Can taking time off break through plateaus? • Stronger by Science

Even if you train consistently and smartly for a long, long time, your progress will eventually slow down and plateau. No matter how effective your program is, how dialed in your nutrition is, progress eventually comes to a halt. Your first instinct may simply be to do more, but what if the solution isn’t doing more, but rather to pump the brakes?

Some research suggests that doing less for a while – or even taking time off lifting altogether – could set the stage for renewed hypertrophy and strength progress. 

Some of the most interesting research on the topic comes from Ogasawara et al. They compared six months of continuous training to intermittent training, broken into cycles of 6 weeks of training, 3 weeks off, repeated 3 times.

At the end of the 24 weeks, the continuous and intermittent training groups saw similar increases in pec and triceps cross-sectional area. Likewise, bench press 1RM increased similarly between groups. 

Here’s what’s interesting. As you’d expect, when the intermittent training group took time off, they did see atrophy in the pec and triceps, and their bench 1RM decreased. However, upon return to training, they had an increased rate of muscle growth and strength gains, whereas the continuous group saw a slight decrease in rate of muscle growth and strength gains throughout the 24 weeks.

Could taking some time off be the key to help you break through your plateau?

Maybe. When looking at this study, there are two schools of thought.

The first is that taking time off resensitizes you to training. The idea here is that after months of progressive overload, your muscles become less responsive to the same stimuli. By taking some time off lifting, you allow certain pathways to “reset” slightly, potentially making your muscles more receptive to growth and strength increases upon your return.

The second school of thought is that we’re not actually observing resensitization at all – we’re simply observing muscle memory. Critics of resensitization will argue that no studies to date have actually seen greater hypertrophy or strength gains from taking time off compared to training continuously. Instead, because of muscle memory, participants in the intermittent training groups quickly return to their previous size/strength, then progress at the same rate as the continuous training groups. From the outside, it might look like a post-layoff breakthrough, but in reality, it could just be returning to baseline.

Now, it’s possible that we simply haven’t observed greater gains in the intermittent training groups due to the protocols used. Studies typically have participants take time off training completely, resulting in muscle and strength loss. However, if participants did just enough training to stave off atrophy/strength loss instead, it’s possible that they would still benefit from the ostensible resensitization effect and retain their baseline size and strength.

However, until we have studies examining this idea, it’s just that: an idea. In the meantime, it remains true that we’ve yet to see an empirical study where the intermittent training group outperforms the continuous training group. 

On the flipside, before we get carried away with the idea of resensitization, there is some evidence suggesting that taking time off could be a slight negative. Coleman et al found that incorporating a one-week break in a nine-week resistance training program did not significantly affect hypertrophy, muscular endurance, or power compared to continuous training. However, the continuous training group experienced slightly greater strength gains and reported marginally higher readiness to train. Additionally, while differences weren’t statistically significant, differences in nearly all outcomes did lean in favor of the continuous training group.

So, there are a couple of takeaways from all this research.

First, if you need to take some time off, you don’t need to worry. While you might lose some muscle and strength in the short-term, in the long run, you’ll very easily regain lost muscle and strength, and you probably aren’t limiting your long-term potential.

Second, if you’re plateaued, taking some time off lifting (or dialing things back to just enough training to maintain your size/strength) might be worth a try. Your first recourse should still be improving your training, diet, sleep, stress, etc. – but, if you’ve been stuck, and pushing harder hasn’t helped, it might be worth stepping back to help break through the plateau. Worst case, you maintain muscle and come back fresh.