Off for two weeks or less, start where you left off. Off for two to four weeks, take about 10 percent off the bar for one session. Off for longer than a month, take 20 percent off, then 10 percent, then resume normal progression. The reduction is smaller than most people fear and the patience is harder than most people expect.
What time off actually costs
Mujika and Padilla split their detraining review into two papers, and the split is the useful part. Short interruptions and long ones are different problems. Strength holds up remarkably well across a short break. The losses that matter show up over longer layoffs.
That maps badly onto how it feels. Two weeks off feels catastrophic because you are stiff, your groove is gone, and the first warm-up set feels foreign. Almost none of that is lost strength. It is coordination and confidence, and both come back inside a session or two.
The ramp, as Reps runs it
| Days since you trained that lift | Prescription |
|---|---|
| 14 or fewer | No reduction |
| 15 to 28 | Minus 10 percent, one session |
| More than 28 | Minus 20 percent, then minus 10 percent, then normal |
Two details are worth pulling out.
It counts per lift, not per workout. You might have benched four days ago and not squatted in five weeks. A global "days since last workout" number would hand your squat a full-strength prescription on the basis of pressing you did last Tuesday. Reps measures each lift from its own last session.
The long ramp takes two sessions, not one. After a month off you get 20 percent lighter, then 10 percent lighter, and only then normal progression. One session of caution is not enough runway when connective tissue has been idle for weeks, and the reduction is cheap. You will climb back through it in a few sessions.
The real risk is your memory
I finished a bench cycle at 255 in late June, three sets of six and a five. Then three weeks passed with no working bench session. I came back at 225.
Thirty pounds under where I stopped is not a confidence problem, and it did not cost me anything: the reps came back fast, seven on every set the first session and ten on most of them by the second. But the pull to load 255 was real, because 255 was the number in my head, and the number in your head is a memory of your best day rather than a measurement of today.
That gap is where people get hurt. Not by training after a layoff, but by training at the weight they remember.
What not to do
Do not test. Working up to a heavy single to "see what I still have" after a layoff is the single most common way to turn a break into an injury. You will find out inside two sessions of normal work anyway.
Do not add volume to catch up. Missed sessions are gone. Doubling your sets to compensate stacks unaccustomed volume on detrained tissue, which is how a two-week break becomes a six-week one.
Do not skip the second ramp session after a long layoff because the first one felt easy. It is supposed to feel easy. That's the design.
Coming back is not starting over
The strength you built is largely still there, and the ramp exists to get you back to it without paying a tax on the way. Everything the app does with that once you're back, including what happens when you stall, is written out on how Reps decides your next set.
