Have you ever wondered how long your strength gains last after training? It’s been theorized that strength gains can last longer than any other adaptation and some literature points to gains in maximal strength lasting as long as 30 days, possibly even longer. Well just this month there was a study published that showed otherwise and we’re going to go over their findings right now!

The Study

Just this month the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a study called “The Effects of 3 vs 5 Days of Training Cessation on Maximal Strength”. The study was put together and conducted by Kyle Travis, Inigo Mujika, Kevin Zwetsloot, Jeremy Gentles, Michael Stone, and Caleb Bazyler and they sought to find out how long maximal strength gains last after stopping your training. The study used 19 strength trained athletes and the parameters of the individuals were the following:

• Age = 23.4 +/- 4.1 years

• Weight = 90.8kg +/- 20.7kg (200 +/- 45.5 in freedom units/lbs)

• Height = 174.2 +/- 7.3cm (68.5 +/- 2.8 in freedom units/inches)

This study is actually somewhat of a rarity in the sense that they used “strength trained individuals”. The majority of the studies we see deal with untrained individuals due to both costs and the fact that people who take their training seriously (athletes and gym rats alike) don’t want to deviate from their plan for the sake of a study. These individual parameters give this study a little bit more real world application when it comes to athletes which is awesome!

They put these participants through a four week training block where they trained 3 times per week (another real world application since this mirrors the kinds of training blocks athletes will go through). Each training session consisted of 3-4 movements and 2-3 competition lifts (bench, squat, deadlift) within those movements, and they performed 4-5 sets of 3-5 repetitions with an intensity of 75-100% of their one rep max. This mimics what athletes should be doing within their own training blocks so this is another win as far as real world application for athletes goes!

They took the following measurements both before the study and both 3 and 5 days after completion of the training block:

• Body composition

• Upper body maximal strength

• Lower body maximal strength

• Psychometric measurements (personality, knowledge, attitude, reasoning, etc)

So they had a population similar to an athletic population, they trained in the same manner athletes SHOULD be training in, and tested the parameters we should be testing when training athletes. This is about as real world as it gets in this field.

Here’s a link to the study if you’d like to pay $52 for it to read it in depth. Otherwise you’ll just have to take my word for it.

The Findings

On the last day of this four week training block they tested the athletes and found the following:

• Trivial significant increases in body mass

• Trivial significant increases in bench press 1RM

• Small significant increases in back squat 1RM

• Small significant increases in deadlift 1RM

• Small significant increases in powerlifting total (squat, bench, deadlift 1RM combined)

• Small significant increases in Wilks score

  • Wilks score is basically a way to compare powerlifting totals/single lifts across different weight classes. A higher Wilks score/coefficient is a good thing, in layman’s terms it means that you’re strong for your size. Something almost all athletes need.

They then gave these participants 3 days off before testing again. And then gave them 2 more days off to test again meaning they tested them at day 3 and day 5 after the end of their four week training block (day 31 and then day 33). After three days off there were no significant changes in the testing parameters however after 5 days the findings got interesting. Here’s what it looked like:

Small and significant decreases in maximal bench press strength

Interesting right? Why would it be that every other metric didn’t budge yet our upper extremity strength suffers without training for just five days??? We’re going to explore that in our next section.

Breaking Down the Findings

In all honesty while this study is GREAT for coaches like myself to help us understand physiological adaptations and their timelines, I kind of wish they took it out a little further like maybe 10 days just to see what happened with the lower extremity but for the time being we at least have an understanding that we lose upper extremity maximal strength pretty damn quickly, much faster than the 30 days that had been hypothesized in the past. Four weeks of training in already highly trained individuals (they already have a higher training age, have been training for a while so these weren’t newbie gains) still saw decreases in bench press 1RM at 5 days while leaving the back squat and deadlift 1RMs unaffected. Why is this?

More than likely this is due to one of three things:

• We still have to move around. On average as human beings we should be taking around 10,000 steps per day. Your lower body is still getting work, even at body weight.

• We have a MUCH HIGHER work capacity in our lower extremity due to the fact that we ambulate on our feet, and not our hands. A higher work capacity pushes the strength “ceiling” much higher and could, in theory at least, allow us to hold onto strength gains longer.

• These participants may have gone for a run of some kind, or if they played intramural/recreational sports they got some level of stimulus in their lower extremity leading to them holding onto those adaptations longer.

Our upper extremity just doesn’t go through the same levels of effort throughout the day. You’d probably be surprised how little you move your upper body outside of grabbing something or turning your steering wheel in your car. Outside of manual labor, the vast majority of the population doesn’t really use their upper bodies all that much.

Why Does This Matter?

