Let’s make an exercise of imagination. You wake up one day after snoozing your alarm a couple of times. The sun is shining bright as the waves hit the shoreline on your long-awaited holiday. You pick up your phone and take a look at the date. It’s been a whole week since you have hit the gym. Do you still have your muscles? Should you panick and drop to the floor and do push ups? What is actually going on?It is not unheard of that if you stop engaging in physical activity your muscles can become weak and lose not only strength but also size. This phenomenon is better known in the anatomical world as muscle atrophy, the opposite of muscle hypertrophy, topic which we covered in a previous article. During this process, proteolytic systems are activated, while contractile proteins and organelles are removed, which in turn results in the shrinkage of muscle fibers, over time resulting in the muscles becoming thinner and thinner.
Muscle atrophy starts occurring when the muscles in our body aren’t being stimulated anymore. Typically, this is a result of either personal choice or injury or illness, preventing you from performing physical activities. With that in mind, however, at some point muscle atrophy does and will occur naturally, for all of us, no matter how hard we try as we age and our bodies can’t keep up with the active lifestyle we once had.
Fortunately, if you find yourself in a scenario simillar to the beforementioend one in the intro, you can put your phone down and realx. Muscle atrophy doesn’t happen overnight. A common misconception in the fitness community is that if you miss more than 2 days in a row of exercise is that you will start so-called losing your gains. Now, while protein synthesis starts to decline after just a few days of disuse, it takes at least two to three weeks, if not longer, of constant inactivity for significant muscle atrophy to be observed, making short breaks nothing to worry about in this regard.
So, if the process is guaranteed to happen at some point, how do we prevent it, or rather, delay it now? Well, the obvious solutions come to mind, such as strength training and avoiding prolonged inactivity, but these only make up a fraction of the solutions. The diet you eat matters, even when you take a break from the gym. Eating a balanced diet with plenty of protein, vitamins and minerals will give your body the nutrients it needs to keep the muscles healthy and running. On top of that, staying hydrated and allowing the body to absorb all of that water weight will not only keep your muscles working, but is important in plenty of other secotrs, such as recovery.
Remember, at the end of the day, listen to your body. If you feel as if you need a rest day, take it. There is no shame in it and you will cerainly not “lose your gains”. If you still commit to a healthy lifestyle outside the gym, whether it is through other activities, diet and hydration, your muscles won’t just go poof for no reason and you will come back from your break feeling even stronger and rested, being the best version of yourself.
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