How fast or slow the body falls out of shape while detraining
For as long as I can remember, the advice for health and fitness was the need to exercise. The exercise can be aerobic, strength training, or moderate-to-hard labor on a job or physical tasks around the home. The range of levels for people that exercise goes from a person who has worked out every day for many years to a person that is just starting a program of fitness. When talking or reading about fitness, it is always “How do I get in shape and what type of exercise should I do?” There is another aspect to fitness and the time you have spent getting in shape. The side that is not mentioned is how long will all of this hard work last when I quit exercising? The term used when you stop exercising is “detraining” or “deconditioning.”
How fast you get out of shape after exercising depends on several factors. Factors such as getting older, how fit were you when you quit, how long have you been exercising and also what type of exercise were you doing will determine the detraining time for a person. When you quit exercising, many physiological changes take place. You begin to lose the cardiovascular gains you made that includes the heart’s ability to pump blood. You will lose your muscles ability to use the oxygen needed to contract efficiently and to use the food you eat to convert to energy better. You begin to lose muscle fiber size and other neuromuscular training adaptations. It seems that you will lose aerobic capacity faster than muscle strength. Depending on your fitness level when you stop exercising the loss of all the gains is between two and eight months. For newcomers to exercising that have not been working out very long, the time needed to lose all the gains is closer to two months. For well-trained aerobic athletes, the loss of half of their fitness level occurs in about three months of inactivity. One other factor regarding the rate of loss in fitness is the person’s age. It seems an older person loses the gains faster than someone that is younger. Older people say recovery from injuries takes longer as well. Younger days of recovery become older weeks of recovery.
Looking at the rate of detraining, there are two points to look at trying to regain lost fitness. One statement was called a “half-life” return to your level of fitness. If the time away from exercise was relatively short, one to two months, a person can get back most of the previous fitness in half the time it took the first time. Longer periods away from exercising will take about the same length of time it took you to get in shape the first time. The other point with regard to regaining fitness after a lay-off is if the person put in an occasional workout a few times during the lay-off. Did the lay-off actually stop all exercise or did the person just reduce the amount of work done during the exercise. Even one hard work out a week will help slow down the loss of fitness.
For an injury that requires stopping an exercise program, the body has a unique system called the cross-training effect. As an example, a person has injured the right knee and can no longer exercise the leg. By exercising the left leg hard, some strength will be maintained in the right leg. This type of exercise is used in rehabilitation programs for injured athletes. This is used mainly for keeping the strength of the injured limb from a total loss of strength. For aerobic fitness where the person with the injured knee cannot run, bike or walk, the cross training can be used by using the arms. A “pedaling motion” with a wheel apparatus using the arms can maintain some aerobic fitness.
It is recommended that if you exercise only one or two times a week that the quality of the workout be above average in intensity. That will help keep the level of fitness close to a normal level for a longer time period. Even if the few bouts of exercise in a week are less intense, the benefits of not losing much of your fitness is better. Instead of running, try brisk walking for maintaining a level of fitness. Instead of heavy weight lifting, try lifting lighter weights with higher repetitions for maintaining a level of strength. The best routine for fitness is to not have a long period of inactivity and being sedentary. This is especially true as a person ages. A person that continues to exercise vigorously as they get older will be able to maintain a high level of fitness for many more years. If the intensity is reduced, that high level of fitness will be less, but in most cases a good level fitness will remain.
