How to Retain Gains & Lose Fat in Crazy

Times
Keep the Muscle, Drop the Fat
by Sohee Lee | 04/28/20

Tags: 
 Training
 Bigger Stronger Leaner

How do you retain muscle when you can't train as hard as you typically do?
How about losing body fat? Is that still feasible without your usual workouts?

Whether you've sustained an injury, your gym has closed, or you're trapped at
home for whatever reason, we've got you covered. Here's what you can do
with your training and diet to mitigate any potential losses.

Training
First, taking a few weeks off of training will not negatively impact your gains. If
you stop lifting entirely for a few weeks, yes, you may lose some size. But
once you get back into your regular gym routine and stay consistent with it,
you'll ultimately end up at net zero loss in gains. You may even see an
increase in muscle growth beyond your pre-detraining levels.

One study concluded that a three-week detraining break followed by a six-

week retraining cycle yielded similar muscle hypertrophy in young men
compared to 24 weeks of continuous resistance training (1).

When taking time off from lifting for a short period of time, your muscle mass
levels don't revert back to where they were pre-lifting (2, 3, 4). Moreover, if the
retraining phase is longer than the detraining period (e.g. three weeks
detraining followed by six weeks retraining), muscle mass may ultimately
increase.

How Much Training is Enough?

Another study tested the minimum dose required to maintain resistance

training-induced adaptations (5). They found that training once per week was
sufficient to maintain positive neuromuscular adaptations, though older men
(aged 60-75) required higher training volume to maintain their gains compared
to younger men (aged 20-35).

This is great news. It means that maintaining muscle mass is actually fairly
easy as long as you're getting in a little bit of training.

What about when you don't have access to your regular gym equipment?

You may find yourself in a situation where you don't have access to barbells,
heavy dumbbells, and your usual gym machines, but perhaps you do have
 some resistance bands and lighter dumbbells (and your own bodyweight,
obviously).

Remember that your muscles don't know what exercise you're doing; they
only know the mechanical stimuli placed on them. So, if you can make a
workout sufficiently challenging, you can absolutely maintain your current level
of muscle mass, at the very least.

Note that I'm not talking about simply adding reps on reps on reps or
necessarily adding load. There are several ways to increase the difficulty of an
exercise, including but not limited to:

 Increasing the range of motion

 Slowing down the eccentric or negative phase
 Adding at a pause
 Adding a pulse or partial
 Increasing the lever
Doing bodyweight workouts – or sessions with minimal equipment – are
certainly better than nothing, and some mechanical stimulus to your muscles
is absolutely better than nothing at all.