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We all know that hunger is a bi-product of dieting for fat loss. In a prolonged energy deficit with the aim of losing fat you should expect that at some stage a level of hunger will develop and is something that you will have to consistently deal with on the path to a leaner physique. Let’s be honest, dieting would be a breeze for everyone if hunger wasn’t an issue. In terms of addressing hunger, eating to satiety is the obvious answer which of course is not always conducive to fat loss. You could wrap an internal band around your gut to help, but I don’t recommend it (unless medically it’s been advised)

Feeling hungry and craving food is a large part of why so many fat loss diets fail. Our bodies don’t like being in a net energy deficit and therefore it will do a number of things physiologically to get you out of that deficit. Combine this with psychological factors that arise from that same deficit and you find yourself in a situation where every bone in your body is telling you to eat until you are full and sometimes even further!

So how can we mitigate the effects of hunger? Well aside from cognitive restraint and some determination to reach your goal, we can look into way to increase satiation from the resources we have available.

Defined,

“Satiety is the feeling of fullness after a meal, while satiation is the end of the desire to eat”

Satiety is somewhat of a ‘diet hack’. Essentially there are groups of foods that if you eat more often than not will help make you less hungry in a fat loss diet? We see quite regularly the advocating for eating any foods you want that fit your macros or more specifically any of the yummy tasty foods you want to fit your macros. Whilst the underlying concept is not wrong as you’re still aiming for a calorie deficit, executing the required behaviour proves hard in most cases. Why? If the goal is to fit as much so called ‘junk’ food into our prescribed macros, the thing that will catch up to the majority of us is hunger. It’s all well and good to enjoy eating palatable foods when dieting, but be prepared to be hungry. The reason being is that these foods are what you’d categorise as calorie dense. This means for the volume of food you ingest, the calorie content is relatively high and whilst you may enjoy your meal you’ll likely be left hungry. Further, highly palatable foods are designed to make you want to go back for more as they generally have high sugar and fat contents. If you instead temporarily sacrifice the need to eat these tasty palatable foods for more filling foods, your dieting experience might require much less cognitive restraint to see you through to the end.

Halt et al. produced a satiety index of common foods.

38 different foods were tested with 240 calories of each food being provided. They found that boiled potatoes had an satiety index of 323% compared to white bread being the reference food having an SI of 100%. “Serving size of the test food was the strongest predictor of SI.”

There is a vast array of food outside of the 38 foods listed which will also provide high ratings on the satiety index, some are lean proteins such as steak and chicken, numerous vegetables and fruits.

Foods that are highly satiating are what we categorise as having a low calorie density. Essentially you can eat large volumes of that food for a smaller number of calories. These foods generally include 1 or more of the following.

– High protein

– High fibre

– High water content

– Generally less fat

Eating these types of foods will result in large bulky meals containing low calories. The ability to eat these volumes of food will cause gastric distention which will enable the stomach to send signals to the brain to recognise satiety. Highly palatable small meals on the other hand won’t have the same desired effect. With satiation being so low with the aforementioned meal, the desire to eat again sooner will ultimately make your dieting experience that much harder to deal with.

Practical take aways and lessons learnt

On the surface, the concept of simply adhering to a calorie target with whatever foods you like seems relatively straight forward. Anyone who has dieted for to relatively lean or long periods of time will tell you it doesn’t generally work that way. Whilst it may be doable, it would come with a cost and you have to ask yourself, is it really worth spending all that time being hungry, craving more food and fighting the good fight to remain in cognitive control of your food consumption? Or is a temporary sacrifice of stepping away from the most palatable foods in a bid to increase your satiety during a diet more worth your while. If you are the outlier that can resist temptation to eat during extreme hunger for weeks on end as long as you get your food fix then go for it. But for the majority of the population this won’t cut it I know for a fact that I would rather feel full during the length of a diet than have a burger each day. Opting for foods and structuring meals on the high end of the satiety index will help you remain fuller for longer and in turn help you to navigate the harshness of dieting.

A term that has gathered some momentum in recent times is the concept of starvation mode. Like many of the other new age terms floating around the fitness industry, it lacks substance and generally has a very simple explanation.

So what is starvation mode?

