What happens to your muscles when you stop exercising? Do they automatically start shrinking when after a week of not going to the gym? If muscles are formed when torn fibers heal, how is it possible that they shrink again? The tears still occurred so how can they just shrink? Also is it harder to get those muscles again after you quit going to the gym?
In: 7
58 YO male who stopped going to the gym in 1990. At the time I was 6’4″ and weighed ~275 lbs. with around 10% body fat.
In October of 2021, I started a new job and stepped on a pallet scale, and weighed 316 lbs. Last Monday I was 299, and the wife and I have started moderate workouts. Swimming yoga, cardio.
All this by way of telling you that your muscles WILL atrophy from lack of use, and it is NOT easy to regain either muscle mass OR flexibility once you do. We plan on retiring in a couple years, by which time I hope to be down to around 250, and have more flexibility and cardio, if not necessarily bulk.
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