Rate of muscle loss when absent from gym?

for someone who has been going 3 times a week to the gym for several years and is way over their natural strength level, i was wondering what the approximate drop in strength was per week of being absent from the gym?

I presume strength would fall off fast initially and then gradually tail off slowly as the weeks progressed. Assuming 3 sessions per week, how many sessions/weeks are needed to restore strength to it's original level after say, a month of absence??

Any thoughts?

After a month? Sheesh. Maybe 3 workouts. A month isn't a long time.

A brief article in last month's (June 2003 on the cover) 'Muscle & Fitness' cites a study in 'Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research' that found after six weeks off, there was still no noticeable sign of diminished strength. It's the thrust of an article on the need for taking off two weeks every six months or so.

I guess it would determine how you define 'strength'. I would think that while your one-max capabilities wouldn't go down much, your endurance on longer sets would likely suffer.

From my experience any loss is negligible from that short a layoff. The body does a pretty good job of trying to keep you the same, especially if you're consistent with how you treat it.

I took most of November 2002 off without any noticeable loss in strength. Took a month off again this past new years, didn't even jog. Again any loss was negligible.

Odd part was when I started jogging again I could run much longer and faster.

That's pretty much been my experience. In addition, my legs decondition much faster than my upper body. I can go a week or ten days and come back with no loss, or even a little stronger, in the upper body, while my lower body has noticeably lost some conditioning.

I think it also depends on what you do during the layoff. I've come back from a month-long backpacking trip and been surprised to be right back at my prelayoff level after only a few workouts...OTOH, lying around the house for a couple of weeks not doing much of anything is not a recipe for preserving strength.