Starting today, many gyms are beginning to open their doors again after months of being closed due to the coronavirus. If you’re like me, during that period you were still keeping up with your training with smart at-home workouts, but if you have been limited on equipment and exercises, there are some things for you to be aware of once you start to get back into the swing of things by pumping iron at the gym – and no, I’m not talking about lifters wearing masks, long lines, and keeping social distancing during your workout. Your gym guidelines will vary.

1. Strength Loss

I can see it now:

You go to load up your favorite exercise at the gym and upon liftoff, you think to yourself “wow, this is a lot heavier than I thought!“

And right you are. You complete your set and are struggling to do even 4 reps of what you used to knock out for 3 sets of 8 back before all of this started. You feel frustrated and inadequate.

But don’t! Strength losses are to be expected after a long hiatus, and they’re nothing to worry about, for 3 reasons:

1. If you’ve been training hard at home using the principles I gave, chances are that you’ve maintained your muscle mass pretty well – or even gained some. And if you’re on this site, chances are you care more about your muscle mass and how you look than the numbers you throw on the bar (as you should if that’s your goal!)

2. Strength is heavily neural-based in nature. What that means is that your strength on an exercise depends on how efficient and effective your brain is at telling your body what to do on an exercise. It coordinates your technique, muscle activation, and firing rate, and after time off from an exercise due to lack of ability at home, things get a little rusty and cause you to lose strength – even if you maintained muscle.

3. Muscle memory is a real thing. After training, you see a rise in what are known as satellite cells. Having more of these special kinds of cells active from prior training increases protein synthesis in a muscle above and beyond what would be possible in an untrained state. This means that you will grow FASTER than it took to get there in the first place. And second, those neural factors involved in strength I just talked about do the same thing. It’s like riding a bike – you never forget. Sure, you might be rusty after hopping on again, but you get back in the swing of things in no time.

2. Lots of Soreness

Another thing you need to watch out for is soreness. Whenever you begin a new workout routine that challenges your muscles in new ways, you can expect a little bit of soreness to follow. Getting out of bed can suck, going up the stairs can suck, and even sitting down to rest can suck. We’ve all been there. But don’t let this discourage you.

A lot of this is due to muscle damage from unfamiliar exercises you haven’t done in a while, but in time, this diminishes due to the Repeated Bout Effect, and you’ll stop being as sore – even though your workouts are still super effective.

Unfortunately, research shows that time is the best thing you can do for muscle soreness, but some people find relief from active recovery, hot baths, and gentle massage or foam rolling.

As a matter of fact, if you’re one of the psychos who LIVES to be sore, you shouldn’t look to get super sore on purpose when you get back in the gym, thinking that it means you’re doing good things. Excess muscle damage is a bad thing that can hinder your gains, so make sure to stay tuned until the end of this article for my recommendations on how to start off your gym training again the right way.

3. Rapid Gains

I know that losing strength, muscle mass, and feeling crazy sore kinda sucks. But there is a bright side: you’ll be making quick gains.

As mentioned, muscle memory is a thing due to satellite cells and neural factors that lead to increased coordination, muscle activation, and firing rates. So rejoice in the fact that whatever you lost isn’t lost for long.

But secondly, chances are you’ve been at home doing minimalist workouts, eating better, sleeping better, and growing in your desire to get back to the iron. These things have all been setting you up to experience great gains once you get back to a traditional intensive lifting program that maybe you were slacking on prior to all of this happening.

And lastly, there may be a resensitization effect that takes place after a long break. Most adaptive systems in the body can become resistant to a stimulus, and removing that stimulus can give you an opportunity to resensitize to it and have an even better response when you reintroduce something. In this case, that’d be training and greater results from it.

So don’t feel down or discouraged from the layoff. Embrace it as an opportunity to reach new heights while you’re firing on all cylinders.

Tips on How to Get Started Again

With all of that in mind, here are some tips to get you going the right way once you step foot back in the gym:

Start off lighter than normal on new exercises or ones you haven’t done in a while. I know you want to go back at 110%, but your technique is rusty, your abilities have been dulled, your connective tissue may have weakened, and you don’t want to be violently sore. Rather than go back to normal, ease into things started at 60 or 80% of your normal weights to reingrain the movement patterns and give your body a chance to get back up to speed.

Start off with a lower volume than usual. You don’t go from 0-100. You start low and build up as tolerable. A good rule of thumb is start off with 50-60% of what you were used to before ramping up into normal levels. For example, if you were doing 20 sets a week for chest, you’d only start off with 10.

Focus on good technique and taking your time. Like I said, you might not have done a lot of these exercises in a while, so it’s the perfect opportunity to focus on great technique so that you will get the most out of your training program when back up to normal levels. Don’t rush your sets, and don’t rush your rest times. Focus on sound, high quality training and the results will speak for themselves.

Conclusion

So there you have it. What are you most/most not looking forward to when you get back into the gym?

…will you even be going back to the gym when they open up? Or are you content with home workouts and not willing to take the risk?

Let me know in the comments section below, and don’t forget to subscribe for future great articles.

Share on Facebook

Tweet

Follow us