I was looking through my workout results from the week and had a realization today. Any time I’m not consistently working out, I should consider it an emergency in need of immediate remediation.
I only took off something like 5 weeks of working out. Partially due to having COVID and generally being constantly sick, and partially due to traveling and not being able to find a gym that would let me sign up.
Regardless of the reasons, the results were dire. In taking 5 weeks off, I lost something like 5 months of strength gain.
Now, to be fair, there are some confounding factors. I was sick a lot and that likely contributed to a greatly increased rate of muscle loss. I didn’t eat nearly as much and barely moved for a while.
Additionally, there are three factors which all currently have an unknown impact on my strength:
- I’m in Mexico City at something like 7500′ of elevation. Thinner air might affect me greatly
- I’m in Mexico City, along with its pollution
- I recently recovered from COVID, and it’s entirely possible that it left me weaker than before (decreased lung capacity, etc)
For the first two, I’ll soon find out if they have any real impact on me once I return home. For #3, I may never know. I do know I’m regularly out of breath even when I’m not doing anything, though all three together could play a part in that.
But ultimately, in just a very short amount of time, my inactivity undid a monumental effort I put in to build strength in the preceding months.
In 5 months I probably spent something like 150 hours working out to achieve a certain level of strength, but it was the missed 35 hours of workouts here that undid it all.
Using those numbers, the missed workouts were more than 4 times as influential in terms of my results. That’s insane.
So if I find myself in another position where I’m not working out, I need to treat it like the emergency that it is and fix it immediately.
But this also got me thinking… With my workouts, my results are tangible and, conveniently, numerical. There’s no guesswork and nothing subjective. I can see when I do better or worse, and by how much.
As a result, it was very easy for me to identify that this is a major issue and that I need to go to great lengths to avoid it happening again.
But what about… You know, everything else?
I have lots of goals and lots of things I’m learning and developing. I often take large breaks from those as well. Could it be that taking time off is just as damaging for those, if not more?
And I’m thinking that the answer is: definitely.
So when I’m home and I take 3 months off from really practicing Spanish, I think it’s pretty likely that I’m doing massive damage to my progress.
Now it’s true that I think knowledge is a bit more indelible than muscle. In a year you’d likely lose 100% of the muscle you’ve gained from weight training. But you’re never going to forgot 100% of something you’ve learned well.
But even so, I think consistency with all things is perhaps even more important than we’re told.
I need to focus more in my life on consistency over time in all pursuits. Always keep moving forward!