As a gym owner, strength coach, and personal trainer I simply have to deal with the fact that my clients are going to occasionally miss workouts. Sometimes it’s just a session here or there, but often it may be for several weeks at a time.
People travel for business, take vacations, and become ill. And it’s part of my job to figure out how to get them back up to speed as quickly as possible in a responsible manner.
My responsibility lies beyond just getting people back to previous PRs, it also means I have to assign them workloads upon their comeback that do not injure them or make them so sore they can’t walk for a week.
Over the years I’ve developed a few guidelines that I use to help get people back on track as quickly as possible.
Before I go through these guidelines I need to clarify that these recommendations are not absolute nor are they universal.
My clients are a diverse group of unique individuals ranging in age from 17 to 88. They are men, women, fit, and fat. Some are experienced lifters and athletes, some are experienced exercisers. This means I have to reign some of them in so they don’t kill themselves and others would be quite content to just restart with the empty barbell. Some clients are strong, some are weak. Some pay attention to recovery, some don’t. Over time, I get intimately familiar with each client and their recovery patterns, and I tweak the following protocols to each and every one of my trainees, but these guidelines are a good place to start if you’ve missed significant time in the gym and don’t know how to re-start training.
Rule #1: If you miss a single workout (or even two), don’t worry about it.
Very few people are training on such a razors edge of complexity that a single workout missed is going to affect training. If you are that advanced, you probably rarely miss gym time anyways and if you do you already know how to handle it. But for you guys that stress and freak out over the occasional missed workout – stop.
You aren’t going to detrain with a couple extra days of rest and if you think you are, it’s likely in your head. The workouts may be harder than they otherwise would have been, but I’d suggest to at least attempt your next scheduled workout and see what happens. If you come up a bit short, don’t worry about it, and adjust your subsequent workouts accordingly.
Hell, half the time my clients come back stronger after a few extra days of rest.
Now, there is a difference between missing a session because of a work obligation and getting sick. In the case of something like a 24-hour stomach virus or food poisoning, give yourself one light workout back (about 5-10% reduction in loads across the board) and then attempt to get back to your regularly scheduled program. If you are really really sick it might take you 2-3 workouts to get back to regular work set weights, but this is not as common as people missing for less traumatic reasons.
If you miss 1-8 weeks of training, adhere to the following guidelines……..
Rule #2: Reduce load on work sets by 5% for every week missed.
Pretty self explanatory. For a week out of the gym, reduce loads by 5% across the board. If you miss 4 weeks, reduce loads by 20%. If you miss 8 weeks, reduce loads by 40%. Again, this is not universal, but I have been using this approximation for a number of years at my gym with clients and it’s reasonably accurate. As I stated, individual differences affect this number, as does the reason for the missed time. A prolonged family vacation or business trip is not as traumatic as a major illness.
Rule #3: Cut volume by about 25% for every week missed.
This applies when a trainee misses 1-3 weeks of training. Beyond 3 weeks, it’s all about the same reduction in volume.
So if a trainee misses 1 week of training I’ll usually get him back into the game with about 75% of the volume he had been doing before the break along with the 5% reduction in load.
If a trainee misses 2 weeks, I’ll cut his volume in half with a 10% reduction in loads.
If a trainee misses 3 weeks or more, he should come back into the gym with about 1/4 to 1/3 of his previous levels of volume.
You can cut volume by reducing sets, reducing reps or a combo of both. So a trainee using 3 sets of 5 reps for his work sets might adjust to 2 sets of 5 reps or 3 sets of 3 reps after a week out of the gym. Either is usually fine.
The volume reduction simply mitigates some of the potential for severe DOMS after time off. Remember that conditioning fades faster than does absolute strength. Part of our conditioning involves our ability to recover from the stress of training. We lose that pretty fast and volume is the quickest way to severe DOMS. You’ll build your conditioning back rather quickly so don’t stress about cutting a bit of volume after a lay off.
Rule #4: Attempt to work back to PR weights at a 1:1 ratio of time missed
In other words, if you miss a week, expect 1 week to work back to PR weights. If you miss 2 weeks, expect 2 weeks to work back to PRs, etc.
