How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

I hurt my foot a couple weeks ago. For the past year or so, I had been doing anywhere from 60-80 minutes of medium-intense cardio on a stationary bike. The foot is getting better, but it will probably be at least another week until I'll feel comfortable doing any exercise on it. I'm just curious as to how fast people lose their level of cardiovascular fitness during periods (at least three weeks, in my case) of little to no exercise. What about the strength of my legs?

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

When i was competing in squash and took a 2-4 week break I'd notice a sharp dropoff in stamina and leg strength for the 1st week. But you do bounce back really quickly. I don't think there's any long-term negative effect unless you're dropping out of training regularly.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

mondays were always the hardest day if you take the weekend off. You literally lose something in two days. But 3 weeks won't do anything significant . you are going to suck for a few weeks probably, but you will be back to normal.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

interesting question. I've heard it takes 3 months to "get in shape", I guess because of the "lifespan" of red blood cells and such, does that mean that if you sit on the couch for 3 months you will be "out of shape"?

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

I don't know about 3 months, but I've felt like I was starting over after 6 months. 3 weeks I would think you'd be well off your peak, but still very quickly back up to a good level. In fact, I think a two week break is probably a good idea somewhere over a year.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

Generally speaking, for every week off, it will take you about two weeks to get back to your original level of fitness. The key is to ease back into your training, don't resume training at the previous level as if nothing happened.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

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Generally speaking, for every week off, it will take you about two weeks to get back to your original level of fitness. The key is to ease back into your training, don't resume training at the previous level as if nothing happened.

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is it true to go from sedentary to decent cardio shape is about a 3 month deal?

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

noticable dropoffs occur after about 2 weeks

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

Two or three days, as noted above, seems about right if you are working somewhere near your peak, like you would for a competitive sport.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

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Two or three days, as noted above, seems about right if you are working somewhere near your peak, like you would for a competitive sport.

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Are you serious? Do you have any articles/research that goes with this? I'm not trying to discredit you, but as a competitive rower, this is both amazing and depressing..

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

This is just my experience from playing soccer, running, and from martial arts, which I used to do as a teenager and young adult, at various stages of my life, pretty full-out, daily or near there for years. My friends all noticed the same thing and agreed; we could tell a marked difference in how winded we would get if we hadn't done any hard running or heavily aerobic work-outs for 2 to 3 days. Your mileage my vary, but this was pretty consistent with us when we were at the peak of our abilities. I think if we were at less than our peak, it probably wouldn't have been so easy to notice how quickly we could drop down from our usual performance. But the standard you set when you're at your best is very unforgiving.

I'm not saying we were suddenly in bad shape, or anything, by far. But there was no getting around our disappointment at how quickly we could come off our peak.

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

Pro cyclists around race time ride absolutely every day, if you take even one day off your body goes into a weird shut down mode and the muscles tighten up. There's this weird way that as long as you do it every day, your lungs are "open" and your muscles are "loose" and if you stop for even one day, it can take a long time to get back to that "warm" state.

(heavy use of quotes because this is very unscientific)

Re: How quickly does cardiovascular fitness dissipate?
 

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noticable dropoffs occur after about 2 weeks

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wow I just tried to brush your avatar off my monitor.

In my experience fitness falls off very quickly. Ive played soccer 2-3 times a week for the last 3 years as well as surfing at least every week. I injured my ankle about 4 months ago and couldnt play any sport at all. After finally being able to run again the last few weeks I feel so out of shape its ridiculous. I expect to take at least 2-3 months to get back to where I was, and probably longer to lose all the fat I put on sitting around eating crap.