Starting again after time off

You lost less than you think

A few weeks off takes some conditioning and very little of what you built underneath it. Strength holds up better than almost anyone expects, and what feels like a collapse in week one is mostly the movements being unfamiliar again rather than the capacity being gone.

It also comes back faster than it was built the first time. The useful consequence is that there is no case for rushing: you are not recovering lost ground so much as waiting a fortnight for something you still have to show up.

Start lighter than feels sensible

The reliable mistake is starting where you left off, because that is the number you remember. It usually works for one session and costs the next two.

A first week at a clear step down from your old loads, stopping well short on every set, will feel insultingly easy and is the fastest route back. The aim of week one is to turn up three times, not to find out what you can still do.

What to expect, in order

Roughly how it tends to go, which helps when week one feels worse than it should:

• Week one: everything feels heavy and awkward. Soreness is likely even at light loads, because the work is novel again.
• Week two: the movements feel like yours again, loads climb quickly, soreness mostly stops.
• Week three or four: close to where you were, and the climbing slows to its normal rate.
• Conditioning lags behind strength the whole way. Being out of breath is not evidence you lost your lifts.

Tell the plan what happened

The easiest restart is an honest one. Set the days you can actually train now rather than the ones that worked before the break, and use the check-in to say the session should be shorter and lighter while you come back.

The fortnight after you return, the review reads what you actually logged, not what you were doing in August. If week one was light and honest, the proposal that follows starts from where you are. If week one was a performance, it starts from a lie and asks for more of it.