Getting injured doesn’t mean you automatically lose all your muscle. Yes, you’ll have to scale back training, but there are smart ways to hold onto your hard-earned size and strength while you recover.
Take the quiz: What’s your best injury recovery strategy? Click here to start.
When people get injured, they tend to stop training altogether — even the parts of their body that aren’t affected. This is the fastest way to lose muscle.
Instead, you need to shift focus to what you can train, manage your nutrition, and build an adaptable program that keeps you engaged.
For more adaptable programming solutions, check out the programming and progression hub to learn how to adjust intelligently during injury recovery.
You can almost always train something. If you hurt your shoulder, you can still train legs, abs, and one-arm exercises for the uninjured side. If you hurt your knee, you can still train upper body and core.
Key principles:
1. Train non-injured muscle groups with normal effort and volume.
2. Use pain-free ranges of motion.
3. Prioritize tempo, isometric holds, and higher reps to maintain muscle without overloading joints.
When you train one side of the body, research shows you can maintain size and strength on the injured side through cross-education effects. This means single-arm pressing, rowing, or leg training is not just a stopgap — it actively helps you retain muscle systemically.
Even light resistance training is enough to maintain muscle mass. Bands, machines, and controlled dumbbell movements are all valid. You don’t have to max out to preserve gains.
You need to keep eating sufficient protein to prevent muscle breakdown. Aim for 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, even when your training volume is reduced.
Don’t crash your calories. Maintenance or a slight deficit is fine, but aggressive cutting will speed up muscle loss during injury recovery.
For more nutrition strategies, explore the nutrition hub for lifters navigating complex situations like injury recovery.
One of my clients tore his meniscus and couldn’t squat or deadlift for three months. We shifted to upper body push-pull supersets, single-leg training on the uninjured side, and banded leg extensions for the injured leg. He kept 90% of his upper body strength and made measurable size gains in his arms while rehabbing his knee.
Another client had a shoulder injury that limited overhead pressing. We trained legs, biceps, triceps, core, and programmed horizontal pushing with pain-free range of motion. She returned to overhead pressing stronger than expected after focusing on everything else.
1. Focus on What You Can Do
There’s almost always a pain-free exercise you can perform. Build your program around that.
2. Unilateral Training Is Underrated
Cross-education helps maintain systemic strength. Use single-arm and single-leg exercises often.
3. Nutrition Can’t Slip
Protein is non-negotiable. If you can’t train as hard, nutrition is even more important to maintain muscle mass.
4. Isometrics and Tempo Work
These are joint-friendly ways to preserve muscle tension and fight atrophy.
The biggest mental hurdle is feeling like you’re “losing all your gains.” Most people drastically overestimate how quickly muscle is lost. If you stay engaged, train what you can, and keep eating, you can maintain much more muscle than you think.
When injured, your main goal is to maintain training density and keep showing up. You can’t force overload on the injured area, but you can increase reps, sets, time under tension, and frequency for unaffected muscle groups.
Progression can look like:
1. Adding reps to isometric holds.
2. Increasing training frequency for available movements.
3. Improving range of motion over time as mobility returns.
Injury doesn’t have to erase your progress. You can maintain muscle, preserve strength, and even build new skills if you train smart. Don’t quit. Adapt.
If you’re navigating an injury and unsure how to keep training, get matched with a coach who can build custom plans that protect your joints, preserve your progress, and help you recover stronger.
Take the quiz: What’s your best injury recovery strategy? Click here to start.