Title: How Much Training is Necessary to Maintain Strength and Muscle? - Bret Contreras
Headings: How Much Training is Necessary to Maintain Strength and Muscle?
How Much Training is Necessary to Maintain Strength and Muscle?
How Low Can You Go
Exercise dosing to retain resistance training adaptations in young and older adults
Phase I
Phase II
Conclusion and Practical Applications

Content: When we are buried up to our noses with work and responsibilities, training 3-5 times per week for 60-120 minutes can feel overwhelming and add more stress to the plate. For optimal progress, we want to be in eustress and not distress, so it’s advisable to reduce training frequency and volume during these times. This picture was taken when I was training once every 5 days, performing 1 set to failure with around 8 exercises. But how low can we go to still keep our gains? Six years ago, I wrote a really good article on this exact topic. Rather than just link to the article, I’m going to copy and paste it as it’s a short article: How Low Can You Go
By Bret Contreras, August 4, 2010
When I was in graduate school, I was a pretty busy guy. I was teaching high school mathematics during the day and attending grad school at night. I started reducing my training frequency, volume, and duration and noticed that it didn’t impact my strength levels too much. This caused me to experiment to see “how low I could go” in terms of training frequency, volume, and duration while maintaining my strength levels.