How to Maintain Your Muscle Size & Strength When You Can’t Get To The Gym PLUS Sample Bodyweight, Band and Dumbbell Workouts

Fitness + Training
Written By Blakley Bonds

Have you ever missed a workout or even a week or two at the gym and been afraid that you’ve lost all of your progress?

What happens if you go on vacation and don’t have access to a gym? Do you lose your strength?

It’s time to get some answers!

In this article we’re going to talk about: 

  • What happens to your strength and muscle size if you stop exercising completely

  • If you can you maintain your strength and muscle size without lifting weights

  • How much exercise do you need to do to maintain your strength and muscle size

  • The perfect workout you can do to help maintain your muscle and strength with or without weights

Ok, here we go. Grab a cup of coffee or a cocktail and let’s see how we can handle these challenging times without our biceps paying the price.  

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR STRENGTH AND MUSCLE SIZE IF YOU STOP EXERCISING?

Let’s go worst case scenario here.  

Not only are you stuck without a gym to go to or a home gym with minimal equipment but you’ve lost the motivation to do anything. 

You’re just existing.  Going to work.  Binging on old Seinfeld episodes on Hulu and doing 12 oz curls.  

I’d love to sit here and say “You’ll be fine and won’t lose any progress”.  

Buuuuut the research disagrees and so must I.  Several studies including this one and this one showed that we do in fact lose significant muscle (and therefore strength) once we stop training.  Even as quickly as just a week and a half completely off the weights.  This is called muscle atrophy. Gulp.  

Not good news if we’re facing an extended layoff right?!?

I do have some good news if you’re at least interested in doing SOMETHING to help your cause while you can’t grab a hold of some dumbbells or a barbell. 

CAN YOU MAINTAIN YOUR MUSCLE STRENGTH AND SIZE WITHOUT LIFTING WEIGHTS?

No more bad news from here on out I promise!

Yes, you can maintain most of your muscle and strength even if you can’t keep hitting your normal routine.  

I bolded and used italic on “most” for a reason.   We’ve got to be realistic here.  There’s no 100% substitute for lifting weights for building strength and size.

But! As long as you don’t take the couch potato route and you’re smart about your nutrition, activity and the training you do continue to do, you can expect to keep 90-95% of your strength and size even after 4-8 weeks.  

Here’s the deal.  Muscles are dumb.  

They do two things:

  1. Get Longer

  2. Get Shorter

That’s it.  Once again thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

But really…

Your bicep doesn’t know if you’re curling a 50lb dumbbell, a band with 50lbs of resistance or a 50lb Chiweenie.   It only knows that you’re making it work.

Now obviously there’s a limit to how many 50lb Chiweenies you can string together to keep increasing the work on those muscles and that will limit your ability to increase your strength without lifting weights.  

 
IMG_4843.jpg

SUP?

 

Remember, the reason muscles grow and get stronger is because we continually ask them to do more, and harder work combined with providing them with extra calories to get bigger.

But the good news is, as long as you challenge your muscles with some good ol’ fashioned hard work they’ll know that they need to stick around instead of shrinking like a grape in the hot sun. 

Sometimes “maintenance” is progress and not having access to a gym or heavy weights for an extended period would certainly qualify as one of those times.

Use it or lose it. 

Makes sense right? 

Well how much does it really take? 

HOW MUCH EXERCISE DO YOU NEED TO DO TO MAINTAIN YOUR MUSCLE SIZE & STRENGTH?

Ready for some more good news? 

You might not have to do as much as you think!

This study done at the University of Alabama took a group of people and trained them.  Then they broke that group into 3 smaller groups.  

  • Group 1 didn’t do any further exercise.  Guess what happened?  Yeah they lost significant strength and muscle size. 

  • Group 2 trained once per week and did 9 sets of exercise.

  • Group 3 trained once per week and did 3 sets of exercise. 

Both groups 2 and 3 maintained most of their strength and muscle size with only slight losses.  The group that did 9 sets lost less in total. 

Now I gotta point out… Groups 2 and 3 still had access to weights, which you might not.  

But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost.  

Like we said, muscles are dumb.  They don’t know WHAT you’re lifting they just know you’re making them work. 

So as far as how much exercise YOU need to maintain your strength and size, you need to evaluate your situation a bit.  

Do you have a full gym set up with weights?  You can probably get by with as little as one tough full body workout per week. 

Do you have some light dumbbells or resistance bands?  You better count on putting in some work 3-4 times per week?

Do you have zero equipment?  Get ready to get busy every other day. 

Before we move on… I want to point out that one of the things that makes our muscles look as amazing as they do is that they contain 2 important things.

Water & stored carbohydrates (glycogen).  When we stop or decrease our training we store less of these bad boys in the muscles. 

That decrease in water and glycogen can make our muscles look smaller when in fact the actual muscle tissue is all still there.  That’s good news!

So maybe you’re wondering… 

What should I be doing as far as workouts to maintain as much muscle and size as I can? 

Here we go!

THE PERFECT WORKOUT TO MAINTAIN MUSCLE AND STRENGTH WITHOUT A GYM

***lingo alert!*** - A “hard set” is one taken to a few reps before failure.  Remember, failure is right before your form breaks down.  No ugly reps!

Remember, the goal is to challenge the muscles so that they have a reason to stick around!

IF YOU HAVE NO EQUIPMENT:

** Do this bad boy every other day and you’re golden.  

IF YOU HAVE ONLY RESISTANCE BANDS:

** This is ALOT of work.  But hey you want results right?  Fit this in 3x per week and you’ll be all set. 

IF YOU HAVE ONLY DUMBBELLS:

** This is a lot of work too but it will do the trick.  Do it 3x per week and you’ll be a happy camper. 

HOW ABOUT A GOOD GENERAL WARMUP THAT YOU CAN DO BEFORE ANY OF THESE WORKOUTS?

Set a 5:00 clock and repeat this circuit with just your bodyweight:

** You’ll be good and warm and ready to rock.  

So eventually you’ll probably either go back to the gym or outfit your own garage/basement gym right?  

Lucky you we have an article with our suggestions on how to spend that hard earned dough and make the most gains.  

SUMMARY

We covered a lot of ground today so let’s hit the high notes to refresh our memory.  

If you’ve made some gains in muscle size and strength and now you’re stuck without access to the gym, not all hope is lost.  

Unless you decide to stop doing everything all together (bad idea) you can maintain a ton of your progress if you’re wiling to work.  

Muscles are dumb, but they want to hang around if you give them a reason to.  That reason is WORK!

Challenge them with some work and you’ll retain a lot of their size and strength. 

The heavier weights you have available to train with, the less frequently you’ll need to work them during this “layoff”. 

If you’ve only got your own body weight, some bands and/or some dumbbells you’re going to have to work a little harder and more often. 

But don’t stress!  You’re in this for the long haul right?  We’ll look back in 5 years and this will just be a blip on the radar and you’ll be back to makin’ regular gains week after week. 

Have any questions?  

Looking for a coach, workout program or your own custom solution?

That’s what we do!  

APPLY FOR COACHING TODAY

Blakley Bonds https://www.digitalbarbell.com
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