This subject is constantly discussed, especially by young athletes, of course, you may have witnessed conversations such as “don’t do heavy sports, you’ll sag when you stop” or “when you stop using protein powder, your muscles will sag etc.” Friends, this issue is officially one of the biggest legends of fitness. Now I will explain this situation to you in detail. When you understand the logic, you will realize how simple and meaningless the question of whether the muscles will sag when you leave this protein powder is actually. Let’s start;
First, you need to understand how the body builds muscle. First, think of our body as a giant factory; let me explain. What do we do in training? We’re pushing our muscles by lifting heavy, right? As we do this challenge, the following message is sent to our brain, “The body needs more strength. Come on, build muscle now!” Then, as we keep pushing, our body starts to increase our muscles, thinking that we need to be strong (this is called hypertrophy). What does it take to build muscle? Protein ! After we give this protein to our body with natural foods and nutritional supplements, the muscle begins to form in our body and training. I mean, when we’re lifting weights, the body doesn’t say, “Let me build an aesthetic muscle here.” It increases muscle building because it thinks we need strength. I said our bodies are like a factory, what do you do if you get too many orders every day? You hire new workers, enlarge and expand your factory, right? Haha, this is the same logic.
Remember what I said so far? We continue
Let’s Understand This First: How Do Muscles Grow?
Now, we train hard, eat well, and use good protein powders, and after a while, we have achieved a good muscle volume. Our factory has grown, it works well, and things are good 🙂 It’s good so far, but you had to quit the sport, what will happen now? Where will these muscles go? Will these muscles droop? Oops!
No, nothing will happen. You will only lose muscle. In other words, your body will gradually start to take back what it has given you, so to speak, since the factory does not receive as many orders as before, the factory will start to reduce and close the unused departments (in order not to harm), the idle workers will be dismissed. So how will this happen? I explain,
We will protect our muscles at ideal levels for 2-3 more months as long as we eat well after stopping sports. Then muscle loss accelerates and our muscles begin to melt, so to speak, during the process when we do not lift weights. Now you will say that you explained the logic of the muscle’s formation and explain its melting! Of course, I’m telling you that too, what did we say, “our body builds our muscles by thinking that we need more strength”, right? Do you know what happens when we leave the sport for months? It’s almost as if we are sending the following message to our brain, “I don’t need these muscles” because all of our muscles cannot be active during the day unless we lift those heavy dumbbells. When the muscles we built don’t use it, the brain thinks precisely like this: “Why am I feeding these unused muscles? This body doesn’t need that much power, then I’ll shrink these muscles so that I don’t have to worry about feeding them for no reason” and then it starts to melt/reduce the muscles. This is also called atrophy.
I hope you can understand. So everything is that simple, 2 times 2 = 4. Now, in order for people to be right who say “don’t use protein, it will sag”, “don’t use heavy sports, your breasts will sag like a woman’s breasts” etc., the body should not melt the unused muscles after stopping sports. such a thing is impossible. It is not in the nature of the body that the muscles sag like fat. Do muscles sag after leaving protein powder? Now you understand that the question is illogical, right?
Now you may say, “Why should I do this sport if I’m going to start losing my muscles 2-3 days after I quit the sport?”
I’ll answer right away, what you say is true, I wouldn’t know it’s wrong, but I can ask you a question. Which sport does not regress if you do not do it for 3 months? Get the best player of the Super League and don’t play the ball for 3 months, then let him play, let’s see how he plays… This man needs to train for at least a few months to recover, right? Even football players who have minor injuries and cannot play for 2-3 weeks take time to keep in shape. This is the case in every sport, be it football, basketball or fitness. In short, every time you do not do sports and take a break from sports, the body regresses and has to revert. But once you start, you pick up quickly and quickly. Because now your body is used to building muscle and your muscle memory is settled. If you have already created a good infrastructure when you quit sports, you will never lose all your muscles, you will still maintain your shape, you will only lose a little of your volume and lines.
