All those people who spend most of their time at the gym know how hard they have worked to earn all that muscle, and to be in a position where there is a chance of potentially losing it is something extremely scary! And this is the main reason to why bodybuilders and weightlifters are so hesitant on taking a break from their gym hours; they fear that a break can cause them to lose all that they have gained. However, unfortunately, life doesn’t happen as you want it to be. There are some factors that you have to take into consideration, you will have to go for a break if your family wants you do, and you will have to take a break if you were to get into an accident. And so you will have to take a break in order to recover, or else you could cause yourself even further damage! However, this does not mean that you’ll end up losing all the muscle that you have gained within a day or so. Here is an average on how long will it take for you to lose muscle!
Now if you were to take a break from working out how long will it take for you to lose muscle?
Muscle loss actually depends on a few factors, such as your age, your nutrition, and fitness level, despite what people might say, gender has no sort of impact on muscle loss. People who are athletes and are people with high levels of fitness are likely to lose muscle at a much faster pace when compared to casual athletes instead. According to researchers, recreational athletes tend to experience muscle loss and a decrease in their strength level after about 12 weeks of doing nothing. However, if you are a competitive athlete instead then you are most likely to experience muscle loss at least within 2 to 4 weeks of not training. So basically the most advanced trainer and the more fit you are the faster you are likely to experience muscle loss.
Should you take some time to rest?
People are likely to suffer from strength loss first and are likely to lose their muscle within a few weeks. Now what you must understand is that if a person was to workout for 15 weeks consecutively and if another person was to workout for 6 weeks, then take a 3 weeks break and the workout for 6 weeks again then the progress that these two would experience would be the same! This means that taking a week long break one or twice a year won't cause your body to go out of shape. You won’t lose all that hard-earned muscle that quickly. In fact taking a week or two long breaks will allow your body with enough time to recover itself. You’ll get a chance to recover from all that strenuous training and to lighten up a bit. After all, muscles tend to get bigger and stronger when you rest them and allow them to recover from all that workout they have to go through, they don’t grow stronger because of the training!
Conclusion:
Therefore the next time you fall sick or injure yourself there is no need to head out to the gym. If your family wants a week long vacation, then give them a chance to enjoy a week long vacation. You can easily take a week or two off from the gym and despite all that detraining, you won't lose all that precious, hard-earned muscle at all!
