Up next in 10
My thoughts on how fast you will lose muscle when you stop working out. Plus 5 things you can do to prevent muscle loss as much as possible.
//Creative Commons Attribution Licence video (Reuse allowed)
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
What's up guys and welcome back to another video I hope you well I hope you
0:03
feeling better than I am because I'm not feeling too good at the moment if you
0:07
watch any more recent videos you'll know I've not been training at the moment
0:11
this is day six without training and if you're having some time off right now
0:15
and you're wondering how long do you have before you're gonna lose that muscle tissue that's what we're gonna talk about in this video okay because
0:23
it's inevitable if you don't train at all you are gonna lose that muscle
0:27
tissue and if you stick around to the end I'll give you some tips on how we can slow down this process as much as possible now when I was younger I made
0:35
the fatal error of training really hard during the week and then I just have the
0:39
complete weekend off off the training off the diet off everything so I would
0:43
take two steps forwards and two steps back I never really made any progress during this time period but also what I would do is you know leading up to like
0:51
a holiday or something like that I would train really really hard everything would
0:55
be perfect leading up to the holiday and then as soon as I go on holiday boom that's it don't train don't go to the gym don't do anything and even when
1:04
after the holiday you know I'm not training I would just take time off and
1:08
I would just I would just undo a lot of progress it was kind of very pointless
1:15
apart from that the only other times that I've had quite a bit of time off has
1:19
been during the lockdown because of you-know-what that was quite alarming how quickly I just lost muscle tissue and so what I did do is as soon as I had
1:31
the borders were open I just left the UK and I went somewhere where gyms are open and eventually that's how I ended up in Bali so you know it's not all bad apart
1:40
from that I haven't really had any serious time off I don't like having time off you know any more than a few days I started to get a little bit
1:47
agitated to be honest just going to the gym it improves every single aspect of
1:52
my day I can focus better I can relax better my mindset's better everything's
1:57
better and the more you can cultivate or the more you can find things which get
2:02
you in like a positive mindset which raise your vibration and get you thinking
2:06
the right way the better you're gonna do in the long term because your mindset
2:09
dictates absolutely everything and for me the gym is something that kind of
2:13
centers me and it just keeps me on track right so let's get into it now if you
2:20
look online there's a lot of science-based nerds on there say oh well
2:24
the studies say this or the studies say that first of all forget about studies
2:29
okay like it's good to look at them okay but it's not the be-all and end-all the
2:33
science nerds like oh well where's the study for this thing and where's the study for that thing what you got to understand about science is it's biased
2:39
okay because who's funding these studies okay what was their motive what are the
2:44
researchers what's their motive there are thousands of studies that get researched every single year but they don't prove the hypothesis that they
2:53
wanted and they just don't even get published they never see the light of day so you can't always trust studies okay with this I guess in it's probably
3:01
gonna be less of a problem with with with being biased and stuff like that
3:05
but even still there is no substitute for personal experience there's no
3:09
substitute that is the best way to know whether something how something affects
3:14
you or whether something's good or not you want to know what the best supplement to take is try all of them and then monitor your results you wanna
3:20
know what the best diet is try all of them and then see which one you get the best results from you wanna know what training split is the best try them all
3:27
and see what you got the best results from so I hope you get a little bit of
3:31
point about science but let's dive into it so when I don't train for the first
3:36
few days I actually look leaner okay I look leaner and I think it's because
3:40
when you train you put a lot of stress on your body okay it raises the
3:44
cortisol in your body and your body just holds a little bit more water when
3:48
you when you got like when your cortisol is higher when you stop training your
3:53
cortisol is gonna come down quite quick and therefore the water retention
3:59
underneath the skin is gonna go away a little bit so I usually look a little
4:05
bit leaner but after a few days though I start to look a little bit smaller as
4:10
well and I think when you go to the gym obviously you get a pump right you get a lot muscle you get a lot of muscle a lot of blood in the muscle and your
4:18
muscles gonna look bigger now the main pump only really lasts for like an hour
4:22
I wish it would last longer to be honest but looking about an hour okay but I
4:28
feel like there's kind of like a residual pump that sticks around for
4:32
like maybe 24 hours or something like that it just feel like you still keep a
4:36
little bit size because of that obviously that it's gonna go so you're gonna look a little a little bit smaller even still but then how you're
4:43
gonna lose size is just glycogen in the muscles after like a week or so there's
4:50
gonna be less glycogen in the muscles because you're not using them how you using them before and glycogen core in the muscle causes more water to be in
4:58
the muscle and more water in the muscle is gonna make it look fuller and bigger so it's gonna look like you've lost muscle but you haven't you've just lost
5:04
glycogen in the muscle you will lose size but you haven't actually lost
5:08
muscle tissue at this point a week it's very unlikely unless your habits and
5:14
your nutrition and everything else is completely messed up but after a week
5:18
you shouldn't be losing much muscle tissue excuse me for me though I
