Detrained, Now What?

Life happens…

There comes a point where something gets in the way and you take time off of training.

You get sick. You get injured. You just can’t be bothered.

I’m not going to lie to you.

It’s likely you’ve lost some muscle and strength…

But that’s fine, it’ll come back pretty quickly.

The biggest priority now (other than building consistency and the habit again) is putting you back into training properly.

You don’t want to jump in and do your normal workout.

This will leave you very very sore, you’ll be all over the place with the form and the weights… it’s just not the move.

So here’s my method for getting back into the gym.

Your first week back in the gym after being detrained is about setting foundations.

There’s a few ways you can do this.

Overall your focus is going to be on improving form, minimising damage, and finding the right weight to use.

So here’s what you do.

1. For every exercise only do one set. Getting a good stimulus means nothing if you’re going to end up super super sore.

2. Give yourself at least 2 warmup sets for each exercise to practice your form, and lock in the right weight.

3. Train over 2 reps from failure to reduce muscle damage.

Here’s a little bonus tip people don’t think about: Give yourself extra rest time between warmup sets, it’ll let you lock in the form better and you’ve probably lost some endurance in your time off.

Next time you go into the gym to do a workout go back to your usual sets and intensity.

This might not be something you need right now, but come back to this article when you hit that worst case scenario and end up having to have some off time.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher