How bad would it be to take 2-3wks off?

G

Greenlantern11B

New Member
I go on leave at the end of december for 2wks.
I plan to lift 3x a week til then. I'm hoping i get a chance to lift before I get on the bird to go back to the states. One week on R&R I prbly wont have gym access. the 2nd week i can drive with my gf to work while she does pt and go to the gym on base.

How bad will the strength/size loss be if my SD goes for 2-3wks?:confused:
 
As long as you don't do anything massively retarded, like fast the entire time, the odds of you losing any significant amount of muscle mass in a period as little as 2-3 weeks is highly unlikely. I don't know where it is right off-hand, but research has been posted here in the past that shows that you do not lose significant amounts of muscle for quite a long period, something on the order of months rather than weeks - assuming a maintenance level of calories is consumed the whole time, of course.
Of course you will lose some strength - that is normal. A few weeks off and things are a lot harder in the gym when you first come back - this is loss of neural coordination which can be regained very quickly, within a couple weeks. It is not actual loss of muscle fiber cross sectional area.
The other thing - your muscles may appear to be smaller after a week or two out of the gym. This is just sarcoplasmic - basically loss of fluids in the muscles. You will notice that after a few sessions back in the gym, your muscles will have swollen back up to their normal size at the very least. Yes, it is hard sometimes for guys to deal with this as they think they are shrinking, but the reality is that you are not going to lose any appreciable amount of muscle in a few weeks unless you do something dumb with your diet.
 
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