Back story:
On August 16th I was making personal gains and was very excited with the progress on my lifts. Only problem was that I had to go on a “vacation” for a week with no training/reduced calorie diet. Then immediately after getting back I had wisdom teeth surgery and now I’m out for probably 2 weeks and will probably lose a lot of strength. I’m guessing that if I wait until I’ve recovered enough to restart without worrying myself it will be around September 4.
I’m assuming that when I return I can’t just go back to what i was doing before (5/3/1 triumverate) and expected to be at the same strength level + progressing.
My question is, after a break like this what are the most effective ways to get myself back to the where I was before the break so that I can begin to hit PRs again?
I honestly dont think there are any special secrets on how to bounce back to prior strength but if your eating enough during this time, maybe doing some stretching to keep the muscles from getting tight or foam rolling regulary too would be a good idea.
I think that once your back and you start hammering again your strength will come back relatively quick. I hadent trained shoulders in like 3months due to an injury and basically just rehabed them for that time and last week started working them out again, strength came back just as strong ±.
Also like I said with stretching and foam rolling, its important what you do with this “off” time as well to prepare yourself to lifting weights again. Your muscles will supercompensate quite quickly as 3 weeks isnt THAT bad lay off from gym.
Just my two cents dude…
Because my mouth seems to be healing slowly I haven’t really been able to get as much food in as I wanted. I’ve dropped 10 lbs in the past 3 weeks which is extremely frustrating. Going to head back into the gym tomorrow and do some quick light bench/squat/deads/chin-ups to get back into the flow before I jump back into a program.
make sure ure mouth has healed sufficiently before any strenuous activity. besides that just decrease ure off ure PR a few lbs and feel the weight out (be comfortable but challenging). you should be hitting the same weight within a week or two no problem you can credit it to muscle memory or whatever.
As far as losing 10 lbs i’d just drink protein shakes i remember after having all 4 wisdom teeth pulled it was hard to eat anything solid without getting a mouth full of blood but drinking was no problem.