THE CHARCOAL EXPRESS

When I joined our company bikini open contest, I worked out most of my body muscles and it took a lot of sweat before I got the bud enough to win me second place.  I only have a month to prepare because I stopped lifting weights two months earlier yet I’m still fortunate I made it in time prior to the event and it’s worth the pain. 

To reward myself, I’ve decided to take a rest from my exercise program and stay away from the gym for a couple of days or so.  A week passed, I felt good about the break but I found my officemates noticing that I’m shrinking.  All of them, even my mom, tell me that I’m getting thin they start asking why is it so? I often tell them I’m on a workout hiatus for the sake of answering their question – which suddenly gave me the urge of getting back in the gym.  So what do you know? People still care about my built, huh.

Since I’m fed up with the interrogative remarks and I’m worried about losing my hardly earned figure, I’ve decided to get back in shape and start beefing up again.  The layoff is now officially over.

I only have one question in mind:  how do I begin? Here’s what I have found out.

The Layoff: 1-4 Weeks

You haven’t lost much—if anything. A Spanish study published in 2000 found that lifters didn’t lose strength after four weeks without exercise, and a 1999 Australian study showed no decline in resting metabolism after three weeks of inactivity, indicating that no muscle was lost.

In fact, if the break lasted just one or two weeks, you may have done your body a favor. “These periodic layoffs work wonders,” says Dave Pearson, PhD, CSCS, 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 3-4 weeks, Pearson sug-gests 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: 1-6 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 five weeks, says Alwyn Cosgrove, CSCS, 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 Layoff: More Than six Months

Sorry, but you’re a beginner again. You have to think of your body as a completely deconditioned blob of ectoplasm, even if it doesn’t look quite that bad to the naked eye. Fortunately, Juan Carlos Santana, CSCS, a trainer and owner of the Institute of Human Performance, in Boca Raton, Florida, believes you can easily get back to where you once belonged in 12-18 weeks, as long as you stick to a disciplined schedule. The key: Start with a firm goal. Let’s say that during the prime of your XFL career (four weeks) you did squats using 225 pounds, and let’s assume you want to become strong enough to work with that kind of weight again.

Source:  Men’s Health Philippines

So, I’m fine then.  I just can’t stand people telling me I’m thin.  I’m not!  You’ll see.