Can we still maintain or increase muscle mass away from the gym?
So we know that a short break from the gym, or a drop in training frequency, doesn't necessarily result in loss of those hard earned gains. I can hear those sighs of relief!
So what about work trips or holidays? Most people will not have access to a full gym set up whilst away, and often access to heavier weights is harder to come across in a hotel gym. These gyms are built to be safe, not often effective. Full of strange bits of equipment often found at clearance sales.
So what to do in this situation?
Can we train with low loads or bodyweight instead? We sure can.
Like I mentioned earlier, intensity and proximity to failure is going to be the most important aspect when training for hypertrophy away from the gym.
A systematic review completed by Schoenfeld et al (2017) compared low load vs high load (<60%1RM vs >60%1RM) and found that training with low loads produced similar hypertrophy when compared with higher loads when subjects pushed to failure.
So yes, you’ll be fine when training with lighter loads as long as you’re producing enough fatigue in your sets (getting close enough to failure). In my personal experience, pushing to failure with lighter weights is often more challenging and much more uncomfortable, both at the time and afterwards (DOMS!!). To achieve these levels of fatigue, you need to work through more "burn" and the mental challenge/boredom of high rep ranges. I prefer the heavy stuff, myself
If low loads or bodyweight is what you have, then time to crank the angry music and dig into it (channel Arnie in "Pumping Iron").
Not your best session? Always remember... "any training is better than no training"
A simple alternative to low load sessions is forking out for a casual visit at a local gym. I like the novelty of a new gym in a different city/country. Make the session QUICK, and make it HEAVY. Then get out of there, back to your holiday.
Main Takeaways
As we’ve seen from the research, our ability to maintain strength and hypertrophy adaptations even in periods of low volume or even no training at all, is pretty damn impressive. Is the training situation ideal? Unfortunately not. But we can still train "well enough" to make strength and hypertrophy gains. At the very least hold you can "do enough" on to them until things do start returning to normal.
Keep in mind, most of the studies I have cited have showed what happens in periods of absoultely no training. That is; zip, nada, null, zero training whatsoever. It still takes anywhere from 2-4 weeks of no training for reversals of adaptations to start happening.
To conclude, here are the main points of the article:
- ~3 weeks of detraining still shows no drops in strength/muscle mass.
- As long as we train with sufficient intensity, we can still maintain strength and muscle mass pretty easily, even with low training volumes/frequency.
- We can quickly regain muscle mass and strength after periods of detraining.
- Completely detraining won’t be an issue for most.
- Train hard, aim for consistency but if you drop off every now and again, you’ll be just fine, and so will your muscles.
David Barros is Enhance's Senior Osteopath. David specialises in treating and training weightlifters and bodybuilders.
If you would like to book a consult with David, please click the link below: