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You Stopped Exercising. The Gains That Stuck Around Might Surprise You.
You Stopped Exercising. The Gains That Stuck Around Might Surprise You.
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0:00
You and I both know that I am not a fitness influencer.
0:02
I host a science channel.
0:04
So I am here with the relatable fitness content;
0:07
the guidance for the average person who tries to be a little
0:10
healthier by making a resolution to go to the gym every January…
0:13
and never makes it through the whole year.
0:15
When you, perhaps inevitably, stop exercising, it can feel like all of that effort was for nothing.
0:20
Like you lose the gains that you worked so hard for.
0:23
But there’s research out there telling a different story.
0:26
Studies suggest that even if you give up exercising after
0:30
only weeks of sticking to your goal, you keep some of the improvements.
0:34
You can pick up that good habit months or even years later and
0:38
still benefit from the work you put in before.
0:40
As it turns out, your burst of motivation can help you out for longer than you might think.
0:46
[♪ INTRO]
0:49
You know exercise is good for you, and so do I.
0:52
That’s why every year, around January,
0:54
we spend just enough time using that gym membership to justify keeping it.
0:59
Many people quit after a matter of weeks.
1:01
So many that there’s a name for this time after a New Year when your gym empties out.
1:05
It’s called “quitters’ day.”
1:07
So if you’re thinking about dialing the exercise back right around now, you’re not alone.
1:11
Whenever your own personal quitters’ day is,
1:14
that’s when you begin the long process of detraining.
1:17
This results in your body slowly losing the gains you made during your temporary training regimen.
1:22
And luckily, it doesn’t all happen immediately.
1:24
In fact, some of those gains stick with you
1:27
for long enough that your next gym attempt is more effective.
1:30
Now perhaps, you’re watching this video from a treadmill,
1:33
still going strong with your New Year’s resolution.
1:36
But if your resolve is starting to waver,
1:38
whatever time you’ve already spent working on yourself has been worth it.
1:42
Let’s say you stick it out for 16 weeks of exercise this year.
1:45
If you start in January, that would bring you to April.
1:49
Maybe you quit at that point and take the next 10 weeks off.
1:52
You might think that your resolution training was all for nothing.
1:55
You would be wrong.
1:56
This exact timeline was tested in people aged 60 and older.
2:00
So the resilience that the researchers found wasn’t just a matter of being young.
2:04
Study participants started out completing a circuit of either strength training exercises,
2:08
like what you might do at physical therapy,
2:09
or moderate cardiovascular exercises, like biking, for 20 minutes three times per week.
2:15
As the study went on, they ramped up the workouts.
2:18
From all that hard work, participants
2:20
improved both their cardiovascular endurance and their muscle strength.
2:24
Then, when they stopped, some of the gains were lost.
2:26
Nobody’s surprised by that.
2:28
It’s when the researchers looked at which gains stuck around that things got interesting.
2:32
After weeks of detraining,
2:34
the participants didn’t all end up back at their baseline from before training.
2:38
They held onto a significant amount of cardio fitness.
2:42
Their recently acquired muscle strength, on the other hand, went away faster.
2:46
So over ten weeks, they were definitely in a period of detraining.
2:49
But it didn’t completely demolish their progress, particularly for the cardio group.
2:54
In fact, when they started retraining again after
2:56
10 weeks of break, the effects of the two training sessions were additive.
3:01
Growth in metrics like how efficiently their bodies took in oxygen built on
3:05
top of progress made during the first training session.
3:08
So by the end of the second training session,
3:10
they had made cumulative improvements, despite substantial time away from the gym.
3:15
The effects were strong enough for the researchers to conclude that training
3:18
is easier when you have trained before, even if it’s been a while.
3:22
Now, that’s a lot to promise for you, the New Year’s resolution exerciser.
3:26
Especially because you’ve probably been there before.
3:29
I doubt this is your first year staring down quitters’ day and
3:32
feeling a bit less motivated than you were on January first.
3:36
And it’s still not easy.
3:37
But one thing research tells us is that results can vary depending on the kind of exercise you do.
3:42
In this study, the participants that focused on strength training
3:45
lost more of their gains than those that honed their aerobic fitness.
3:49
And even within the aerobic exercises,
3:51
the treadmill warriors had more cumulative payoff than the cyclist superstars.
3:56
Which is a shame, because I do not want to run.