Starvation mode basically claims that at some point when your body is subject to a lengthy dieting period or low calorie intake your body will halt fat loss in order to survive. Basically, no matter what this person does they can’t lose fat.

Whilst the concept does have some truth to it, a better understanding of the actual mechanisms at hand would allow people to put actions in place to ensure future fat loss success.

The part of starvation mode that holds true is that your body will respond to periods of time in an energy deficit and after long enough there will be a point where that calorie deficit will no longer yield results. This is actually a well-known mechanism within the body called adaptive thermogenesis. This is a natural process your body will implement in order to restore the balance between energy coming into the body vs energy going out. More on this in a second. Before that you need to make sure you are super clear on how fat loss is achieved.

The underlying principle that will dictate successful fat loss is calorie deficit. If you don’t know what that is, basically the amount of energy we expel day to day, week to week must be more than what we consume day to day and week to week. In a calorie deficit your body will mobilise stored fat in order to produce energy needed to survive and function. Outside external intervention (surgery) there is no other way to lose fat and if you are in a calorie deficit for a long enough period of time there is no way you won’t lose fat.

What does this tell us?

Basically, you can look to address any other factor you like but at the end of the day if it doesn’t help you achieve a deficit you won’t get your desired result. The reason I say this is because people often put a lot of effort into everything but achieving that deficit. It’s like having a math exam coming up and studying for science and english. You’ll end up very knowledgeable in science and english but that’s not going to help in passing your math exam. No matter how many fitness supplements you take to ‘balance your hormones’ or superfoods you eat to ‘reduce inflammation’ if you’re not in an energy deficit fat loss won’t occur.This is not too say that addressing other factors will not be effective or necessary and in some cases they are. But if the main goal is to lose fat then they must be implemented in order to ASSIST achieving the required deficit, not REPLACE it.

Ok, so now it should be clear that if you are in a deficit then you will lose fat. Provided you are engaging in resistance training and eating a high protein diet, fat is your bodies preferred fuel source in negative energy conditions. We also mentioned that the mechanism behind fat loss stalling and what makes it hard for people to continue is adaptive thermogenesis, NOT starvation mode. The human body doesn’t like being in an energy deficit. It would much rather have balance, that is the right amount of energy coming in for what it expends. For that reason when we reduce our food (energy intake) the body will find ways to reduce energy output and even try and increase energy input, this is how fat loss stalls. The easiest way to look at this is to see how the body expels energy and then how it is effected by dieting.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

All systems and metabolic processes in the body require energy. BMR essentially refers to sum of these energy outputs when our body is at complete rest.

In order to conserve energy, the body will begin to lower the output of some of these systems and become more efficient. Firstly, the bigger the individual the more energy the body requires to “keep the lights on”. If you lose weight and let’s say drop from 90kg down to 80kg, you are carrying around less weight and therefor you cost less to run hence a decrease in BMR.

A classic example of body reducing energy output is the reproductive system. When females have been dieting for an extended length of time they will lose their menstrual cycle as survival is the body’s current priority, not reproduction.

Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

NEAT is the amount of energy you burn from your day to day unplanned activity. To paint the picture, a construction worker whose job requires manual labour is going to have much higher NEAT than an admin worker who sits at a desk all day. When an individual diets, reductions in their NEAT become a huge reason why progress stalls. Basically, your body will respond to the deficit by making you move less. You will sit at every opportunity, take the car instead of walking and even fidget less. Some people even speak slower. All of this reduces energy output and is the bodies way to contribute to offsetting the deficit that you have created through eating less food.

Exercise Activity (EA)

The is pretty self-explanatory. This is the energy burnt from planned exercise. A key thing to consider here is that whilst you don’t want this to drop, it also doesn’t burn as many calories as people think. This means that if you purely try to exercise your way to fat loss then you’re taking a very inefficient approach.

Another reason why using exercise as your main driver of creating an energy deficit is not a great idea is because you can’t really accurately track how many calories you are burning (that’s right, your treadmill and/or watch is not that accurate, it is all pretty general). Tracking food whilst it may not be perfect, is a much more reliable and effective approach.

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)

The thermic effect of food basically states that the process of digesting food requires energy and some foods require more energy to digest than others. Eating less as required in a diet, will mean the amount of energy expended digesting food will be less. Consuming high protein and fibrous foods will help offset this reduction as much as possible.

