How to Rebuild Your Gym Routine

The global COVID pandemic has affected all of us. If you are a regular gym goer, there’s a high likelihood that your workout program has been affected, either by our club closure or having to quarantine due to exposure to the virus. Getting back into your gym routine can be a real challenge. In this article I’ll provide a roadmap to getting back into your pre-pandemic routine. 

Set Realistic Expectations
When you are coming back from a layoff, you need to adjust your expectations regarding what you can lift and the effort you can put into the workout. You will not be able to lift the same weight or do the same number of reps that you previously could. Going into your first come-back workout accepting this fact will prevent you from trying to push too much weight and potentially injuring yourself. 

You should expect that your one rep max will drop about 10 percent after a layoff for a couple of months. Plan and work for that. Above all, listen to your body, never forcing your muscles to push beyond what it is capable of doing. 

Ease Back Into the Workouts
Your body has been allowed to ease out of the workout habit, so you need to ease it back in. Just as you can’t lift the same amount of weight that you could before your lay-off, neither can you train with the same amount of intensity. So you can’t expect to just jump back in where you left off. 

If you were training 5 days a week for 90 minutes each work before, start back with 3 weekly workouts. For the first couple of weeks, stick with higher reps range, not going below 10. Then, as you feel your body getting back into the groove, step it up to 4 days and work down to a couple of sets of 8, then 6, as you increase the weight accordingly. 

Give Yourself More Time to Recover
Remember back to when you first started working out. You would have experienced quite a lot of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Well, get ready for a repeat when you come back after your lay-off. Your unused muscles will get quite a shock when you impose weight training stress on them again and they’ll respond in a way that you will feel. As a result, you need more time to recover from the workout before you impose new demands on the muscle.

Rather than working a muscle every 48 hours as you may have done previously, space the workouts 72 hours apart for the first couple of weeks. Be sure to get a minimum of 7-8 hours rest each night and keep your body well hydrated. You may also benefit from applying a muscle pain reliever like Deep Heat after your first few workouts. 

Nutrition
If you’re like most people, you probably let your diet get a bit loose during the time that you were away from the gym. When you get back into your workouts, it’s important that you make the adjustments so that you are supplying your body with the nutrients it needs to perform. Have a pre-workout meal a couple of hours before hitting the gym, including a lean portion of protein and a starchy carb like sweet potato. Just before the workout, take a banana or a pre-workout. Then, once the workout’s done, down a protein shake to fast track protein synthesis.

Wrap Up
Ease your way back into the gym after a lay-off. Expect to be not quite as strong and adjust your weights accordingly. Begin with 3 sessions per week and gradually increase back to your pre-break training volume. Expect, too, to have more post workout soreness than usual, optimizing your recovery to suit, Finally, get back on track with your nutrition so that you’re feeding your muscles with the nutrients they need to perform for you.