How Quickly Does My Fitness Level Decline When I’m Ill or Take a Break From Training?

How quickly will my fitness level drop if I stop exercising or take a break?

Deconditioning is the term for losing performance or fitness when you stop exercising, because of your school or job situation or because of illness or injury.

How quickly and how much an individual will lose fitness during a break depends on many factors and is actually not precisely predictable. The most important factors are your level, how long you have been training, and how long you stop.

If you are in good shape at a high level when you stop exercising for a couple of days up to about a week, this not necessarily affects you performance in a negative way, unless you fell ill or had an accident. On the contrary, stopping exercise can actually boost performance like resting after an intensive training period what we call tapering.

The better the training level and the longer you have been exercising, the longer you can maintain performance and fitness. Also, upon taking up exercising again, you will reach your former level of performance more quickly if you had been exercising for a long time at a high level.

Having worked out regularly for years, you will lose about half of your performance in the three months after quitting exercise. As a beginner with only two months of exercising, two months after quitting all the fitness is gone.

As a general rule, it will take the same time to return to your previous fitness level as the duration of the break.

It helps a lot if you do not completely stop exercising. If you can work out in a 'similar' way, you will lose fitness more slowly.

For swimmers and other technically oriented sports, the specific training is more difficult to replace, but you will fare much better if you go jogging, biking, work out with stretch cords, or swim in a small hotel pool, than completely stop exercising.