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The prospect of training in the gym again has become a reality for more and more people. Or maybe you will be back in a few weeks and consider how you can train and how you can optimize it in the future.

One thing that I think is important is that you shouldn't just go back in and continue where you left off. This can lead to frustration, disappointment and injury.

It would be even worse to go back and release the pent-up energy and excitement you have with a brutal training flash. From an objective point of view, that's probably pretty obvious But most of us strive to maintain an objective approach to training.

The change in your body is often controlled by strong emotions. Many of us went to the gym to:

• Engage with inner demons
• Build armor to protect us from childhood bullying
• Other very emotional incentives

If there are emotions, the logic goes out the window. Do not do it Let the emotional desire to destroy yourself with insane workouts win. Doing this will most likely require you to take more time out of the gym due to burnout or injury.

Your return to the gym

If this bulleted list is not in the way, you should see some general trends and signposts as you approach your return to the gym.

I will cover each item in detail to give you a complete overview and to help you make your exact workout plan for opening the gym doors. I will also outline a sample program to illustrate how these principles can be implemented.

Get things in perspective

In my opinion, Even a genetically talented lifter takes at least five years to build a really impressive physique. For mere mortals, it's more of a decade plus.

The benefits of exercise last a lifetime. Although progress can be slow as you approach 15, 20, 25, or more years of exercise, there is still a good reason to exercise.

Today is a clear and visible reminder of the importance that exercise and nutrition can have for resistance to viruses. Given that you should consider training as a multi-year, probably multi-year effort, these past three months are just a drop in the bucket.

With crossed fingers, scientists, doctors, nurses and powers can take control of the pandemic and produce vaccines. Chances are that this will be a one-off event. It can be helpful if you recognize and use the resulting opportunities.

First of all, let me give you some positive news from scientific research about being released from training. This research will help confirm my advice, but hopefully it will reassure you that you haven't lost all of your lock gains and that any loss of strength or size is temporary and can be recovered quickly.

As I described in my article at the beginning of the lockdown, several studies have analyzed the effect of withdrawal on muscle mass and strength level. Several studies have shown that no muscle or strength loss occurs during three weeks of training. But what about three months?

Well, Blazevich et al., 2007 found that after three months of exercise, there was no significant difference in the reduction in muscle mass. The participants lost muscle, but not much. They also suffered some loss of strength. This loss of strength corresponded approximately to the five-week training.

The good news is that this can be quickly regained as an integral part of a skill's strength. For example, a study by Staron et al., 1991 found that participants regained strength only 30 weeks after 30 weeks of discharge.

Reduce fear

Remember that you've probably been injured or busy before and haven't lost all of your winnings.

• The world never went under.
• Your muscles didn't fall off.
• Their value to humanity has not evaporated.
• You didn't wake up and you look like your 11 year old me.

Instead, no one has likely noticed a difference in your body, and you rediscovered your best strength and muscle values ​​remarkably quickly when you got back to the gym. The same thing will happen now.

In short, both muscle mass and strength are quite resistant to decay, even if you do nothing. So I firmly believe that if you haven't done any exercises during a lockdown, You can get back to your baseline before locking relatively quickly, and very soon exceed these values.

That is when you have not done any training. If you've been able to do some weight, light weight, or resistance band workouts, the news is even better.

I summarize if you were able to do a few workouts a week and work with sets of 30 or fewer reps just before failure. Then there is a possibility that you have not lost any muscles. Any force you have lost is just the technical ability to handle and coordinate heavy loads and will return.

Panic over

Hopefully this will reduce the fear of all your difficulties before the lock is released. Once you know that you are not starting from scratch and have not lost too much ground, then; You can resist the urge to go inside with blazing weapons, hoping to get years of hard work back in a few weeks.

You just don't have to. What took years to build does not take weeks to destroy when it comes to size and strength.

With this in mind, I think it is important to meet your expectations. I'm not suggesting that you go back to the gym and hit the same numbers, do the same reps, or do the same volume as before the lockdown.

Strength is an ability

To master a skill well, you need to practice. To display this ability, you need to practice it frequently. Unfortunately, many of us haven't touched a barbell in the past few months.

As a result, squats, deadlifts and bench presses are not at their highest levels when you finally hold the bar in your hands again. These elevators are likely to feel a bit rusty. You won't feel in the groove like before. Don't worry – this is normal for any skill. I can think of many examples, but here is one from my youth.

