How long before muscles deminish?

[BananaMan]

I havent done any upper body exercise for 2 weeks now cause of my injured left elbow. I'm gonna do some pullups today to test it out. My right arm has been getting some exercise from knife throwing and sword work though. So how much have my muscles suffered from no exercise for 2+ weeks? how should i get back on track? And what can i do for injured elbow?

only good thing about this is, i've been training my legs to death =)

[Cashier Graham]

I've just come of a period of 5 weeks laziness, I nearly puked at the judo session because i was so unfit! Anyway your strength won't really diminish significantly, if your unsure just do some basic conditioning with light weights and 15-20 reps for one or two sessions. I took it easy for my first session in the gym, mostly because i was working on endurance, but on my second session I went back to my usual routine of lifting near maximal weights and was fine. The best thing for an injured elbow is rest.

[Losttrak]

Muscle atrophy depends on the amount of stimulation of the muscles themselves. Even slight usage maintains a large percentage of muscle mass even when it is minuscule compared to standard usage. It has been proven in people who are in comas, etc, that any stimulation of the muscles whether thru 3rd party manipulation or even shock therapy can prevent serious atrophy. So as long as you arent lying in bed like a vegetable, your recovery time shouldnt be too terribly extensive in theory.

Did you know that people with amputated hands... when they IMAGINED flexing their hand... it prevented atrophy of the forearm in a controlled experiment. LoL. Crazy.

[1renox]

I'm not a physiologist, but I play one on TV--

I read in "Theory and Methodology of Training" (a very good book BTW), that training, whether it be sport specific or for general conditioning will start to regress to previous level of training after 8 days. There were supporting studies. If start before 8 days there is minimal loss of conditioning. If you've gone 2 weeks, that's only 6 days past 8, and that's not much lay off, really.

Likely, your nervous system will need the reconditioning more than your muscles after only 2 weeks.

Probably you haven't lost much, but the injury will likely slow progress. Sometimes, a good long break allows for needed recovery. I've come back from a lay off being able to progress beyond previous levels and quicker than if constantly training. (Periodization effect I think)

The problem, I think, with studies in exercise physiology is that there are few follow-ups to explain individual variations from the norms.

RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation is the "coaches" answer to injury. I treat myself using pressure point therapy, RICE and wrap my injured part very tight when exercising it. I guess it depends on the serverity of your injury as well. Best thing to do is ask a doctor if you haven't already.

[Serpent]

Any training gains will start to be lost of the muscle isn't "shocked" again within 72 hours. Atrophy starts at this point, but will not be significant for a few weeks.

The upside is that you should be able to retrain the muscle quite quickly.

[Ford Prefect]

Strength and endurance tend to decrease after 2 weeks of no training. Coming off an injury is a different matter because you're nervous system will be inhibitted in fear of causing another injury.

[Silumkid]

I have seen a study that claimed that muscle performance decreases by 2% every 24 hours after 72 hours of no training. Although I don't know all the standards applied to this test, the whys and wherefors, how they tested, etc.

I think though that 2 weeks should not be a significant decrease. There may be some, but not like half! Just don't be surprised if you feel a little shaky when you get back to it.

This isn't to say a break is altogether bad...lots of athletes who follow true periodization schedules often have 1-2 week breaks in their microcycle periods in which they do no strength training. Often they will do something like swim, roller-blade...something to break up the training and relieve/prevent boredom.