Lifestyle
I Haven’t Exercised In Months… How Do I Restart?
January 24th 2022
After figuring out what you enjoy doing and finding out your availability, the next steps are to stay consistent and to recover well from activity. Eventually, you will need to continue to hit your short terms goals in order to achieve your desired results from an active lifestyle.
As I read and researched other forms of exercise other than strength training, I was baffled by the number of lies I encountered.
Maybe they were not officially “lies”, but they have certainly stretched out truths.
For instance, one issue I was running into was seeing specific calories burned with simple household activities such as sweeping and mopping the floors and seeing how a native, inexperienced person can be fooled by burning 200-300 calories in less than one hour of cleaning.
Really?
If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
Otherwise, wouldn’t the fittest and strongest people on the Earth be housewives?
In this article, I want to go over what to expect if you haven’t exercised in months and how do you go about restarting.
What to expect:
- DOMS
You will be sore.
Why?
Because you have been detrained and deconditioned.
You lose what you do not use and since it has been months or even years since you exercised, your body only kept the bare minimum amount of muscle and strength in order to survive your daily tasks.
As a result, when you come back from inactivity, you will feel sore initially, which is also known as delayed onset muscle syndrome (DOMS for short).
Your muscles will ache and you will feel “weaker.”
But rest assured, this is very temporary and you will recover and be stronger within the next few days, typically 24-48 hours on average.
This brings me to my second point.
- Exercises and workouts will be hard (initially)
If you just joined a fitness class, have lessons, or exercised independently, be aware that your first few workouts are going to be rough.
Not unbearable but they will suck.
There is no way to sugarcoat it… this will be the first hurdle you will have to overcome in order to get back on track to living a healthy life.
If you think this is tough, trust me… it could be way, way worse and you should put your situation into perspective about the grand scheme of things.
You will be alright and this minor inconvenience will go away once your body accepts that your mind wants to change your old habits and start to live a more active lifestyle.
Is Sweeping good exercise?
Sweeping is great exercise if it’s something you enjoy doing. A 160lbs person who sweeps consistently with moderate effort for 10 minutes will burn around 40 calories that session.
The amount of calories you burn will depend on your—
- Gender
- Age
- Exercise Intensity
Not only will you be burning calories, but you will also have the opportunity to tidy up your environment, decreasing stress and cortisol levels.
If this is not a great deal overall for your health, then I do not know what will be.
Can I lose weight by mopping?
Yes, you can lose weight by mopping. A 160lbs person who mops the floor with light intensity standing will burn around 30 calories for that session.
Does cooking count as exercise?
Cooking does count as exercise, a light intensity one. A 160lbs person who cooks for 10 minutes will burn between 30-40 calories, depending on the amount of walking done.
With more intensity and effort, your calories burned should be closer to 40 and if you are stationary for most of the cooking or food preparation, your calories burned will be closer to 30 per 10 minutes.
How can I start gym after 3 months of no exercise?
- Pick something you enjoy
Even if I said strength training is the best thing you could do for your body, if you do not buy into that vision, then it’s just wasted mental space.
I want you to pick something you want to do as part of your lifestyle:
- Playing basketball
- Swimming laps
- Horseback riding
- Hiking
- Snowboarding and cycling
There are so many choices to choose from that there are really endless possibilities.
Once you have something you enjoy doing, we can move on to the next step.
But hang on a second, make sure this is something you really enjoy doing.
Because when life gets a bit rough, having additional factors to persuade you to continue exercising will be much easier than me saying you should go lift weights and maintain a schedule.
But if you are asking for my opinion and want a bit more explanation and research, here is why I think you should do compound exercises for your physique to save time.
Greyskull LP was a beginner program I used to run back in the day and it was great.
- Ease into it
Tons of online coaches will make a bold recommendation to go 2-3 times a week to exercise.
If you have experience with an active lifestyle, then you can probably make that judgement a lot more accurately than someone who was never active.
Start off with 1 or 2 times a week to exercise and go from there. This is if you have any skepticism of how frequently you should go exercise. Otherwise, you can just straight into 2-3 times a week.
