expected.
“This could be explained by the fact that changes in the nervous system may be more permanent than peripheral changes in the muscles,” says Halonen.
Obviously muscle size was reduced after the break and it took about five weeks to get back to the same level as the continuous group, but it’s good news for anyone worried about an injury, holiday, illness or something like a COVID 19 lockdown. means that after some time off you have to start all over again.
“Of course, the break slows progress somewhat,” says Halonen, “but it is reassuring to know that it is possible to reach pre-break levels surprisingly quickly.”
The team will now look at how muscle memory works at a cellular and molecular level, in an effort to gain new insight into how the body retains changes made through training.
“The physiological mechanisms of muscle memory are not yet fully understood,” noted senior researchers Juha Hulmi and Juha Ahtiainen, “and our next step is to study in more depth the cellular and molecular changes in muscle that could potentially explain this phenomenon.”
As the researchers note in the study: “Although continuity of training is an important fundamental principle in physical activity, our results suggest that recreational RT (resistance training) practitioners should not be overly concerned about an occasional 10-week training break, e.g. .once a year, as long as the RT performed is effective and regular.”
The research was published in the journal Scandinavian journal for medicine and science in sports.
Source: University of Jyväskylä
Leave a Reply