Posted: 2/17/2008 7:22:44 PM EDT
| I'm just curious......is there a general idea of at what rate built muscle and subsequent strength deteriorate? For example, if someone doesn't lift weights for 2 weeks, do they lose a lot of their strength? Just curious. |
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My personal trainer from back in high school when I was running track (sprints) and used to coach Emmit Smith's 4X100 team said that for every month of muscle you've gained it takes three months to fully lose it. He's also a chiropracter (SP?) and very knowledgeable in the field so I trust his statements. |
This seems low, and conflicts with my experience. There may be a point at which this becomes true, but I doubt most people will hit it. Age may also play into it. |
This is something I have been wondering as well. I run a lot of long distance stuff, did a 50k trail race saturday (but I am a fatty and slow  ), every muscle in my body hurts, and from past races will hurt for at least 2 more days. My weight training schedule is split up every 2-3 days. My point is how much muscle can one lose to catabolic loss during a very long race? How does the body decide which muscles to start eating first. Lots of info to google but it is hard to get real facts. |
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Some of it is dependant on diet and it's different for every person. Like if you took 2 weeks off but maintained a good diet, you may not expereince any strength loss whatsoever. Others might lose 5 pounds on their bench or whatever, but generally, 2 weeks is a negligable break. And yeah, a healthy person on a strong diet will experience a minimum gain of 1lb of muscle per month. If you're only gaining 5-7 pounds per year, you should re-think your lone, post-workout protein shake... Kenny, regarding muscle loss during long races... 1lb of muscle is the equivalant of 2500-3500 kcal. Your body has about 2000kcal of glycogen, and in a long race, you burn ~2000kcal in 20 miles. So, in a 50k (~30 miles), you've surely metabolized all of your glycogen and are either burning fat, muscle, or a little of both the rest of the way. Thus, I'm going to say about a 1/2lb provided you're an extremely efficient runner. I'm uncertain which muscles go first. It could be completely uniform, it could be the muscles used most, or muscles most resting. I could theorize all of those. |
That's a really good question. Couldn't you consider all exercise potentially catabolic? Meaning, if you didn't have some kind of recovery protocol in place, it would seem that any really physically taxing workout, aerobic or anaerobic, could result in net muscle loss. If that's the case, it would make sense to assume that those muscles worked the hardest would suffer the most, since those are the ones that benefit most from the recovery process. I don't know if this is actually the case, but it sounds good... |
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There is a statement floating around that you can lose muscle after 48hrs of inactivity but it hasn't been proven yet, as of Dec. last time I heard. It's pretty unlikely that you could not do squats for a year and still lift 315. I can't even do that and I train year round for jumps and sprints. 2 weeks with no activity you would see some decrease. If you stay active you'll notice very little if any. |