Training Breaks
Rest and Recovery
After Oleksander Usyk's heavyweight title fight with Tyson Fury, he will take 3 weeks of complete rest. This shows how important well-planned periods of rest are, even for elite athletes.
We do not get bigger and stronger when we lift weights, we get bigger and stronger when we RECOVER from lifting weights. The muscle building process takes about 48 hours after training, but repairing muscle damage can take longer, even weeks in extreme cases.
For the majority of us that are not professional athletes, periods of rest will come naturally throughout the year. We come down with colds and flu, get busy with work or studies, plan holidays or take some time off for Christmas. Some of these are more restorative than others, we usually feel well rested and ready to attack training after a holiday, whereas we might need to gradually build back up after illness.
I’ve gone to the gym on Christmas day, multiple times, because it’s something that I genuinely enjoy. But as I’ve got older, I’ve realised that taking a day off to spend with family actually HELPS your training as the things you do outside of the gym make a big difference too. The mind and body are interconnected: if you are more relaxed and happier, you are better able to push yourself and recover.
What I would recommend to minimise any negative effects of taking breaks from training:
1. Train hard enough the run up to a break that you DESERVE a rest. Usually we want to gradually increase the training weights or volumes so we are able to recover for the next session. But when we know we are taking a break, this gives us an opportunity to push more than usual, we can overreach our recovery abilities and then take advantage of the extra rest to recover. Aim to avoid skipping sessions in the run up to a break.
2. Get back to training as soon as you are ready. Usyk said that his wife wanted him to take a 4th week off training, but he didn’t believe that taking an extra week off would be beneficial. In the grand scheme of things, the occasional week or two off is not going to make a huge difference. However if you allow that to turn into 3 or 4 weeks away from training, then you will start to progressively lose muscle, strength and power the more time off you take.
3. Maintain protein and calorie balance to avoid muscle breakdown. You should continue to eat a high protein diet and avoid dieting in a calorie deficit. To maintain muscle, the anabolic (tissue building) and catabolic (tissue breakdown) signals in your body need to balance. Weight training is a very strong anabolic signal, while low protein and calorie deficits are catabolic. So when you are not training you need to keep protein intake high to avoid losing muscle.