Client Q&A #2: Coming Back After a Layoff

In the past week I’ve had a few recurring conversations with some clients at the gym regarding this topic. This happens pretty often in the summer months as people tend to vacation and travel more than at other times of the year. But as always, I’ve figured that if 2 or 3 people at my gym have a question about a specific issue, then there are probably at least 10x that many of my subscribers that also have that same question. Hopefully this article will shed some light on this topic for you, someone you train with, or someone you coach.

Question: I’ve had a long lay off from training, what is the best way to restart my program? How do I know how much weight to use on my first week back?

This is definitely one of those issues that almost all of us face from time to time during the year. At KSC, I train real people with real jobs, families, and a whole host of obligations that sometimes force them to take time away from the gym. Some do a better job than others about staying committed to their training, but usually even the most committed of clients will miss a week (or a month) from time to time with injury, illness, vacation, or business related travel. It’s called life – and it happens. But it’s something we can work around.

There are a multitude of factors we need to take into account when we get back under the bar. Primarily:

What is the trainees level of advancement (novice, intermediate, advanced)
What type of program had the client been following when they left off?
What is the trainees level of experience under the bar?
How long was the lay off?
How consistent had the client been prior to the layoff?
And What was the reason for the layoff?

A trainee’s level of training advancement will often dictate the degree to which someone regresses. In my experience, novices and early intermediates tend to regress the quickest, just as they progress the quickest, but the actual measurement of regression (in terms of load on the bar) is usually not as drastic as it would be for a late stage intermediate trainee or an advanced athlete. This makes sense, as most of the time late stage intermediates and advanced trainees are using loads that are heavier than most novices use (although this is not always the case). To simplify – a novice might require only a 5-10% reset of weight on the bar for 10 days of lost training time, whereas an advanced athlete might need a 20-25% reduction of weight on the bar for a similar amount of lost training time. These are NOT absolute percentages, prescriptive for everyone – just a rough estimate to illustrate a point.

Now, it has also been my experience that more advanced athletes can handle a week or 10 days out of the gym much better than a novice can. Often there isn’t a need to reset at all. More advanced athletes simply tend to hang onto their gains better than novices do. Advanced athletes also make up lost training time at a much faster rate than novices and intermediates do. As an example…a novice athlete who has to reset their training weights by 10% might have to climb back to their previous PR’s in somewhat similar increments that they used in their original progression – usually 2-10 lbs per workout depending on the lift. An advanced athlete can usually make much bigger jumps from workout to workout to get back to old PR’s.

For instance a novice who was squatting 295x5x3 might need to reset back to 265-275x5x3 after a layoff, working back up to 295 in 5 lb jumps – the same increment they used the first time through this progression. However, an advanced athlete that resets from 500×5 to 400×5 can probably work back up over that 100 lb gap in 20-25 lb increments after a lay off. Even if originally it was 5 lb increments. So what originally took a year or more to achieve, might only take a month or two the second time around.

So how should athletes at various levels of training advancement/experience estimate their starting weights when they return to the gym? Is there a rule of thumb?

For most novices who miss a week or 10 days of training, I usually start with about a 10% reset for the first workout back and I see what happens. Most of the time, we get 3×5 with that weight and simply restart the novice LP from there. Simple. If that first set of 5 appears to be very very easy then I might add a little bit of weight for the next two sets of 5. Example:

(last workout before lay off) 295 x 5 x 3
(first workout back after 10 day layoff) 5 x 265 (very easy), then 275x5x2. Done. Go to 280-285 next workout.
If 265×5 was moderately heavy then we just stick with that for the next 2 sets. If 265×5 was an all out ball buster 5RM, then I’ll probably drop the weight down to 245-255 for the next 2 sets. Then I’d repeat 265 at the next workout until we got it for all 3 sets.

Let’s say the trainee has regressed more than I thought. I put 265 on the bar and he only manages an ugly triple. Reduce another 10% and perform 240x5x3. Now we have a longer road back to 295 than we had hoped for.

If the novice athlete has missed more than 2 weeks, or even up to a month, we are probably looking at about a 20% reduction for that first workout back. Maybe 235 or so.

For advanced or intermediate athletes I use a different approach. Usually that first workout back I work them up to a conservative 1-rep max. Note – conservative! Not a true blue all out 1rm. Just a heavy single that we can base some reliable percentages off of. So for a client using the Texas Method, can easily use that heavy single to set up some reliable re-starting points for their volume/intensity day. I like to restart volume at 70% of that number for 5×5 and and intensity at 90% for a triple.

So if the conservative 1rm we perform is 405, then we probably set up their first volume workout at 275x5x5 (roughly 70%) and their first intensity day at 365×3. Then we see what happens and progress from there. But that formula rarely fails to be a reasonable restart point.

Other Factors to Consider

*Always know that high volume strength work (think 5×5) or high rep work (think sets of 10-15) will regress faster than absolute strength. This is because all volume work has a conditioning element as part of the adaptation. And we know that conditioning/endurance is a fairly transient adaptation. We lose it quickly and we gain it quickly.

*The nature of the lay off will obviously impact how much regression you experience. Were you severely ill for a month? Were you extensively travelling on business? Some of my business guys fly all over the world to different time zones. They don’t get a lot of sleep or their sleep is not restful (think trying to nap on planes, etc), and their diet goes to hell. Plus they may have career related stress etc. These things matter. Ditto with other types of emotional stress. Are you going through a divorce? A major move? A career change? Death of a loved one? Stress impacts recovery and some handle it better than others.

On the flip side, sometimes a short vacation does the body good. Did you recharge on your sleep? Get a mental/emotional break from work? Did you eat good wholesome meals and get in some exercise. It’s not entirely uncommon for someone to come back from a short respite from the gym stronger than when they left. This is especially true if the client had been training REALLY hard and consistent for several months at a time. This short deload can actually dissipate some fatigue and an increase in performance.