muscle depletion

LoeshaElizabeth

Ive been a bit rubbish this week with working out, been really stressed and down and havent had a lot of tine as its coming to the end of my college course so lots of assigbments to get in ect. I was wondering how long it takes for tge muscle to start going again. Ive worked hard and gained a fair amout of strength so dint want to loose it. Im going to try and get back into it but realistically im looking at only doing 1 strength training workout per group (core, arms, legs) per week. Is that still enough to improve? And will having a week off have an effect?

sijomial

I've seen it stated that three weeks is the time period before you start to lose muscle mass.
Strength would decline quicker but that's your CNS (reverse of the effect where you gain strength very quickly through your CNS adapting when starting a new regime, well before any muscle mass gain).
Having a week off is unlikely to have any effect, you may gain as much from the rest as you lose from not training.

I've always worked on basis that one workout a week results in slow loss of muscle/strength, two to maintain, three to improve. It does depend to a large degree on age, training years, where you are now compared to your training peak and of course intensity of training.