With all these physiological factors in effect, it would be remiss of us not to mention we also have a psychological drive to eat more. That is being hungry all the time and a higher perceived food focus. But we won’t go too far into that rabbit hole.

As you can see from that overview, fat loss is a constant fight between you and your body. You create a deficit and lose fat but at the same time your body is making adaptions that eventually mean you will no longer be in a deficit due to adaptive thermogenesis. What this tells us is that it’s not impossible to keep losing fat BUT it can become more difficult.

In terms of addressing adaptive thermogenesis, you first need to ensure you are actually creating a calorie deficit with your food. Do you actually know how many calories you should be eating and if so are you actually sticking to those calories consistently? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to both of those questions then that is where you need to start first.

Say you were on the money with your calories and after 3 weeks of losing fat, you have plateaued! What can you do from there? You need to again tip that energy in VS energy out equation back in favour of energy out. From an energy in perspective it’s relatively straight forward, decrease your calories. In terms of energy out, we need to look at the systems above that expel energy. In summary;

BMR: There are probably no mechanisms or strategies you can use to increase BMR or maintain it whilst dieting.

TEF: With food intake decreasing, TEF will also decrease but you can do your best to keep it as high as possible by eating plenty of protein and fibre.

EA: As we mentioned, you shouldn’t be trying to ‘exercise’ your way to a deficit. It’s very inefficient. In terms of training, we recommend you aim to maintain similar levels as to what you were performing previous to your cut.

NEAT: Natural decreases in NEAT as we diet can quickly bring progress to a halt if not monitored. This is often a big reason to why you hear people say “I am so strict with my calories but I am not losing weight”, their NEAT has dropped drastically. The individual could have been doing 11k steps a day prior to a diet, now 8 weeks in their steps are averaging 5k per day. That’s a massive difference in terms of weekly energy output. Monitoring the individuals step count can be a very effective measure to control NEAT.

So we have determined that ‘starvation mode’ is essentially a misinterpreted version of adaptive thermogenesis. We have also just shown you that adaptive thermogenesis will create stalls in progress that can be dealt with by decreasing calorie intake or increasing energy expenditure. Now as you keep decreasing calories and increasing expenditure to address these fat loss stalls there is going to eventually become a time where it is no longer viable or sustainable.

But what if you still have fat you want to lose?

This is likely the reason people come to the conclusion that they have hit ‘starvation mode’. A prime example is someone that has yo yo dieted for years and are now in a position where they have fat they want to lose but are maintaining on very low calories. They will make initial changes that will result in a small loss but very quickly they will get too a place where their calories are very low, activity is very high and they just can’t push it anymore. But again, the reason that fat loss is not occurring isn’t because it can’t, it 100% can. It’s because the calorie deficit that is required is very hard to achieve and is likely unsafe or simply not viable. If this is the case you will need to do a reverse/recovery diet to set yourself up for future fat loss.

Summary

The term starvation mode is simply a misinterpretation of adaptive thermogenesis. The critical difference between these terms is that when fat loss stalls, starvation mode states that there is nothing you can do to keep pushing fat loss along. As we explained in this article, this is false. You can continue fat loss, but what that would require is often not viable or acceptable. Adaptive thermogenesis is a survival mechanism of the body that you would be happy to have if you were stuck on an island as it decreases your energy output and can prolong your life. Dieting, we don’t really want it but it is an unavoidable situation. Whilst it does make fat loss increasingly harder, it does not make it impossible.

With gyms and studios soon to reopen you can expect to see a rush of eager gym goers ready to drop the TheraBand’s and get straight back into the iron. Motivation will be through the roof and everyone will be ready to crush it.

Our question is…What’s the last thing you want to happen?

Injury

Can you imagine the frustration of finally being allowed back into the gym after months, only to be met with an injury 2 weeks later.  

Unfortunately this will be the case for many.

You see, there’s a process of reacclimatising to your previous resistance training after some lay off. You can’t just waltz back in and hit your prior 1RM.

