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How to Survive a Fitness Layoff
By:Lou Schuler Photograph by:Steven Lippman MSN-Health

Haven't worked out in 2 months? 2 years? 2 decades?

Maybe your ex-wife got the treadmill in the divorce settlement. Or the bank foreclosed on your home gym. Or your personal trainer was overthrown in a violent coup. Doesn't matter.

You've laid off your exercise program, your gut is growing faster than the Bush administration's budget deficit, and you want your abs back.

Lucky for you, the comeback plan we've created is pretty simple—no headhunters, no credit checks, no HR jobinatrix administering a psychological exam.

But a comeback may not happen as fast as you expected. You may remember that you were the go-to guy when your college roommates needed a keg hauled to the second floor, but your muscles, tendons, and ligaments have developed a case of amnesia. If you try to get it back too soon—whether "it" is muscle, strength, or the ability to dance like a Cossack—you'll get hurt and end up with less of it than you have now.

Follow this plan, though, and you can achieve the shape you remember—even if your memory is playing tricks and you were never really in shape at all.

The Layoff: 1 TO 4 weeks

You haven't lost much—if anything.

A Spanish study published in 2000 found that lifters didn't lose strength after 4 weeks without exercise, and a 1999 Australian study showed no decline in resting metabolism after 3 weeks of inactivity, indicating that no muscle was lost.

In fact, if the break lasted just 1 or 2 weeks, you may have done your body a favor. "These periodic layoffs work wonders," says Dave Pearson, Ph.D., C.S.C.S., of Ball State University. "Most men find they can actually lift more when they return to the gym."

The 10 Percent Solution: You don't really need to make any adjustments in the weight room after a week or two without exercise. If you've been out 3 to 4 weeks, Pearson suggests taking 10 percent off the top. That is, use 10 percent less weight than you'd normally use for most exercises. You may also want to cut a set from each exercise. So if you normally do four sets of bench presses with 185 pounds, you could do three sets with 165.

The Layoff: 1 to 6 Months

How much you've lost depends on how well trained you were before the layoff. If you worked out diligently for years, you've taken a hit, but you have something left. Otherwise, you may be back where you started.

Either way, you should be able to get back in shape within 5 weeks, says Alwyn Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., a strength coach in Newhall, California. "But you can't just wing it. You have to have a plan," says Cosgrove.

And you have to stick with that plan. Many men fall victim to "mission creep" when they return to the gym. Let's say you have a written plan requiring one set of curls at the end of a workout. But you feel so good that you do three sets, and maybe throw in some lateral raises to finish with a good pump.

The next time in the gym, you feel flat—stale—and you wonder how that happened after just one workout. The answer: You did more work than your body was prepared to do, and you took too little time to recover.

The Minus-Five-Repetition Rule: Cosgrove has a unique system for keeping your enthusiasm in check while ensuring fast and steady results. You can choose any training plan. Then you're going to do less work in each set than your body can handle—a lot less at first, a little less later. Here's how it works:

For any exercise, you probably have a pretty good idea of how many repetitions you can do with a given weight. So put your memory to work as you devise a rebound strategy. Let's say your routine calls for a set of 10 bench presses, and before your layoff, you would've used 135 pounds for those 10 repetitions. Cosgrove's system requires that you select a weight that you're sure you could've lifted 15 times before your layoff. You'll still do 10 repetitions, but you'll use a weight you would normally use for 15.

That's week 1: minus-five repetitions. Week 2 is minus four, week 3 is minus three, week 4 is minus two, and week 5 is minus one. At week 6, you'll be using your prelayoff weights. So if the routine calls for sets of 10 bench presses, you use 135 pounds. Which means you should be using heavier weights than before in week 7 and beyond.