Mighty lifter,
It's September. Kids are back in school, schedules are tight again, and a lot of lifters are returning to serious training.
You've been with us for some time, so I'm guessing that might be you. If it is, there's one thing worth knowing before Friday.
The time off isn't what sets you back. The first week back is. You feel flat, you miss your old numbers, so you load the bar like it's May. Then Tuesday you're walking down stairs sideways, Thursday you skip, and two weeks later you're further behind than when you started.
We just published a guide on how to avoid that. In a nutshell:
Go light. First week or two, use 50 to 60% of your old one-rep max on the big lifts, and stop about 5 reps short of failure. Old bench was 275? You're doing 135 for a couple of sets of five. It'll feel silly. Do it anyway.
Cut sets, not sessions. Start at 7 to 10 hard sets per muscle per week, roughly two per exercise. Add a third only once the soreness fades and your numbers start moving.
Twice a week, every muscle. Not once. Twice gives you the practice without the wreckage, and the practice is most of what you're missing right now.
Do that for 2-4 weeks and you're back on normal programming.
Your body remembers more than you think. Muscle you've already built comes back faster than it came the first time, but only if you give it something it can recover from.
The whole plan, including a two-day workout you can start this week:
https://dr-muscle.com/regain-muscle-after-break/
One more thing.
As you may already know, we rebuilt the app. The new version is at https://x.dr-muscle.com/ and your old login still works. It's faster and simpler. Logging in and starting your first exercise takes about 4 seconds now, down from about 10. It's early access, so a few features are still missing. Full comparison here: https://dr-muscle.com/dr-muscle-vs-dr-muscle-x/
We're about to ship a major update to it, and before we do, I want four people to go through it with me.
Here's the deal. You tell me what's broken, what's confusing, what you'd change. You talk to me, not support. And because this version is built with AI, we turn fixes around in 3 days or less.
Four spots. If you want one, hit reply and say so.
With gratitude,
Dr. Carl Juneau, PhD
Founder of Dr. Muscle AI
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