How to Resume Your Training After a Long Break

In this blog post, I'll continue the story from last time.

How to get back into your workout routine after being forced to take a long break. It happens—sometimes life throws things at us that are completely unforeseeable.

So, as I mentioned in my last blog post, I was hiking with that group and asked the oldest guy in our group—who’s really fit—what he did to stay in such good shape.

• He started a long time ago and exercised regularly.

• He deliberately divided his workout routine into segments of resistance training and segments of cardiovascular training.

• He spent a lot of time being active and outdoors.

But when he got sick for a couple of months during the COVID-19 pandemic, he had to take a longer break from his routines. And after being away from those routines for more than three months, he couldn’t just go back to the same exercise schedule.

To make a comeback, he focused on two things:

What WAS my level before, meaning, where do I want to go (goal) and where IS my level right now (current situation).

With that in mind, he started at about 30–40% of his previous routine, drastically reducing both the training volume and the intensity.

Over the course of several months, he gradually increased those parameters again and is now back to about 85% of his previous routine.

So he still has 15% left to climb, right?

Well, what most people won't tell you is that getting older IS a real thing.

And sometimes we have to scale back.

My own training is NOT the same as it was 10 years ago.

So you should keep training with a regular routine, making some adjustments—maybe cutting back a bit—but keep training. You should never stop.

Stay strong,

Matthias