Now the negative is out of the way lets touch on the positive! First of all, whilst you may feel like you’ve lost everything, if you do the right thing it will come

back and in a hurry. Second, after some time off your body will be primed to

make some good gains so it’s something we definitely want to take advantage

DETERMINE YOUR STARTING POINT

How you re-enter the gym will essentially be based off what you’ve been doing whilst gyms haven’t been available. You likely fit into one of the following categories:

Category 1 – Full equipment access and no change to training

For some, your training hasn’t changed. If you are lucky enough, you have access to basic gym equipment with sufficient loads to satisfy your needs. This can potentially see you resume training as normal in the gym.

Category 2 – Resistance/hypertrophy focused training with limited equipment.

You fit into this category if you had small pieces of equipment (therabands, light dumbbells etc) OR even no equipment but still managed to done some resistance/hypertrophy focussed training during this time. What do we mean by this? Although the load wasn’t available, you still performed many of the basic movements patterns that are common in the gym to a high relative intensity (close to failure). We know from research that low loads taken to high relative intensities can still produce hypertrophy. Meaning those with limited equipment have been able to make progress or at least maintain if they were able to follow this principle.

Category 3 – Training of another modality or goal.

In this category you’ve been training but it’s been with different modalities to your regular gym training.  It’s easy to see that a large number of people are performing workouts and exercises that don’t have much carry over into a typical resistance training session. A classic example is that people have begun to run more. HIIT training has also seen an increase. Why? They don’t require any equipment.

Category 4 – No training

For one reason or another, some people have trained very little or not at all. We are not here to shame anyone or say you’ve messed up by not training as we

understand this had the potential to be a difficult time for some. What you do

need to do though is consider this when going back to the gym and making sure you alter training accordingly. 

It’s important that your carefully consider which category you fit into when

returning to the gym as each will require a different approach.

KEY CONCEPTS OF RETURNING TO TRAINING

When returning to the gym there are two key concepts we must consider when looking at programming. These are the acute: chronic workload ratio and De Training.

The concept of acute: chronic workload ratio essentially addresses our likely hood of injury and what we can do to make sure that remains low so we can return to the gym safely.

De training looks at the adaptions the body has made (or lost) due to time away from resistance training BUT also why with a well-structured program you can quickly regain muscularity and even set yourself up for some good progression.

Let’s look at these in more detail.

Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio

The concept of an acute: chronic workload ratio simply states that the likelihood of us getting injured in training is higher in a single session if that session is significantly higher in workload compared to previous training sessions based over the rolling average of a 4 week period. Basically, if you suddenly do a session significantly harder than what your body is accustom to then you open yourself up to injury.

The best example of this is returning to training from a holiday. Think about it, have you or do you know of someone that’s gone on a holiday where they haven’t trained? You/they come back and get straight back into training only to have a new niggling or more severe injury appear. That is the acute: chronic workload ratio in action and obviously must be considered given the current circumstances.

De Training

Ever heard the phrase, use it or lose it? De training simply refers to the loss of previously made adaptions in training. At worst case, you haven’t trained at all and the de training effect will be

significant. Best case you still managed to train hard but with limited load available and therefore there will be some degree of detraining but certainly not as much as not doing anything. Finally, if you had a full gym set up then detraining probably won’t be of concern to you.  

The areas we will be most concerned with in regards to de training are muscle loss, connective tissue and neural pathways. We know that after 2-3 weeks of the removal of the stimulus (training), the detraining effects start to occur.

Muscle loss is exactly as it sounds. Muscle is a metabolically costly tissue. It requires energy and if the body feels like its wasting energy on excess muscle that’s not being used then it will get rid of it.

Connective tissue is our tendons and ligaments. Once again, through consistent resistance training overtime these tissues have made adaptions in order to be able to handle high loads and volumes in training. Now that’s been taken away for significant amounts of time, these tissues now have a decreased capacity to handle such load and volume.

Our neural pathways is essentially referring to our technique. Let’s take a deadlift for example. The deadlift is a complex exercise. During our training career we practice over and over to eventually develop a coordinated sequence of movements between individual parts of our body in order to perform it well. At a neural level, this meant our motor neurons (nerves which innovate muscle and cause contraction) fired in a specific sequence and at a high rate to allow us to perform deadlifts with a good technique at high loads. Again, when the ability to deadlift is taken away, these neutral pathways will decay over time meaning our technique and ability to produce force in the deadlift will be affected.

