Are strength gains permanent?

deadlift 150lb. jeezus pudwianoski better watch his back

 

nice to see you around again mate!
one of my original inspirations I beleive.
can't remember why though!

 

lol but honestly why would it go back to 150. if you got to 500lb thats beastly mode and you will be strong and big, ur strength might decrease in the deadlift by 150lb too 350. unless you contract a serious muscle wasting disease and eat like a rabbit you should be fine,.

 

Haha, I used to post quite a lot in here Mr Small, things change and I didnt post at all for a while and now do so infrequently.:good

 

I initially started lifting when I was 14, so was probably pretty pathetic numbers, but have been an athlete all my life so my lifting was sport specific, not pure strength/power.

I had a window before serious sport training re-started, so I decided to try to squat 200kg and deadlift 250kg, didnt hit target but did improve my sprint times. I didnt lift at all for 6 weeks and went backwards a fair bit.
Part of it is being out of practice, but my point was that you do make losses, 5/10/15% pretty quickly if you sont keep at least ticking over.
Im making sure I lift 1 heavy and 1 lights and explosive session every week.

 

it woudlnt go back to 150lbs, if you reached 500lbs deadlifting regularly.

it would decrease sure, but not that significantly.

 

You can only deadlift 150lbs? Really.

A healthy man should be able to lift more then that with no training

 

If you give up for a long time you will lose A LOT of strength.
BUT if you've put in enough work to go from a 150lb deadlift to a 500lb deadlift, the chances are you will have changed your body and the neuro-muscular system to such an extent that even if you gave up for 10 years you would still be able to lift more than 150lb. And even if you strength goes down to lifting, say, 250lb max, you'll be able to regain a fair bit within a few months of coming back.

I know about this, because I used to be quite strong. I deadlift 550lb about 13 years ago, but over the last 10 years I've been on and off with my training, sometimes not hitting the gym for 6 - 12 months. But even at lowest, least-trained periods, I reckon I could have gone in and done lifted 365 easy.
Recently, over the last 4 months, I've hit the gym at a consistent rate, and I still can't deadlift 550, but I did 440 the other day and the strength is coming back. Another 3 or 4 months and I expect to be doing 500 +, with certainty.

In summary, if you slack off a lot you will LOSE a LOT. But you really have to slack off for many months over many years to really head back towards where you started. And if you slack off that much, and give up for years, you probably don't care about strength anyway.

Anyway, there's no point worrying about, or crying over, what you might lose or what you have lost. As long as we healthy and we give a ****, we should be in a gym training, getting stronger or maintaining high levels of strength. There's no way around it.
I'll let others do their own experiments in LOSING strength, I'm on a mission to gain mine back ! :good

 

I started lifting pretty seriously when I was 19, and except for boxing competitions when I would taper off, did it consistently for 10 years. Then I had an accident with 2 brain hemorrhages and could not lift, then had a travelling job for three years. at 33 years old after years off, a few weeks back in all my lifts were back to the same level, but my muscles had shrunken. Maybe 80% of the old maxes within two workouts, way way stronger than when I first started.