Coming back to training after a long break

After all the gym closures, a lot of us will be returning to the gym after a fairly long period with very little to no training. Hopefully you’ve been keeping up the activity with at home workouts and minimal equipment options but if you haven’t, don’t stress. Here is a bit of a guide to help you get back into training after a long break.

Reduce the volume. The gym can be very exciting after a long break and people tend to go too hard too early, expecting to be able to handle the same amount of volume as they did when they were training consistently. This means reducing the total amount of work (or reps) you do in a session. A good guide to the first week back is to hit about 50% of the volume you usually would, you should be leaving the gym feeling like you could have done more. Then you can slowly increase the volume week to week.

Reduce the intensity. Now not only should we reduce the volume, we should definitely take it easy with the intensity the first week, this means lowering the weight you use, and not pushing yourself too hard in metcons. Now this doesn’t have to be as aggressive as a 50% reduction, but it should be enough to make a difference.

Warm up thoroughly. You should all be doing thorough warm ups anyway, but it’s even more important after a break. Our muscles and joints have gotten somewhat used to the lack of load so you need to make sure you are ready to move, if you don’t warm up sufficiently, you are opening yourself to injury and that’s not something we ever want.

Don’t train if you are getting too sore. If you do end up overdoing it slightly and end up with some serious DOMS, don’t be afraid to take a day or two off to rest up so that you can come back fresh another day. Training while you are very sore is a recipe for disaster so make sure you are resting up sufficiently.

That’s it for the tips team, hopefully we’re all back in the gym soon!