If You Stop Weight Training After Doing It For A Long Time, How Fast Do The Muscles Atrophy?

Can there be "side effects" like soreness or twitching?

This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Connor Clark, Fitness Trainer & Health Coach, Bodybuilder for 5 years

Here are some general rules to keep in mind if you are looking to take time off or forced to:

• You can take a full week off and not lose any strength or muscle mass.

A common misconception is that any time away from the gym leads to atrophy and strength losses. This is not the case.

In fact, it can actaully be to ones benefit to do so. After a good few weeks or months of training our bodies can get masked in fatigue which could lead to diminshed strength output.

In order to regain your strength (it was actually always there, just hidden under your fatigue) you can do what is called a deload week. This is simply taking a few days off from the big weights to recover and get back on track. When you return you will find you can lift 5–10% more weight than when you were previously fatigued.

You may feel a bit deflated or think you look smaller during the time off but don't worry those small aspects will come back almost instantly.

• Around about 2 weeks time you will begin to lose your strength gains.

This can be attributed to our Neuromuscular & Central Nervous System (CNS).

Our motor nuerons are the nerves that attach to our muscles to contract and relax them. When we lift heavy weights we excite and actually awaken dorment nerves.

Training for strength will, overtime, allow those nerves to send faster and stronger signals to the muscles. This is how we grow to lift heavier weights. When we seize to use those nerves our strength diminishes.


Unfortunately for us, that happens just around 2 weeks time.

• Between a 3–6 week period you will begin to lose muscle mass.

This varies person to person but we do know that it is during this period that muscles atrophy.

Another factor that can contribute to how soon the muscle begins to breakdown has to do how you actually train.

If you train mostly for strength (1–5 reps) then the muscles may attophy sooner versus someone who lifts evenly or more often with higher rep ranges (8–15 reps).

• The longer you have been training, the easier it is to retain your gains.

If you have been training for 5, 9, 15 years consistently and you have to take 3 or 4 months off you might not lose a whole lot of muscle mass or strength compared to someone who only trained for a year and takes that time off.

It is a general rule of thumb that it takes about the same time to recover your lost gains compared to how much time you took off.

For example, if you took a 3 week vacation to Exuma Cays, Bahamas and did no training on your trip it would take around 3 weeks of training to get back to your previous state.

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