As a child, I loved playing tennis in summer. Growing up in the UK, summer is not long and is often interrupted by gray skies and heavy rainfall. Therefore, the time window for playing was relatively small.

Every year I improved steadily throughout the summer, only to return the following year and feel like I was back at zero. Certainly much worse than where I left off. This is because I have not trained.

However, the rate of improvement in the first few weeks was dramatic. Relearning these movement patterns and skills was much faster and easier than the first time.

At the end of summer I was noticeably better than at the end of the previous summer, but this progress had not been linear. Each year:

• The starting point was lower than my best one so far.
• Then there was a quick climb up to my position.
• Then a gradual improvement beyond how good I was last year.

The same applies to you and your lifting.

This ability factor is most evident in the more complex exercises in your program. Squats take longer to get back into the groove than squats that take a little longer than leg presses. Leg extensions, however, will probably feel normal again after just a few warm-up exercises.

The higher the ability component of a lift, the greater the waste you see in session 1. The good news is that this ability will be available again quickly.

Pull-ups can mean a greater drop in performance than pulldowns on your first session, as more stabilization and coordination are required. If you did not have access to a pull-up bar, it can be expected that it has rusted somewhat.

The low hanging fruit

A chance created by blocking is the ability to do more with less. If you are not in the gym, you will be sensitized again to the attraction of lifting.

Many of us never take time off or even have a delay occasionally. If you do the same thing continuously, adaptive resistance can be used. This is a by-product of the Repeat Combat Effect. Basically, the more you do something, the less adjustment you get back.

This is why progress slows down as we become more advanced and better educated. Going from good to great is much more difficult than going from good to good, which is more difficult than going from terrible to good.

When you return to the gym, you should do just enough to make progress. If you haven't done anything, just doing something is enough. What is an overload after a three-month break is much less than when you worked at full throttle for years.

For this reason, a larger time window has opened for overloading the training.

The gap between your initial minimum effective dose (MED) and the maximum achievable volume is now significantly larger than before the block. By gradually closing this gap, you can extend the length of a valid training block.

More effective training = more profits

Because of this increased susceptibility to the training stimulus, you should pick the low-hanging fruit. The threshold for winnings is now lower than it was before the ban.

This creates the potential to make new profits in the future. It also minimizes the risk of injury. By keeping the recovery capacity in reserve, you have a longer runway for effective training. This means that if you're smart, your profits can go up and go on in the long run.

Common sense

The problem with common sense is that it is not that common.

So far I've made a lot of points about:

• Loss of size and strength
• Recover lost profits
• The bar is lower.
• Build up gradually

All of this should make it fairly obvious that a gradual introduction to training with a methodical and gradual increase in workload will best serve you.

However, many of you will not be able to resist the temptation to do too much. Remember that blocking has created an opportunity for you in many ways. Don't waste it.

Do not put yourself down

If you work too hard too early, make adjustments. Chances are that this is the longest time you have been away from a serious workout since you started your serious workout.

So this is a completely new situation for you. When something is new, it is unrealistic to expect perfection. If you get carried away and do too much, don't beat yourself up. Learn the lesson. Course correct on the trip.

It is better to start too easily and leave room for progress than to be excessive and regress.

It is pretty obvious. If you went too hard too early, don't be stubborn. It is a mistake to let your pride get in the way. Admit your mistake and withdraw.

Come back in a routine

While it's tempting to sketch out a super complex routine six days a week from the comfort of your sofa, the reality of sticking to this plan may not be that easy. Before you optimize your time in the gym, you should primarily go to the gym.

It's an important first step to simply re-anchor the habit of training in the gym. If you scheduled the workout at 6 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, repeat this.

Or if early morning workouts are a thing of the past with your new home work schedule, choose another appropriate time for the workout. Make training a priority again by planning it in your diary. Identify potential barriers to training. Pick a time that removes these barriers and the ring fence at that time. For example:

• I usually prefer to train in the afternoon when life is normal. However, while working from home, I found that my motivation was lower and my energy was exhausted by trying to help the children do homeschooling. As a result, early morning training effectively helped me get a high quality, focused session.
• If you are still working from home after the lockout and gyms are open, You may find that pulling off the sofa for an evening workout is much more difficult than leaving the office and going to the gym. In this case, the best option may be to do the training first.
• On the other hand, When you first have the energy of a sloth in the morningIf you have to press Snooze five times and need three double espressos to feel human, it doesn't make sense to schedule an early morning workout.

