Hey guys I recently moved and had to take an unintentional hiatus from training for about 2 months. I’m a bit torn on whether to continue where I left off or run the beginner template starting from block 2. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Howdy,
Good to hear from you again. Let’s see if I can help shed some light on how to get back into the gym.
The main goal here is matching the training load to you the individual. While this is generally applicable to all exercise programming, the return-to-the-gym phase is somewhat unique because the person often possesses a far greater ability to accumulate training load than to recover from it. In other words, having previous experience that’s remote can widen the gap between what you can do and what you should do.
Some people will call the retained ability to train hard and heavy “muscle memory”, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Muscle memory is more so the rapid restoration of strength and muscle mass. We’re still learning about what drives muscle memory, but currently, it seems to be a combination of retained myonuclei, persistent neural adaptations, and possibly some epigenetic factors (changes to the DNA) from previous training.
When someone who’s trained stops, without injury or immobilization, the losses are small. Competitive lifters with squats around 460lbs took two weeks completely off and their squat and bench didn’t really change. Trained teenagers who stopped after a twelve-week block went from 121 to 118 kg on the squat over three weeks, which is inside the range a true 1RM’s daily variation anyway. We typically see ~ 10% loss within two months for maximal strength, whereas it often takes longer to lose size. Again, this is for a healthy person who stopped working out. Immobilization, injury, and illness are all different.
So there are two points here: 1. You’re probably stronger and can execute a higher training load than you can recover from and, 2. You likely haven’t lost much, but will nonetheless recover any missing strength and muscle mass faster than it took to originally gain it.
To point number one, what we’re looking for is a program with a lower training load than you were using before your break. You probably don’t need to go back to the beginner template because you’ve detrained and become a true beginner, but it’s not a bad option. The beginner template is just a lower-load program with built-in ways to anchor to the right weight, e.g. ascending sets, which may also be beneficial after some time off.
How far “back” you need to go just depends on where you left off, as a competitor using a super high training load program and someone working out 2x/wk for years are different folks. I’d pick a lower training load program, e.g. the beginner, hypertrophy I, or powerbuilding I, and go from there.
-Jordan
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