A while back we as coaches used to make the argument that after a long season of playing sports and not really training as hard as you do in the offseason that the losses in strength seen in the gym were due mostly to loss of movement skill in the squat/bench press/lunge/etc. If you don’t practice these movements under a load, the body will more than likely lose that skill over time which means you won’t be able to perform them with the same load. It comes back fairly quickly but on the surface that strength seems lost as they can’t perform at the same level they did prior to taking off for the season. Here’s an example of how this plays out in real time:

For a good portion of my early career I worked in NFL Combine Prep. A lot of facilities can do really well with Combine Prep, in fact the facility I was at early in my career pulled in over a quarter million dollars in the first 6-7 weeks of the year by doing so. Some of these athletes are getting ready to perform in the Combine but the vast majority of them are getting ready for their Pro Days at their universities. If you don’t know what a Pro Day is, it’s basically a smaller Combine where NFL scouts and coaches get invited to the university to watch players from that university (and sometimes smaller colleges in the area) perform their tests, work them out and interview them. The invited scouts and coaches can choose to come if they’re interested in a player, or decline. I’ve worked with guys who had less than 3 or 4 coaches/scouts show up to their Pro Days, but their numbers get uploaded to a central database where every team can view them so in many ways it’s as important as the NFL Combine.

These guys come to our facilities after a long season and most times after a long bowl season as well, possibly even a layoff after their bowl game if it was early enough in December. Now if you’ve never worked in university athletics understand that during bowl season these teams aren’t necessarily trying to get ready for that bowl game, they’re trying to get more practice for the following season and get guys reps. Oftentimes the gym work gets shoved to the side and these kids may get into the gym once or maybe twice per week, unless they’re playing in a meaningful bowl game and even then it’s still not on the forefront of these coaches’ minds.

When they come in they’re what we call incredibly “de-trained”. They’ve had just enough time away from the gym to be garbage compared to where they could be, but they’re still incredibly strong. They tend to lack work capacity and movement skill which are quick fixes. So we hit them with a ton of volume and progressive overload and BOOM: these guys look strong now. We like to take credit for it (look at the local sports performance facilities stories on the Instas and Facebook who have had Combine and Pro Day prep athletes and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about) but in reality the base for this strength had been laid for the past five years while they were in college. They had just lost the ability to display that strength, which volume and a solid progressive overload will help fix.

With the above information one could possibly conclude that you could still be strong after a long layoff right? Well according to this study the answer is no. Most athletes who take a hiatus from the gym will lose the ability to display that strength because they haven’t had a stimulus where they needed to. If they can’t display it, they can’t use it on the field!

The lower extremity is a little different than the upper extremity, which is why it’s interesting for this study to find no loss in strength in the lower extremity after no real stimulus. Most sports involve sprinting, change of direction and decelerating throughout games and practice. The ground reaction forces of sprinting and changing direction are MILES higher than you’d ever see in a squat, deadlift, lunge variation, etc. Ground reaction forces are essentially a measurement of force, and in these endeavors you’ll see higher ground reaction force than you ever would under a barbell. You more than likely won’t see a huge drop in strength throughout your season in the lower extremity due to these factors, but like I stated above you’ll lose that movement skill and ability to display that strength in the gym and if you can’t display it, do you really have it?

Real World Application

Not every sport would see this drop in upper extremity strength so quickly. Above, we talked about how we still get a stimulus for the lower extremity throughout playing sports due to sprinting and changing direction but there are many sports where the upper extremity will get enough work to provide some level of stimulus. Tennis, golf, baseball, certain positions in football and even hockey are examples of sports where upper extremity strength may not fall off as much without a direct strength stimulus every 5 days. Hitting a ball, throwing a ball, swinging a racquet/club/stick/bat all involve certain levels of strength so with these sports it may not be AS NECESSARY to train as often during the season as it would be to do so throughout the offseason.

All that being said there’s some things to think about with your in season training as an athlete. The above sports mentioned are all a one sided endeavor meaning you’ll be getting a stimulus mostly only on your dominant side. We still need to stay strong in our non dominant hand/arm/shoulder to stay healthy and prevent injuries. Furthermore as a young athlete you’re not trying to maintain strength/power/speed, you’re trying to create/develop it! That means we cannot take off the entirety of the season from the gym and expect to move the needle over time. Given enough time you absolutely CAN AND WILL LOSE STRENGTH in both your upper extremity and lower extremity, this study proved it. Your season is more than likely 6-9 months long, training in the offseason for three months will not lead to long term development of strength. You’ll be fighting a losing battle from this front if you fail to train throughout your season. Why lose the strength you worked so hard to develop in your offseason when you need it the most?!