Here's How Long It Could Take to Build Back Muscle After Time Away From the Gym

The holiday season can make it tough to stick to your fitness routine, and it’s normal to worry about losing your gains. The good news is that taking a break from the gym probably won’t undo all your progress.

That’s according to a new study finding that people who took a 10-week break from a strength training routine maintained their muscle growth, strength, and vertical jump performance once they starting working out again.

“Our results therefore suggest that trainees should not be too concerned about occasional short-term training breaks in their daily lives when it comes to lifelong strength training,” the authors wrote in the study, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports. 

Here’s what you should know about the research, why your hard-earned gains may stick around longer than you think, and whether experts recommend taking a workout breather.

How a Training Break Affects Strength

To test how taking an exercise break after several months of resistance training affected maximum strength and muscle size, researchers from the University of Jyväskylä recruited 55 relatively healthy men and women aged 18 to 40. None of the participants had much of a history of resistance training prior to the study.

Participants were randomly separated into two groups: one that continuously performed resistance training exercises like bicep curls, squats, and lunges twice a week for 20 weeks and another that took a 10-week break halfway through.

Researchers measured participants’ muscle strength and size before the study and every fifth week after it began, except for during the 10-week hiatus.

The researchers found that participants who took a 10-week break halfway through their training saw similar gains in muscle strength and size as those who trained continuously. They also discovered that both groups made similar progress because their strength and muscle size quickly bounced back to where they were before the break as soon as they started training again. 

“During the first few weeks after the break, progress was very rapid, and after only five weeks of re-training, the pre-break level had already been reached,” Eeli Halonen, lead author of the study and a PhD student in the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, said in a statement. 

“For the group training continuously for 20 weeks, progress clearly slowed after the first 10 weeks,” Halonen said. “This meant that there was ultimately no difference in muscle size or strength development between the groups.”

The research backs up the findings of previous studies into the effects of exercise breaks, including one from 2020 that revealed that after three weeks of stopping resistance exercise, there was no significant impact on muscle thickness, strength, or sports performance in adolescent athletes. 

The new study left some unanswered questions, however, Ryan Glatt, CPT, NBC-HWC, a certified personal trainer, brain health coach, and director of the FitBrain Program at Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, told Health.

It's unclear “how longer breaks or varying intensities might affect outcomes,” he noted, and the study's focus on untrained individuals also limits its relevance to experienced lifters, who might be more likely to adapt after a break, Glatt said. While body and exercise type can influence outcomes, people who train longer and harder tend to bounce back more quickly.

Why Pausing Exercise Might Not Affect Gains

You might not lose as much progress as you expect during a break because when you train regularly, your muscles undergo changes like increased blood flow that make it easier to rebuild strength after a pause, Alan Beyer, MD, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon specializing in surgery of the knee and treating sports injuries at Hoag Orthopedic Institute, told Health. 

“When you regularly lift weights, you are building more blood supply to those muscles, making them stronger,” Beyer said. “Because those muscles already have better blood flow, better blood supply, and are able to work harder without starving their fibers of blood flow, it takes a long time for those blood vessels to shrivel up and die if the muscle is not used.”

Prior training also improves muscle cells and neural pathways for movement, Glatt added, both of which “make it easier to rebuild strength and muscle after a break.”

These changes are what people are referring to when they talk about “muscle memory,” which Beyer said is the ability of your muscles to “remember movements and actions you’ve done repeatedly in the past.”

For example, when you practice lifting weights or hitting a baseball, your brain and muscles work together to make that movement easier over time. Even if you stop doing that activity for a while, your muscles remember how to do it once you start again, and you usually pick it back up faster than when you first started.

Something similar happens when you take a break from cardio exercise, which tweaks the heart, lungs, and energy-producing parts of cells called mitochondria, Glatt said. You can “recover more quickly upon retraining due to retained efficiency in these systems.”

It’s important to note that the impact of a break ultimately depends on how long it lasts and your training history, Glatt said. For example, short breaks of one to two weeks typically have little effect on progress, especially for experienced lifters, Glatt added. On the other hand, longer breaks, especially those lasting months, tend to result in more significant losses, particularly for beginners.

How Long Does It Take To Bounce Back? 

Glatt said that as long as you train consistently, it usually takes about half the break length to get back to your previous fitness level—which is consistent with the new study’s findings. “For instance, a six-week break might require three weeks of training to regain prior levels of strength and size,” he said.

When it comes to regaining muscle mass, it can take longer than the study results suggest, Beyer said. The general guideline is that every week you’re not working out or immobilized, it takes about three weeks to recover and return to your previous level, he explained. For instance, if you’ve been in a cast for six to eight weeks due to a fracture, it could take 18 to 24 weeks to regain all the muscle mass you had before the injury.

Do Experts Recommend Taking an Exercise Break?

According to Glatt, taking planned breaks from your regular workout routine can help reduce the risk of overtraining and allow for recovery without major setbacks. These occasional breaks can also lower the risk of injuries and help optimize performance. 

While taking a week off every few months is reasonable, Glatt said the exact length and frequency of your breaks will depend on your individual needs and the intensity of your training.

The key is “listen to your body,” Beyer added. If you’re feeling pain or dealing with an injury, taking a few days off to rest and recover is perfectly fine.