What Happens When You Stop Working Out For 30 Days

How much muscle do you lose when you stop working out? Find out what happens to your body when you stop exercising and how long can you stop working out before it becomes a problem.

In an effort to show you the powerful effects of consistency with exercise and working out, I want to show you the opposite scenario.

By:  Tim Ernst – Founder of Body Blitz Max, 180 Muscle and Barbell/Dumbbell Ripped Muscle Complexes

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your body if you stopped exercising for 30 days? How about a year?

What if you never worked out again?

In today’s article I want to go over the physiological and psychological effects of never working out again.

My goal is to hopefully show you the benefits of continuing to work out and staying consistent.

For all of you people who are advanced you may want to read this entire article because the more fit you are the faster you tend to lose the benefits of exercise.

The technical term for stopping exercise for an extended period of time is known by experts as “detraining” and there’s a couple things that happen when you go through this process.

Blood Vessels

One of the very first things that changes are your blood vessels.

In fact according to a study done at the University of Connecticut your blood vessels will adapt to your change in activity levels within only two weeks.

According to this study the effects on your blood vessels are so great that after just 30 days of not working out, your blood pressure could go back to the same levels that it would be at if you never were working out to begin with.

This study kind of shocked me because I always thought that you would maintain at least your cardiovascular benefits for longer, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

If you take a month off your blood pressure shoots right back up so what’s the point?

Well that’s true, but according to those standards I would then argue “what’s the point of showering, or brushing your teeth.

After 24 hours you have to do it again…everyday or else you’re gonna stink.

Let’s look at what happens next.

Obviously if your blood vessels change it makes it a lot harder to use oxygen as efficiently.

Oxygen

One of the very first things to go down is your VO2 Max which is the measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen you can utilize during intense exercise.

It’s important to note that VO2 max doesn’t just give us an idea of how good your aerobic capacity is with intense exercise, but it also will reflect across all forms of cardiovascular activity.

So….. you know…. when you come back to the gym after going on vacation for a week or two or just taking some time off…everything seems to get you super winded and your heart rate feels very high even from things that felt pretty simple a few weeks earlier.

Well that’s one of the drawbacks of your VO2 Max declining.

Studies indicate that after just 12 days it’ll decline by 7 to 10 percent. That’s a light estimate.

Some studies report that after just 2 weeks VO2 max can decline by twenty percent and believe me, you’ll feel even a seven percent decline so that’s a lot.

The reason why this happens when you stop working out is because you lose mitochondria.

Mitochondria

These are mini-factories within your muscle cells that convert oxygen into energy.

On study reported that after just 2 weeks of inactivity the muscle mitochondrial content decreased as much as 6 weeks of endurance training increased it.

So 6 weeks of work for 2 weeks of rest….That’s a big bummer.

Blood Sugar

Next your blood sugar levels are going to spike up and if you’ve been reading my articles for a little while now, you know that not only does that lead to health problems but high blood sugar also triggers insulin and fat storage.

Normally when you exercise the food that you ate is used as fuel for your workouts, that’s why you’re always hearing about maintaining an energy balance between diet and exercise.

When you no longer exercise, but you continue to fuel your body with food it’s like continuously filling a car that’s siting in park.

You hit a point known as spillover except unlike the parked car you won’t have fuel spilling over on ground.

That spillover happens inside your body and the extra fuel spills over into your fat cells.

Your body will first use that blood sugar to replenish depleted glucose in your muscle tissue and then your liver.

However, once those are full it’s got nowhere to go except fat cells.

To make matters worse after just a week of not exercising your muscles mitochondrial activity in your muscle cells slow down making your metabolism slower.

So you’re not only burning less from a lack of activity, but your resting metabolic rate drops.

I’m sure everyone reading this understands that this is a perfect recipe for losing lean muscle tissue and body-fat.

Study

A study in the journal of strength and conditioning research found that a five-week exercise break boosted college swimmers fat mass by 12%

Another study looked at what happens to muscle mass when people took one week of bed rest.

Keep in mind, bed rest and not being active or not the same thing but this study does help give us an idea of what happens to the body when we stay sedentary for longer.

The study was performed in the Netherlands at the school of nutrition and translational research in metabolism.

They found that just one week of bed rest substantially reduced skeletal muscle mass and lowered whole body insulin sensitivity.

This is a double-edged sword because not only are you losing muscle mass but the effects on your insulin levels will make you store fat.

In another study these same researchers found that even five days of disuse can lead to a 4% decline in muscle mass and a 9% decline in muscle strength.

Like I stated earlier, just because you’re not exercising doesn’t mean that you’re laying around in bed all day every day. However, these effects were noticed just after one week.

If you spend a week recovering while not being confined to your bed all day you’ll probably be fine, but if you spent a month not exercising even if you’re not bedridden all day just by being sedentary you’re going experience similar effects.

The worst part is that if you’re in better shape you’re going to have more muscle mass and you’ll lose more strength and muscle size compared to people that are less fit.

The last major effect that I want to talk about is with your psychology rather than your physiology.

Psychology

Most of you know that when you exercise your body releases endorphins which are hormones that make you feel really good and happy.

Obviously when you stop exercising you could expect to get a little grumpy because you won’t be getting the boost and mood from all those pleasure hormones like endorphins anymore but that’s just the beginning.

Of the psychological effects of not exercising, anxiety and stress both go up when you don’t exercise.

This can lead to depression, trouble getting to sleep and weight gain.

When you stop exercising your body quite literally forgets how to handle stress and your natural stress response begins to atrophy just like your muscles.

However what I find even worse is whatnot exercising has on your motivation over time.

You see your motivation to get to the gym and workout snowballs, meaning if you consistently go to the gym not only are you making exercise a part of your routine and your habits, but you’re also making be easier to go exercise again next time due to momentum.

I call this forward momentum.

The trouble with momentum is that it could swing both ways.

If you’re not exercising for a couple weeks or a month, you’re creating backwards momentum.

It’s a lot easier to say no to going to the gym after you put it off for two weeks and it’s even easier to say no after putting it off for a month especially when you know for a fact that when you do start exercising again it’s gonna be painful.

Because of all the physiological effects that I already talked about like blood pressure, getting enough oxygen, muscles getting weaker, all of that is going to increase your desire to push it off and voila you have backwards momentum.

Momentum is something that you want on your side because it’s no secret that momentum is a very difficult force to reverse.

However, the solution no matter how long you’ve stopped exercising remains the same.

Start exercising again as soon as possible and remain consistent.

I like to exercise every day because it gives me forward momentum and surprisingly makes it even easier to get into the gym then when I exercise less often.

Remember, consistency is the number one key to you getting the results and maintaining them for the long haul so be consistent.

I really do hope this article helps dissuade you from considering stopping your workouts.

If you need some time to recover, take a week off and do some light body-weight training for some active recovery.

What’s Next?

As you probably know or at some point you’ve been told that the best way to build muscle is by training each muscle group a different day of the week…

• Chest on Monday…
• Legs on Tuesday…
• Back on Wednesday…
• And so on. Or…

Maybe you’ve tried the double-up split where you train upper body one day, then lower body the next.

However, there’s something you need to know….

These workouts are silently chipping away at your testosterone levels and causing you to leave massive muscle building results on the table…

Yes you read that right…

But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be this way. Because…

Believe it or not, there’s one type of muscle building routine that’s BEST for your male hormones and packing on some serious size at the exact same time.

And to prove it, here is..

=> The Mother Of All Muscle Building Routines