HOW TO RETURN TO TRAINING

When thinking about how to structure your training when returning to the gym, we are mainly concerned with how you manage volume, frequency and intensity of training. Get this right and you’ll set yourself up for an effective come back. For your return to the gym we can basically place the above 4 categories into two groups.

Category 1

You’re good to go! Nothing changes as you’ve followed a regular gym program. There shouldn’t have been any muscle loss occur, you could perform all your usual lifts and you had access to plenty of load which means there likely won’t experience any effects on neural pathways and connective tissue.

The only recommendation would be to incorporate some different movements to provide a novel stimulus, if your training goal allows for it. Whilst you had enough load, you may have been limited to only barbell and dumbbell movements so incorporating some gym machines into your program may stimulate some new growth.

Categories 2, 3 & 4

Categories 2,3 and 4 all will require some modifications in volume, frequency and intensity of training to varying degrees to account for de training and the

acute: chronic workload ratio.  If you can remember from above as you go from category 2-4 you get further away from what you left off with in the gym.

For your first block of training (4-6 weeks) we recommend you reduce volume, frequency and intensity. How much will be based off which category you fall into. If you fall into category 2 then you will likely be able to start with slightly higher volume and intensity than categories 3 and 4. Due to still having trained in somewhat of a submaximal capacity. Categories 3 and 4 are not at all specific to gym resistance training hence you will need to be more conservative. As some general recommendations:

Block Length:

4-6 Weeks

Volume:

Reduce volume to 4-8 working sets per muscle group per week or 50-60% of your normal volume.

Intensity:

 A relative intensity between 2-5 RIR will be appropriate for this block of training. Going to failure likely won’t be necessary or needed to stimulate growth.

Frequency:

Training each muscle group 2 times per week is probably a good sweet spot for frequency. Some smaller muscle groups like biceps, triceps shoulders may be able to go to 3 depending on your recoverability between sessions.

LOOK FORWARD TO SOME GREAT GAINS!

For some those recommendations look pretty insignificant. To give an example, it may look like 4 training sessions per week in an upper, lower split and given the volume and intensity recommendations, you may only be in the gym for 30-45 minutes each session.  If before restrictions you previous went to the gym 6 days per week for 60-90 minutes at a time then you may be lead to believe that there is not much progress that can be made when starting so conservatively. But being injured doesn’t help your progress either.

The good news is that whilst your body isn’t ready to train like is used to, it is

primed to respond to training and allow you to bring back quick gains.  This means that you really don’t need to do a whole lot to progress. There are 2 main components to this.

Muscle Memory

Muscle memory essentially means that we have all the components for muscle mass already in our system but they are simply lying dormant. When we train and build muscle tissue we add myonuclei to muscle cells. Myonuclei occupy a certain domain or space, once each myonuclei hits its domain the only way we can continue to grow is adding more myonuclei to the muscle. This is what gives the muscle cells and therefore muscles the ability to grow. When we stop  training, the muscle itself shrinks but the myonuclei remain in the muscle. Once we resume training we are more than likely to still possess the previous number of myonuclei. Now we have an increased number of myonuclei occupying a small space, they have the ability to expand their domain and grow without the need to add new myonuclei. 

This means that with some well-structured training (avoiding injury) we can rapidly return to our previous muscularity.

Re Sensitisaton

If a stimulus is consistently applied over a long period of time our body will continue to make adaptions causing this stimulus to no longer become novel. The effects it once had become less and less which means you have a large output for not much progress. But if that stimulus is removed and then re-introduced later, it can then be effective once again.

To give an example of how this is generally used when we can train as normal. If our goal is hypertrophy then we know high volume with sufficient intensity is key. We may go through 4 training blocks of high volume training but as we go from block 1-4 you may see some diminishing returns on your gains i.e you will be putting in the same/more effort but your rate of progression will slow. To counter this we implement a lower volume block of training with higher absolute intensities, essentially mimicking a strength block. We do enough volume to at the very least maintain our gained muscle but this then allows us to make more gains once we resume higher volume training.

