STUDY: 2 weeks inactivity means you lose muscles

A new Danish study has found that a mere 2 weeks of inactivity can make you lose your hard earned muscle mass! To quote: "Our experiments reveal that inactivity affects the muscular strength in young and older men equally. Having had one leg immobilised for two weeks, young people lose up to a third of their muscular strength, while older people lose approximately one-fourth. A young man who is immobilized for two weeks loses muscular strength in his leg equivalent to ageing by 40 or 50 years," researcher Andreas Vigelsoe, from the Centre for Healthy Ageing and the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a recent university news release.

There is even worse news for bodybuilders who have a great deal of muscle:
"The more muscle mass you have, the more you'll lose. Which means that if you're fit and become injured, you'll most likely lose more muscle mass than someone who is unfit, over the same period of time," said Martin Gram, another researcher at the centre.

The good news is that you can get your lost muscles back but as the researchers concluded:

"It was interesting how much muscle was lost due to inactivity, and pointed out that it takes about three times the amount of time you were inactive to get your muscle mass back."

So if you are in the middle of a muscle building phase and are going to be "inactive" for a while, you may well want to have some alternative plans for having at least some form of activity.