I trained for about sixteen years. Then life did what life does, and I stopped. Travel, work..it all got in my way.
Recently, I got back into it. And nobody warned me about most of what happened next. So here's what I wish someone had told me, for anyone standing in their garage looking at a dusty bar and wondering how bad it's going to be.
Your memory is lying to you
The biggest danger when you come back isn't your body. It's your memory of your body.
In your head, you can still deadlift. You still do blast through your workout. You remember how you used to move, and your brain loads the bar accordingly.
Your body didn't get the memo.
The fix is simple and annoying: start well below what you think you can do. Lighter than feels necessary. Fewer rounds than feels necessary. It will feel too easy for about one session, and then the soreness arrives and you'll be glad you listened.
Your engine goes first
Here's the pattern most returning lifters notice: fitness and strength don't fade at the same speed. Conditioning drops off much faster. Strength hangs around longer.
That means your first few workouts will feel strange. The weights might be manageable, but you'll be gasping by round two. Your lungs give up long before your legs do.
Don't let that fool you into thinking you're weaker than you are, and don't let your remaining strength fool you into thinking you're fitter than you are. Short workouts first. Let the engine catch up.
Muscle memory is real, and it's on your side
Now the good news. If you trained seriously before, you'll get back to where you were much faster than it took to get there the first time. The research on muscle memory backs this up, and so does every returning lifter I know.
As an...uhem...older and more esteemed gentleman, I found that my strength declined slightly but was the fastest to jump back. But my cardio basically became non-existant.
This is the encouraging bit. The years you put in weren't wasted. They're banked. You just have to be patient while you withdraw them.
Your tendons are slower than your muscles
This is the one that catches people. Muscles adapt fairly quickly. Tendons and joints take longer. So in week three, you might feel strong enough to load up, while your elbows and knees are still asking what happened.
That's how returning lifters get hurt. Not in week one, when they're careful, but in week three or four, when they feel good.
Take an extra couple of weeks before going heavy, even when you feel ready. Especially when you feel ready.
Week one soreness is a different level
You'll have forgotten. The first week back, everything hurts. Stairs become a negotiation. Sitting on the toilet requires planning.
It passes. By the second or third week, the same workouts barely leave a mark. Don't quit in week one because you think it'll always feel like this. It won't.
What worked for me
Here's roughly how my first month went.
Weeks one and two:
three short sessions a week, 8 to 12 minutes, light weights or bodyweight. The app has plenty of 8-minute workouts, like Frozen Dash and Bellhop Chipper, that are perfect for this.
Weeks three and four:
added a fourth session and one longer workout of around 20 minutes. Stayed light on anything heavy overhead.
Every session:
proper warm-up. I never used to bother. Now I don't skip it.
No benchmarks yet.
Testing yourself against your old times in month one is just a quicker way to feel bad.
If it's been a long time, or you've got any health conditions, injuries or medication to think about, check in with a doctor before starting again. That's not the roast talking. That's the sensible bit.
The thing I missed most
It wasn't the weights. It was the crew. The people who expected you to show up and gave you grief when you didn't.
That's why I built Fatboy Fitness. The weights were the same when I came back, but the people weren't there, so I put their voices in the app. If you're coming back on your own, switch on the motivation audio. It helps more than you'd think to have someone, even a recording, yelling at you to stop slacking.
Welcome back. Start light. Pick a short workout and go train, FATBOY.