This re-sensitisation will be in full effect when coming out of isolation. Our bodies are going to be highly responsive to the kind of training we can achieve in the gym and for that reason we should see some good progress early. That also means we don’t need to do much to progress and this should be taken advantage off. Sure, you could go balls to the wall from the get go and yes you potentially will make some quicker gains but this is great time to take advantage of your ability to make gains from less training. Doing the least amount of training you need to progress now will mean that you can keep progressing for longer with smaller volumes. Trust me, this is every advanced trainers dream so make the most of it. It’s like deciding to take a scenic walk and running as fast as you can from start to finish. Sure, you’ll get to the end but you’ve missed out on all nice scenery that people want to see. Take your time, you’ll get the same result but in a more ideal manner.

SUMMARY

If you’re reading this article this then it’s likely you’ll be one of the people breaking down the doors once gyms reopen. Whilst the enthusiasm is great there is definitely some things to consider when you get back into training. Don’t expect that you’ll be able to pick up where you left off and attempting this will leave you open to injury which is your worst case scenario. Can you imagine waiting this long only to get injured 2 weeks in. Whilst we need to go in with a more conservative approach to training, it doesn’t mean we can’t progress! If anything our bodies are primed to make some significant gains.

With the majority of us having been banished indefinitely from our sacred place of gains (cue the home gym owners evil laughs), there is a massive fear amongst gym goes of losing their hard earned muscle and strength.

Is it as simple as 6 months out of a gym and I will lose everything? Well, that depends.

If you still wish to train with the limited equipment you have (bodyweight, bands, small dumbbells), then it is very likely you can maintain your hard earned progress. However, if structured and applied appropriately a home style training plan can in fact see the gains train continue.

And if you have a home gym then screw you…

If you take the relaxed approach and sit on the couch for 6 months, then yes you are very likely to lose some of your attained muscle, after all muscle is metabolically costly to the body. If there is no purpose for it (muscle is a protective mechanism) then it will atrophy. If this does occur though, the good news is returning to resistance training will likely see your gains come back in a hurry!

More on this later.

“Can I keep building muscle?”

Yes, the same principles apply if you were in the gym. If you provide a sufficient stimulus above your current homeostatic state then it’s absolutely possible.

We now know that there is quite a broad rep range that allows us to stimulate and synthesis muscle tissue. As a generalisation, most train within a 6-15 rep range in the gym for hypertrophy purposes. It is probably correct in saying this is the most practical range to elicit growth in.

However, as mentioned that is likely the PRACTICAL range. Nothing about Covid-19 and the situation it has put us in is practical and therefore we can take advantage of what research has shown which is the rep range spectrum for muscle growth is quite wide. Somewhere from 3-30 reps seems to be the current understanding. [1]Schoenfeld et al. 2017. “Muscle hypertrophy can be achieved across a spectrum of loading ranges”.

So what does this tell us?

Building muscle can be done with high loads and low loads. At the moment most of us only have access to low loads from our home equipment. Morphological adaptions seem to be most efficient with magnitudes of 60-85% max load on the bar, for sufficient durations.

However when using lighter loads there seems to be a minimum magnitude threshold of 30% which will also elicit morphological adaptions provided we take sets to a very close proximity to failure, 0-3 RIR.

So assuming you are training with lower absolute loads and performing an appropriate amount of volume, then you can provide the signals you need to stimulate and synthesis new muscle tissue if you take sets to a high relative intensity. If you are willing to go the extra mile and perform a few more reps per set, get uncomfortable with the “burn” and hit sets close to failure the gains will continue.

A useful guide to follow detailed by James Krieger is, [2] 10-20+ sets per muscle group per week, spread out by 2-3 stimulative sessions per muscle group per week, with roughly 4-8 sets per session.

In short, gaining muscle is very achievable if we have to use light loads and high reps. To achieve this we must ensure that sets are taken to a close proximity to failure and we meet our own individual intra session and weekly volume demands.

“Will I lose all my muscle?”

It depends. It takes very little to maintain your current muscularity. Your maintenance volume is far less than what it takes to build new tissue. Once you pass the newbie gains phase, synthesising tissue becomes a lot harder. We have probably all experienced these plateaus.

Mike Israetel from RP is known for the volume landmarks concept. That is

MV or maintenance volume amount of volume required to maintain your current muscle.