There is no right or wrong here. Just find out what works for you and how to get your ass back to the gym.

Creating bad habits is too easy. Starting healthy can be a lot more difficult. If you've started developing serious Netflix addiction at night (I know I've seen it since the last dance), planning your workouts for the evening may not be a good idea.

The reputation of the sofa, the remote control and a tub of ice cream could win. Choose the path of least resistance when it comes to planning workouts – prepare for successs.

The DOMS will be epic

Let me make one thing clear: getting sore after training is not a good indicator of effectiveness. Under no circumstances should you chase or use sore muscles to determine the benefits of one workout over another.

DOMS is a natural result of hard training. If you train hard, muscle damage and disorders occur. Lifting weights hard often leads to DOMS. The best way to get DOMS is to expose the body to a new kind of stimulus – do a new exercise.

Since the incentive is new, the body has not adapted to it and therefore homeostasis is disturbed to a greater extent. Muscle damage and the subsequent repair processes (including DOMS) are started up.

Each time you repeat the same stimulus, the level of disorder is reduced and the DOMS are less severe. This is a long preamble to this main point.

If you haven't been to the gym for three months, you get sore, really sore. Every exercise is new. If you try to do the same workouts that you did before the lockdown, you are likely to be crippled.

It is important to be aware of this. This means that you can reduce your training to minimize the DOMS while accepting that there are DOMS. To give you an example from my personal experience, let me tell you when I did a super light squat workout and was in pain for a week.

The session consisted of 3 sets of 5 squats with 70% of my 1 = repetition max. 3 x 5 with 70% is not a special challenge. Especially when you consider that at the end of my previous training block, I trained legs twice a week and did eight sets of squats per session. The devil is in the details.

This debilitating DOMS was brought back to the gym in my first session after a two and a half week vacation break. What's more, even though I had done a fair amount of footwork before the vacation, I hadn't crouched back. Instead, I had a training block built around front squats and Bulgarian squats to develop a structural balance.

I thought I was very conservative with my 3×5 plan at 70%. The session felt like a no-brainer.

When I woke up the next morning, got out of bed and wiggled like a little giraffe when I tried to go to the bathroom, I realized that I had underestimated things.

A two-week break and six weeks without this particular exercise were enough for a relatively light workout to cause outrageous DOMS.

When returning to training, note the following:

1. What could you do in the lock?
2. What is your goal?
3. How can you bridge the gap between what you did and what you need to achieve your goal?

When choosing your starting point, use what you did so as not to base it on what you did. Then use common sense to close that gap. There is no point in planning your workout the way you did before locking it. It makes a lot more sense to plan your workout so that it systematically returns to what you did before the lockout.

Hopefully you can take things to the next level and analyze what you did before locking to find bugs, uncover the unnecessary or sub-optimal, and remove or replace them to refine your approach. This way you can achieve your goals more efficiently.

Do not use previous maxes

Use the early stages of your return to the gym to learn the perfect technique. Your weights don't matter much at this point. Having only weights in hand is an incentive enough at first. You shouldn't be bound to hit certain numbers so you can focus on:

Think of this as a priming phase. Use the quality of your technique and the execution of elevators as a method to overload and gradually build up the volume tolerance.

Treat each rep as an opportunity to grow and try to maximize muscle tension. You then created the platform to make progress with the volume.

It's a bad idea to try to base your training weights on the percentages of previous maximums. As I said, your technique is probably wrong. What was 70% of your 1 RM might feel more like 85% at your first session.

This, of course, limits the repetitions that you can get, or requires that you train very close not to hit the repetitions you have planned. The fatigue generated will go through the roof.

While your intensity thresholds are now lower and your strength is slightly lower, You are not a beginner again. You can probably handle much heavier loads than a beginner, so you can do a lot of muscle damage as a beginner. Leave enough reps in the tank at the beginning. It is a luxury to be able to make progress so far from failure. Enjoy it as long as you can.