5:24
wouldn't like to go any longer than two weeks I like to play it on the safe end because I enjoy training as well two weeks is the absolute maximum I would
5:32
want to go without without properly working my muscles okay two weeks is the
5:37
absolute maximum you might be able to get away with longer if you do some of
5:42
these things that I'm going to discuss right now but for me I would feel
5:46
uncomfortable going any longer than two weeks so I've got some notes here of
5:51
things that the main things that you need to do to kind of slow that you will
5:56
help you slow down this process of losing muscle tissue okay so the first
6:01
one the most important one is going to be about your nutrition you want to make
6:05
sure you're eating at maintenance calories do not be in a calorie deficit
6:09
okay because if you've been a calorie deficit your body is going to be needing excess resources it's not going to be going to get it from the food so it's
6:16
going to look at your body and it might take some of that muscle so you don't
6:19
want to be in a calorie deficit you don't want to be in a calorie surplus
6:24
either because you're not training if you are in a calorie surplus you're just going to gain body fat and sometimes you might seem like you've lost gains quick
6:32
but it hasn't you just put on more body fat and if you've got more body fat you
6:37
look less lean and sometimes you actually look like you've got less muscle but in fact you have the same amount of muscle but you just got more
6:44
fat I have this a lot when I diet I actually when I'm cutting I lose a
6:49
little bit of fat I look better obviously because of what muscles are
6:53
popping more and people are telling me oh you look so much bigger now and I'm
6:57
actually not as big I'm my weights less you know what I mean but it's just a
7:01
it's just an illusion of the eye because your muscles stick out more you look
7:05
bigger so that's something to look out for I would definitely be eating a
7:08
calorie maintenance next step protein you want to be eating one gram per pound
7:15
of body weight you want to make sure you get enough protein in protein is obviously muscle sparing and a good target to aim for is one gram per pound
7:23
of body weight step number two is you want to do something like you want to
7:28
do some light movement light movements better than no movement I've made a previous video about doing something is better than doing nothing that's all you
7:36
can go check that out but you want to make sure you're doing some kind of movement even if it's just walking even if it's just getting out in nature even
7:44
if it's just doing your general day-to-day activities that's better than just being sat at home on the sofa doing nothing okay so even some
7:53
kind of movement even though you're not directly working on your muscles it will
7:58
help quite a lot step number three is sleep okay sleep if you're getting enough
8:06
if you if you sleep deprived well that's gonna stress your body out because your
8:10
body's in a stress situation you're more likely to be losing muscle tissue so as
8:15
much as possible you want to make sure you're getting as much good high quality
8:19
sleep as possible and then this leads into step number four is like stressors
8:24
like are you drinking alcohol a lot are you going out partying all the time like
8:29
for me I would be going on a holiday with a bunch of lads and just getting
8:34
pissed every single night drinking loads loads loads loads to the point I can't
8:39
even remember some parts of the night right and then obviously I was going to bed at like you know four five six o'clock in the morning waking up a few
8:47
hours later feeling like crap and it's doing it all over again okay there was
8:51
definitely no training happening on those holidays but if you're doing that
8:55
you're putting immense amounts of stress on your body and obviously you're gonna lose a lot more muscle tissue than if you were just you know maybe you weren't
9:02
training but maybe you were just just living a relaxed nice holiday or
9:08
something like that okay and step number five this is the most important is just
9:13
do some kind of workout okay do some kind of workout okay because you can
9:21
always do something it's just a mindset thing like even if you have no equipment
9:26
you can still do push-ups you can still do bodyweight squats you can still find
9:31
some like heavy things around the house or wherever you are maybe you can you
9:36
know do some laterals with it maybe you can do some curls maybe you can do some tricep extensions like it's just a mindset thing you will always if you
9:46
have the right mindset you'll always find a way to be able to do something is it going to be optimal no okay you might have to do a hundred reps per set or more
9:55
but that is for sure is a thousand times better than not getting a workout in at
10:00
all okay so that would be the biggest thing is just try and do something
10:03
because chances are if you look hard enough there will be something you could
10:09
do like for example right now I could just grab some of these branches and I'm sure I could try and get a workout in I would look for somewhere where I can do
10:16
pull-ups and just do some pull-ups like guaranteed if you got the right mindset
10:20
and you want it enough you'll find a way to get a workout in and that's it guys
10:25
so make sure your foods at maintenance make sure you get enough
10:30
protein in do some kind of movement sleep minimize the stresses as much as
10:35
possible and if you do all those things and you will slow down the rate of
10:41
muscle tissue as much as possible but for me I wouldn't like to go any longer
10:45
than two weeks if it's been less than two weeks and you're doing some of these other things that I've talked about don't worry about it if it's been a lot
10:52
longer than two weeks well maybe you should think about getting back in the
10:56
gym and I hope that helps guys you can enter James Sweetland calm for coaching
11:01
and I'll talk to you in the next one
Beauty & Fitness
Fitness
Weight Loss
Nutrition
Bodybuilding
Fitness Instruction & Personal Training
High Intensity Interval Training