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Over the past several months you have been working through a well thought out exercise and movement routine.
You have been getting in your steps.
You have been doing 3 days a week of strength training.
You have been doing more easy cardio sessions.
Heck you have even been able to add in some high intensity cardio as well.
Things have been working in your favor and you haven’t missed a single planned workout for weeks!
Not only that, you are noticing a ton of benefits. You are seeing muscle definition in places you didn’t before. You can go for long hikes on the weekends. You can play sports with your kids without being out of breath or fear of hurting yourself. But best of all with all this new fitness, you feel more capable in everyday life, there isn’t anything you have to say no to.
YOU ARE CRUSHING IT!
The All-or-Nothing Trap
Then life hits…work gets busy, at the same time your kids get sick, and your significant other suddenly gets a new job which takes up more time and puts more responsibilities on you.
You are missing workouts left and right as you struggle to adjust.
Have you just undone all the hard work you have put in over the past few months?
The all or nothing mindset takes over and you figure if you can’t follow your established routine and you are going to lose all the gains you have made why do anything? Might as well do nothing at all.
This story is all too common within the health and fitness arena.
If it can’t be done perfectly then might as well not do it at all, right?
WRONG!
In fact doing something, anything, no matter how insignificant it might seem, will always be better than doing nothing. In fact in many situations doing something is FAR MORE IMPACTFUL THAN IT MAY SEEM.
The Science of Reduced Training
A good example of this is a recent study (Terzis, 2024) done on how little training people can do to maintain their fitness.
In this study a group of 34 healthy females ages 18-26 who had not exercised in the past 2 years were split into two groups, an exercise group and a control group. The control group did no exercise for the entire duration of the study. 27 of the 34 participants were assigned to the exercise group.
For the first 12 weeks of the study the exercise group performed a combined strength and aerobic training protocol 2 times per week. Each training session lasted an hour and consisted of several sets of leg presses followed by 10 sets of 60 second sprints on an exercise bike with 60 seconds of recovery between each set of sprints. The weight on the leg press and the resistance on the exercise bike were increased gradually over the course of the 12 weeks of training.
For the next 12 weeks of the study the exercise group was split into 3 subgroups. The first subgroup performed the same exercises session once a week instead of twice a week. The second subgroup performed the same exercise session once every other week. The third subgroup stopped exercising entirely over the next 12 weeks.
In the final 12 weeks of the study all participants stopped exercising.
Researchers evaluated muscle strength, muscle thickness, and aerobic fitness throughout the study to show the effects of training and then detraining.
Surprising Results: Less Can Be More
At the end of the 36 week study the results showed that as soon as the participants stopped training all together they started losing fitness. The participants that stopped training after the initial 12 weeks immediately and consistently lost fitness throughout the rest of the study. When all participants stopped training after 24 weeks everyone saw a drop in fitness.
This is not really surprising, if you do nothing you can’t expect to maintain the fitness that you have gained.
The interesting results are in weeks 12-24 between the groups that cut their training to once a week or once every other week. Keep in mind that everyone in these two groups were training twice per week in the initial 12 weeks. So the group that cut their training to once a week cut their training volume in half, and the group that was training every other week was only doing ¼ of the work they were doing in the first 12 weeks.
The results of the study showed the group that trained once a week were able to maintain their fitness despite cutting their training volume in half! That is not bad for halving the volume of training you once were doing.
The group that trained every other week did see some loss in fitness, but it was not drastic by any means at all. In fact by training once every other week participants were able to maintain 91-95% of their fitness!
Here are some graphs illustrating the changes in muscle strength, muscle size, and aerobic fitness for the various groups.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11280775
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11280775
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11280775
Strength vs. Size: What Persists?
If you study these graphs you will notice that strength is much more well preserved training once every other week than muscle size or aerobic fitness, but we still see those markers of fitness above baseline!
However look at those participants that stopped training after week 12. By week 24 their muscle size and aerobic fitness had deteriorated back to the point before they started exercising!
Key Insights: Something is Always Better Than Nothing
The main takeaway from this study is that doing something is better than doing nothing. In addition to that doing something is probably way more impactful than you think!
Getting stuck in the all or nothing mindset is so detrimental because as we see even if you can only do ½ of what you were doing before you are probably not going to improve your fitness but you certainly won’t be losing any fitness!
Applying the Lessons: Maintaining Gains in Tough Times
When we go through those times in life where you can’t be perfect and we need to cut way back on exercise habits don’t worry, you won’t be back sliding at all. The goal for these periods of time is to basically maintain your gains until life returns to normal and/or you adjust to the new routine. This not only goes for fitness but for all aspects of your lifestyle. Don’t worry if the scale isn’t moving, you can’t eliminate more stress in your life, you can’t lift more weight, the goal is to survive the tough period and come out the other side no worse off than before!
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References
Terzis, G. (2024, July 22). Effect of Different Reduced Training Frequencies after 12 Weeks of Concurrent Resistance and Aerobic Training on Muscle Strength and Morphology. Effect of Different Reduced Training Frequencies after 12 Weeks of Concurrent Resistance and Aerobic Training on Muscle Strength and Morphology. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39058089/