Use relative intensity instead of measuring intensity as a percentage of 1 rpm. Relative intensity is a measure of how difficult a sentence is due to its proximity to failure. It is tracked by recording (RIR) at the end of a sentence. With 4 RIR you can gain strength and muscle mass. This is especially true as a beginner.

For a short time you are closer to the beginner phases than for a long time. Take advantage of this. Use RIR as an important metric and progress tool to control your training. Start in the first week by ending the sentences at 4 RIR. Especially with higher quality compound lifts. Over a number of weeks, you can increase your intensity by leaving fewer repetitions in reserve.

With RIR, you can gradually increase the intensity of your training and adapt your training efforts exactly to your body's ability to tolerate training. When you get used to the training again, you need to push the training harder to get an effective workout. With RIR you can do this. For example:

• Week 1 – 4 RIR
• Week 2 – 3 RIR
• Week 3 – 2 RIR
• Week 4 – 1 RIR
• Week 5 – 0 RIR

In reality, once you regain the ability to lift, you can increase the load without increasing your relative intensity.

In the first week, a set of 8 with 200 pounds on squats could be 4 RIR. The following week you find your groove again could mean that 205 lbs is still a 4 RIR. It's possible that you can add 5 pounds a week for several weeks without changing the RIR. This is most likely the case with lifts with higher capabilities. With stupid exercises such as machine-based isolation work, this effect is unlikely to occur.

I would suggest that you start with 4 RIR loads for compound lifts and gradually add the load every week until you are 1 RIR. For insulation elevators, I would start at 3 RIR and add the load until you reach 0 RIR.

Don't think it over – I did that for you. This article is proof of that 🙂

I find a practical example useful to give you a frame of reference for your return to training. Below I sketched a plan based on an avatar. Let's call him Bobby. Bobby is in his early thirties and has been lifting steadily for a decade.

He started strength training to improve athletic performance, but has worked throughout his career as a bodybuilder and CrossFit. For about a year now he has been training four days a week with an upper and lower split and hits each muscle group twice a week.

During the lockdown, he stayed active 3 times a week and trained body weight. He has managed to keep his body weight fairly stable – only gaining 2-3 pounds. He usually does:

• 5-8 sets per workout (10-16 sets per week) for main muscle groups (chest, back, quads, hamstrings)
• 3-6 sets per workout (6-12 sets per week) for smaller muscles (biceps, triceps, calves, delts).

To optimize Bobby's return to the gym, I would suggest the following:

week 1

In three training units, you train each muscle group once with your legs, push, pull, split. This allows for a long recovery time for the DOMS, which follows even relatively simple workouts (the legs are exercised first because they are likely to take the longest recovery time).

• volume – 50% of normal value per workout (2-4 sets per workout muscle group)
• frequency – 3 sessions per week, but 1 x week per muscle group
• intensity – 4 RIR for compound elevators, 3 RIR for insulation elevators

E.g .:

• Monday – Legs
• Wednesday – To press
• Friday – Pull

Week 2

In three training sessions, train each muscle group twice with a whole body, a whole push and a whole train.

• volume – 50% of normal value per workout, 2-4 sets per workout per muscle group
• frequency – 3 sessions per week, but twice per muscle group
• intensity – 4 RIR for compound elevators, 2-3 RIR for insulation elevators

E.g .:

• Monday – Hole body
• Wednesday – Press your upper and lower body
• Friday – Pull upper and lower body

*Include quads in Wednesday push and hamstrings in Friday pull session

Weeks 3-6

Exercise each muscle twice with an upper / lower split in four workouts.

• volume – 75% of normal per workout, 3-6 sets per workout per muscle group
• frequency – 4 sessions per week, but 2 x week per muscle group
• intensity – 2-3 RIR for compound lifts, 1-2 RIR for insulation lifts

E.g .:

• Monday – Upper, higher
• Tuesday – Lower
• Thursday – Upper, higher
• Friday – Lower

Weeks 6-10

Exercise each muscle twice with an upper / lower split in four workouts.

• volume – 90% of normal per workout, 4-7 sets per session for large muscle groups and 2-5 sets per session for small muscles
• frequency – 4 sessions per week, but 2 x week per muscle group
• intensity – 1-2 RIR for compound elevators, 0-1 RIR for insulation elevators

E.g .:

• Monday – Upper, higher
• Tuesday – Lower
• Thursday – Upper, higher
• Friday – Lower