Ideally you’ll want to train as frequently as possible as part of a short term linear progression. But if prior to the hiatus you were squatting heavy 1x/week, don’t expect to come back and immediately be able to squat heavy 3x/week to get back up to speed.
I generally base my assumptions and progressions off a 2 day per week frequency for each lift.
You have to take into account your soreness and shitty recovery when you first get back under the barbell.
Be patient, but don’t stress, it comes back quicker than the first time around…….
It may have taken you months to go from 275 to 315 the first time you achieved this goal. You had to build new tissues and lay down the neurological hard-wiring to put 40 lbs on your squat. However, getting back up to previous PR weights, doesn’t take nearly as long.
Keep in mind that conditioning dissipates fast, but it comes back fast too. Most times, your ability to get back into the volume (which is partly a conditioning adaptation) will come back faster than the loads on the bar.
Putting it into practice…….
Let’s say you squatted 275 x 5 x 5 (5 sets of 5 reps) before you had a business trip that didn’t allow you to train with barbells during that time.
Here are a few examples of how to handle your re-entry back into the gym:
One Week of Missed Training:
- 95% of 275 is 260. We’ll call it 255 to hedge a bit and give us more even numbers to work with. 75% of the total volume is 18 reps. We’ll call it 15 reps.
- Workout 1 (Monday) would be 255 for 3 sets of 5 reps or 5 sets of 3 reps.
- Workout 2 (perhaps done on Thursday) would be 265 for 4 sets of 5 or 5 sets of 4 (20 reps).
- The following week, you should be good to go for 275 x 5 x 5.
- This gets you two lighter lower volume sessions under your belt and gets you back into PR territory within 1 week.
Two Weeks of Missed Training:
- 90% of 275 we’ll call 245. 50% of the volume is about 12 reps.
- Workout 1 (Monday) would be 245 for perhaps 4 sets of 3 reps. This would be very manageable.
- Workout 2 (Thursday) would be 255 for 4 sets of 4 reps.
- Workout 3 (Monday) might be 265 for 5 sets of 4 reps
- Workout 4 (Thursday) might be 275 for 5 sets of 5 reps.
- This gets you back into PR weights at the end of the second week back into the gym after a 2-week hiatus.
Four Weeks of Missed Training:
- 80% of 275 is 220. We’ll call it 225 for ease of plate loading. 25% of the volume is 6 reps. We’ll call it 10.
- Workout 1 (Monday) would be 225 for 2 sets of 5 reps.
- Workout 2 (Thursday) would be 235 for 3 sets of 5 reps
- Workout 3 (Monday) would be 245 for 4 sets of 5 reps
- Workout 4 (Thursday) would be 255 for 4 sets of 5 reps
- Workout 5 (Monday) would be 255 for 5 sets of 5 reps
- Workout 6 (Thursday) would be 260 for 5 sets of 5 reps
- Workout 7 (Monday) would be 265 for 5 sets of 5
- Workout 8 (Thursday) would be 270 for 5 sets of 5
- Workout 9 (Monday) would be 275 for 5 sets of 5
Let me simplify and summarize for you how to work this process, as the examples above are just that. Examples. Each trainee might add load and volume back at a slightly different pace.
- Use the 5% and 25% rules for establishing the first workout back into the gym. Get this one right.
- Use the 1:1 ratio rule to set your old PR workout up on a day in the near future that is approximately equal to the number of weeks missed (i.e. plan your old PRs 2 weeks from the date of your first workout back if you missed 2 weeks of gym time).
- Between the re-introduction workout and the PR workout, increase both volume and intensity in manageable and even increments until you hit your old numbers. I suggest you pre-plan all this out, but also be flexible and adaptable if things start to come back quicker than expected or progress slower than expected. If it takes 1-2 workouts longer than expected to get back to your old numbers, so be it.
- Train each lift 2x/week increasing volume and/or intensity a little bit each session.
If you miss really long stretches of time (more than 8 weeks) then these formulas become less reliable. In those instances, I suggest you simply “start where you are at” and work off of a top single your first time back in the gym. You don’t have to perform a 1-rep max, but working up to a quick single can give you an idea of where you are at, and starting back at say 70% for 3 sets of 5 reps might be a good place to restart a short 2-3x/week linear progression to get yourself back in spitting distance of your old PRs.