MEV or minimum effective volume is the minimum amount of volume per muscle group to see progress.

MAV = max adaptive volume is the volume range where you are making the ‘best’ gains for you.

MRV = max recoverable volume is the max amount of volume your body can recovery from. Short term is ok, but too long spent here is disregarding the principle of fatigue management.

Mike states in his article, [3] “you can typically keep almost all of your muscle with as little as 6 working sets per muscle group per week.”

This means that we don’t need to stress about doing heaps of training, rather just enough if that’s you’re only option.

Secondly, many of us have been chipping away at building new tissue, spending many mesocycles focusing on overloading and performing moderate to high volumes in the gym, prior to the shutdown of gyms.

In doing so, over time we begin to de sensitise ourselves to this volume. The high volume that once gave you great gains, seems to be slowing down and progression is becoming harder to buy. In fact, this break from the gym albeit probably longer than we all would like, is potentially going to help you elicit some great growth when we return. We are now going to be more sensitive to the higher loads and moderate reps after only being able to perform reps in the high teens and 20s for the past few weeks (probably months), with limited equipment availability.

Just think of this break from the gym as an extended re-sensitisation phase. Do your best to maintain and possibly even grow your muscle with high reps close to failure and then reap the rewards when our place of worship opens again.

“Will I lose my strength?”

Short answer is yes, but it also depends. The intensity you train at will drive the end effect (the effect being strength or hypertrophy), with volume being the amount of it we perform. If we are training for strength it is more likely we will be using high absolute loads with an appropriate volume dosage, typically that is low. If we are training for hypertrophy, it is more likely we will be using increased volume supported with higher relative intensities.

Given the current situation most of us can’t train with high absolute loads, so progressions in strength probably won’t happen. Strength is skill specific, so if we can’t practice lifting heavy our body is not conditioned to do so.

Let’s use the example of a 2RM. Returning after 4 months off heavy lifting, whilst our movement patterns might still be ok if we practised an exercise that has some transference eg goblet squat to high bar back squat, the ability of our neural drive to recruit required muscle force probably won’t be the same. We might move correctly, but the amount of force we can produce won’t be the same as 4 months ago. After all a light goblet squat requires a lot less effort than squatting a 2RM.

What we do know though is that bigger muscles have the ability to express more force. If we retain our hard earned muscle or even build more, we give ourselves the best chance to hold onto as much strength as we can. Once we are back and we pick up the specific movement pattern again, strength will climb back.

“Muscle Memory”

I mentioned there is good news! If we do have an extended break from resistance training, once you return you will likely see your gains come back in a hurry. Below is a picture I took from an article by Greg knuckles titled, Grow like a new lifter again.

In short muscle cells contain myonuclei that occupy a certain space. Adding more myonuclei to the muscle cells allow the muscle fibre to get bigger (hypertrophy). The new added myonuclei come from the surrounding satellite cells. When we detrain and atrophy, we lose muscle but we don’t seem to lose the myonuclei in the muscle, or we just haven’t yet found out how long of detraining it takes to lose them.

If you refer to the above picture. You can see the process where we go from untrained, to training and adding some nuclei. We have enough myonuclei to now grow bigger muscle. If we detrain, the myonuclei remain inside the smaller muscle. Once we pick up a resistance training again we can quickly return to our previous muscular form.

Pretty cool hey.

From an anecdotal point of view, back in 2018 I broke my right foot. I was in a moon boot and had to have my foot elevated for 10 days of bed rest (that sucked), I wasn’t allowed to walk on it for another 14, then I could walk but with the moonboot on for another month.

After just shy of 2 months when I could finally walk bare foot, my right leg was notably smaller. 2 months later and I was probably a week away from playing our last home and away football match of the 2018 season. So, for me it was cool to see muscle and strength levels return so quickly.

Key Takeaways

• You can retain your muscle on as little as 6 sets per week per muscle group.

• Building new muscle is indeed possible with home training. Ensure you take your sets to a close proximity to concentric muscular failure (0-3 RIR and have sufficient weekly volume per muscle for your individual needs with a frequency of at least 2x per week.

• If you don’t train, it is not the end of the world. Find a new hobby to keep you active for the meantime i.e go for a run or ride a bike. Your muscle will come back when you begin training again.