It doesn’t matter if you are a fitness fan or if you train once in a while, just so you don’t feel guilty about yourself. Almost everyone, sooner or later, happens to miss the appointment with physical activity. Too much work, a holiday or simply changing the season can keep us temporarily away from the gym or our favorite sport. This is not always bad, because the body sometimes needs to recover energy and recharge. However, when the break lasts longer than a few weeks, it is more difficult to resume. We feel we have lost “training”. But what exactly happens to our body?
Our organism is by nature habitual
The more time has passed since your last training session, the easier it is to lose the benefits of exercise. The more seriously you have trained, the slower you will lose your achievements. Our body does not like changes and instead seeks a condition of stability. Homeostasis, i.e. the maintenance of a constant condition, helps to stay in shape longer and with greater health benefits. It is therefore pointless to start an intense sport if you already know that you are not able to complete it for a sufficiently long period. Better to train in a mild but consistent way. We talk about this topic with Professor Daniela Lucini, head of the Section for Exercise Medicine at Humanitas.
Strength or endurance: Here’s what we lose first if we stop training
When we train our body with any sport activity, the work we do on our body is twofold and it acts on both slow contraction muscle fibers (also called type I) and on fast contraction fibers (type II). While the former are responsible for resistance, the latter, especially when stimulated by intensive exercises, contribute to the increase in strength due to their ability to contract quickly.
While the normal motor activity we perform daily (such as talking, sitting, walking or standing) always keeps the slow contraction muscle fibers in training, to train the fast contraction fibers you need to dedicate a special training, without which they would remain almost completely inactive.
Type II fibers, in short, tend to atrophy much more quickly than others, which is why the first thing our muscles lose when we stop training is strength.
The mechanisms of resistance
Even endurance, after skipping a few trainings, starts to give way. We immediately notice this if we are runners: if between one running session and another too much time passes, a real physical change begins in our body. In short, we get tired faster and more easily.
After a period of regular cardiovascular training, type II muscle fibers, i.e., those with fast contraction, tend to change to type II(x) and type II(a). The latter are essential to the success of resistance performance. After a period of pause from training, they tend to return to their original form, with the result that they tend to get tired much faster.
When taking a break is healthy for body and mind
“Overtraining syndrome is characterized above all by fatigue, physical malaise and reduced sports performance,” explained Dr. Lucini. Stopping workouts may not be good for the physical and sports goals you want to achieve. That does not mean that taking a break is always bad. Especially if you train intensively, a break can help improve your muscle and aerobic performance. To avoid the so-called overtraining syndrome, it is better to stop for a while from time to time, to the benefit of the body and mind. But how do you understand when the time is right? If your muscles are still sore after 72 hours of your last workout, your body is probably asking you to slow down. For a few days, a week or even two. If necessary, it is better to do so without fearing any loss of the results previously acquired.
