Hey guys, recently I had to undergo a small surgery to remove an cyst, was advised to do not engage in strenous activity for 2 weeks. Yesterday was my first day back training and noticed quite a strength loss, particularly on squats. Was doing sets of 172.5kg for 5 at RPE 8 prior to taking this time off, today, 140kg for 5 was a RPE 10 basically. Does anyone have any material about what causes this strength loss and how to go about it, how long on average should it take to return to the regular strength, etc. Just trying to find more information on time off, detraining, performance loss, etc, thanks!
Bruno,
Thanks for the post and I hope your recovery is going well. As far as the decay rate of strength, here’s what the literature has to say:
A mean decrease in strength of 14.5 ± 14.3 % was found when players (n = 155) ceased strength training for a mean duration of 7.2 ± 5.8 weeks.
rBased on the outcomes of the included studies, the detrained athletes were able to maintain the majority of their pre-season strength levels (mean = -1.2 %; ES = -0.08) with no resistance training over detraining periods of 2–3 weeks.
A study by Gay et al found that 3 weeks of no resistance training caused trivial reductions in upper (0.5 % decrease; ES = -0.04) and lower body (1.6 % decrease; ES = -0.09) strength in American football players. It should be noted that the players in the above study continued to practice during these periods of resistance detraining, which may have provided a sufficient stimulus to maintain strength throughout the unloading phase.
Another study by Hortobagyi et al.found that 2 weeks of detraining also led to trivial reductions in upper (1.7 % decrease; ES = -0.12) and lower body (0.9 % decrease; ES = -0.05) strength in power trained athletes (i.e. American football players and Olympic weightlifters).
Overall, the strength decay you experienced may be due to other factors, e.g. stress, acute loss of skill/confidence, or other detraining- though I wouldn’t necessarily expect this to persist very long. You should be able to return to previous strength levels very soon!
-Jordan
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Like Samson’s hair your power was in the cyst
thanks for the input mr. nuanced (: today marks my 5th day training since the break, things are a lot better already. 150x5 on squats felt great, and that almost buried me some days ago. the biggest hit was on my squats it seems like. the press is going well, was hitting 95kgx5 easy prior to the surgery, and came back with a 90kgx5 still. anyway, thanks for the reply, I figure everything should be as it was by the end of this week. thanks Jordan!
Nice man! Let us know how you do!
-Jordan
170x5@9 today, basically I feel I am back where I stopped. was waiting to get to this point to let people know in case someone go through something similar. 10 days more or less to get back at it. keep in mind, the antibiotics I had to take gave me some fucked up GI issues and I vomited like 4 times during this last days, so nutrition wasnt 100%, and I was on finals week, so yeah, not the best time to get surgery but everything ended up fine, finals are over and I am going to murder some progress on the next months. thanks for the inputs Jordan.