It is a dream of every person to always stay fit and look in good shape. However, fitness asks for a lot of hard work and consistency. If you are not a consistent exerciser than you may lose your fitness within a very short time. In this blog, we will try to find out how long does it take for a person to lose his/her fitness. Let’s assume that you were planning on participating in your dream race and working really hard to stay in the best shape and very fit. But guess what, some mishap happens and you are stuck with a major lag on your training schedule. It may be some sort of sickness or some injury or anything that is severe enough to affect your workout plan. Different physical trainers offer their services to help you build your body and stay fit for longer durations. But if you stop performing daily workout and routine exercises including walk/jog you may start losing shape and fitness and won’t be very long before your body loses its shape. Let’s have a glance on different scenarios that may alter your physique and you may start losing your fitness.

It takes more than a few days

People who perform exercise daily and have a proper workout routine often stay much healthier both mentally and physically than those who don’t. But there are circumstances when you may miss your workout exercises for some days consecutively. This may or may not affect your fitness provided the level of fitness you had achieved till the day you started missing exercises. There could be a number of scenarios in this regard:

• You may fall sick and have to leave workout due to the weakness of being sick.
• There is a possibility that you have met an accident that has affected you in such a way that you can’t perform your exercises for some days.
• There may also be some days where you have to fulfil family obligations/responsibilities and they don’t spare you enough time for your fitness.
• Also, you might be having some strict commitments at work due to which you have to sit for extra hours. And that also leave you ending up having insufficient time and energy to spare for a workout.
• And the list goes on and on, you can think of any possible scenario causing hindrance in your daily routines.

Now, what are the possibilities that you may start losing your fitness due to any of the reasons mentioned above or something else? If you are an athlete then missing out on your workout for a few days may not affect your fitness level badly. Once you start again after a few days, you will gain your fitness level within no time. Contrary to that, if you are not an athlete or a professional sports player etc. then missing on your workouts consistently for a few days may affect your fitness. You may start feeling slightly weaker than before. Also, you may feel pain in your muscles due to missing exercises since your body is aligned on a routine and the muscles crave for some workout. But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. You won’t be staying in dark forever. Several fitness trainers and physical tutors suggest different ideas based on their expertise to regain the fitness level that you had previously maintained by performing several exercises. Jonathan Cane an exercise physiologist says that an endurance athlete would start feeling a significant degradation in fitness if he/she misses workout for 2 weeks straight.

How to know if you are losing fitness

When you miss workouts for a few days then it would become very difficult for you to restart. So how would you know that you have lost your level of fitness that you had previously maintained? “There are some variables you can easily measure,” says Cane. “Resting heart rate is one good indicator.” If you feel that your heart rate has increased quite a bit then there is a fair possibility that the level of fitness you maintained previously has now started to fade out gradually.

Preventions

The uplifting news for normal exercisers is that as much as it might hurt attempting to get back fit as a fiddle, it’s simpler for once-fit individuals to bob once again into shape than it is for individuals who infrequently work out. As much as it might hurt attempting to get back fit as a fiddle, it’s simpler for once-fit individuals to skip back. “It’s certainly harder to begin without any preparation,” Cane says. “Indeed, even a long time of detraining won’t return you to the degrees of a stationary individual.” Age is a factor, as well: Older individuals lose wellness quicker, and more youthful individuals for the most part recapture it faster. So what would you be able to do to abstain from being absolutely inactive during constrained downtime? “Broadly educate if conceivable when you’re harmed,” Cane exhorts. At the point when you can’t run, inquire as to whether you can swim, bicycle, or strength train. In the case of cycling is out, get some information about yoga or Pilates. “In case you’re essentially too occupied to even think about committing to typical preparing time, attempt to at any rate slow the misfortunes with short, extreme episodes of activity,” Cane recommends. “Contingent upon your game and your objectives that may not be sufficient to keep up your wellness, yet it will in any event help stem the tide.”

Bottomline

Maintaining fitness is a very difficult task and requires hard work and dedication. Once you have started to work out then you may want to continue it without taking any days off. Thus if you miss your workout/exercises then there is a fair chance that you would start losing your fitness. Also, your health may also get affected if you miss your workout for many days consecutively. However, if you are an athlete then you may not face many difficulties in regaining the fitness once you restart. Find out more about losing fitness.