If you are dying to do more, curb your enthusiasm a bit and let’s ride the wave of positive reinforcement for a few weeks before we decide to increase any frequency.
Of course the underlying rule to follow here is the best frequency to exercise is the one you are willing to do, whether someone recommended it or not.
- Making sure you eat!
You have committed to having an active lifestyle and you just completed your first day.
Your next goal is to make sure you get enough nutrients in your body to recover as well as staying hydrated.
This also means that you stop working out on 5 hours of sleep and get at least 7+ hours each day.
And if you are really good and want to excell at what you are doing, you may even need 9+ hours.
- Have long term goals
One of the reasons why you quit was because your long term goal was not ambitious enough to inspire you.
Maybe you did not have one at all?
Now, in order to get back on track to have an active life, we need to make sure you have a tangible, measurable goal.
Here are some examples—
- Running a 5 minute mile
- Shooting 10 free throws in a row
- Deadlifting 500lbs in the gym
- Winning first place in a fishing competition
- Hitting the most home-runs in your league
- Break down your “crazy” goals into smaller ones with a time constraint
If some of the goals listed above seem to be out of reach, good.
You have something to work towards.
Break down these big goals into smaller ones that can be achieveable.
Here are some more examples of simpler goals from the ones listed above:
- Running a 7 minute mile
- Shooting 3 free throws in a row
- Deadlifting 3150lbs in the gym
- Winning third place in a fishing competition
- Hitting the one home-run in your league
Your short term goals can be as simple as it needs to be in order for you to finish it.
And that is the plan, for you to achieve the goal to build momentum.
Is it ok to skip workout for 3 days?
No, it is not ok but if you believe that taking more rest has additional benefits than achieving your long term goals, feel free to take a 3 day rest.
People who skip planned workouts have very similar traits—
- Unprepared
- Do not care about their long term goals
If you are the former, shame on you. Do your due diligence and create a better plan with more research.
If you are the latter, you may need to question why you want to continue working out or even exercise in general.
And if you have a combination of the two, you are just lost and need to figure out what you want.
There have been countless programs made that trained world champions that have them training every day.
These are top ranked athletes in the world training every day, sometimes multiples time during the day to remain on top and you feel a little “tired” and want to skip a workout for a 3 day break?
Here are some of these programs:
- Bulgarian squat programs
- 50 day deadlifting challenge (I am currently on day 36 as I am writing this article)
Your body is capable of a ton of physical PRs.
All you need to do is to accept the terms and conditions and train. Hard.
Can I take a month off working out?
Some lifters will program deload weeks or even an off week every 3-6 weeks. However, it is not general practice to take a month off working out since lifters will suffer from performance and strength losses starting the 2-3 week of rest.
Traditionally, taking more than 2 weeks off any time during a training cycle that is not right after a major competition will be not great to build progress to hit future PRs.
Lifters need to build a steady, gradual amount of fatigue and volume in order for them to overcompensate for recovery to peak during a competition.
How long does it take to regain strength?
It will take a few weeks to regain your lost strength after not exercising in months if you are a beginner. As a more advanced lifter, it could take several months, depending on how technical and specific your form and lift were.
For instance, a beginner can “recover” their lost strength after not working out for months in several weeks since they do not have much strength to begin with.
Compared that to an elite level lifter that spent years honing their skills and then had to step away from lifting.
The elite level lifter will spend a ton of time not only recruiting back his strength but also:
- Endurance level
- Recovery capacity
- Technique
There are more layers that build every gym PR and raw strength is just one aspect of that equation among many different things.
So, do not be surprised if it takes you more than 12 months to regain your strength.
Forget about the creatine without working out…
Accept the challenges as blessings and train hard.
Conclusion
Just because you have not exercised in months, it does not give you an excuse to be lazy.
I’ll let that sink in for a minute.
.
.
.
After you recovered from your situation and are medically stable to perform activity, you should plan and put yourself in the best possible position to achieve your goals, no matter how small or gigantic they are.
Only you hold the keys to control your life and we have a lot of individual power in order to achieve great things in this life.