3:59
So gains from different exercises last for different amounts of time.
4:02
But even gains from the same exercise can wear
4:05
off sooner or later depending on the intensity of your training.
4:08
Another study tested this in a group of older men described as “healthy but inactive.”
4:13
Haha. Oh no...
4:16
it’s me...
4:16
These participants trained on either a low or high intensity exercise program for 24 weeks.
4:22
Both programs involved strength, power,
4:25
and mobility exercises, like cycling and weight machines, three times per week.
4:30
The difference between high and low intensity training was the number of reps, resistance,
4:35
and, you know, intensity of those exercises.
4:37
Once again, nobody’s surprised that the high intensity group
4:40
had greater gains from that training schedule than the low intensity group.
4:44
The interesting thing was how they compared after months of detraining.
4:49
At that point, the high intensity group still had
4:51
their improved strength and mobility …but the low intensity group did not.
4:56
Again, it didn’t go away all at once.
4:58
The low intensity participants kept almost half of their strength after four months of detraining.
5:03
But 4 months after that, they were back to baseline.
5:06
So after completing low intensity exercise,
5:08
eight months of inactivity will put you back where you started.
5:12
But if you pick things up sooner than that,
5:14
you can start back up in better shape than you might think.
5:17
Also, if you completed high intensity exercise, then your gains will decline from inactivity,
5:22
but you won’t go all the way back to baseline even a full year after stopping.
5:26
Which means that more intense exercise seems to stick with you for longer.
5:30
But before I get to the data on the kind of really intense exercise
5:34
that competitive athletes are familiar with, we need to pause for an ad break.
5:39
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6:26
Some of the most intense training sessions happen in the context of athletic competition.
6:30
And even elite athletes build their detraining periods into their annual exercise plans.
6:36
They wouldn’t do that if it were a total loss of all the progress they made until then.
6:41
And, in fact, it’s not.
6:42
One small study assessed this pattern in adolescent swimmers.
6:46
These volunteers each had at least five years of competitive experience
6:50
and had been training six or seven times per week.
6:54
They were serious athletes.
6:55
And even they took four weeks off.
6:58
After those four weeks, their overall performance dipped a bit.
7:01
They came back with a slower stroke rate and reduced aerobic performance.
7:05
But that aerobic reduction was only by a factor of 1.8%,
7:09
and many other metrics were statistically unchanged.
7:12
1.8% matters in a competition that decides winners and losers over fractions of a second.
7:18
But thinking about the bigger picture of how many adaptations your body keeps despite stopping your
7:24
regular training, 1.8% deterioration over a month is impressively minimal.
7:28
But that’s what happens when you’re still competing and just took an off season to recover.
7:33
The impression we get from our average viewer is that if you
7:36
competed when you were a student, that might have been years ago.
7:40
The good news is there could still be some
7:42
leftover benefits sticking around from your glory days.
7:46
Depending on your physical condition at the start of detraining, you can take years off
7:50
and still have physiological adaptations from that time in your life when you regularly exercised.
7:56
One longitudinal study checked up on high school hockey players over time
8:00
to see how long they retained their athletic adaptations.
8:03
While training, players who exercised more gained more bone mineral density.
8:08
So the researchers assessed the players’ bones using x-rays in almost six years of follow ups.
8:14
After high school, half of the athletes stopped playing hockey and lost some bone mineral density.
8:19
But it was still significantly higher than non-athletes three
8:23
years later at the final follow up assessment.
8:26
A similar, yet small, study tested female gymnasts and found that they also had more bone
8:31
mineral density than their non-athletic peers even four years after they stopped competing.
8:36
At this point, both former gymnasts and non-gymnasts in the study were
8:40
exercising less than four hours per week on average.
8:43
But the gymnasts still had greater bone mineral density than the non-gymnasts.
8:47
All of these studies concluded that it takes time for the benefits of exercise to wear off.
8:52
If you find yourself in an annual cycle of training and detraining,
8:55
feeling like you’re going back to square on every quitters’ day,
8:59
hopefully this data shows you that your efforts weren’t wasted.
9:03
Your body retains at least some of the benefits
9:05
from that time … even if you don’t see a treadmill again until next January.
9:09
But don’t let that be an excuse!
9:10
Keep Going!
9:11
It’s better if you keep going!
9:13
[♪ OUTRO]
