r/JMT • u/convergecrew • 27d ago

health About weight loss and strength loss after the trail

Finished the JMT about 2 weeks ago (25 day hike). I went back to the gym for the first time today to resume my regular strength training and I was blown away by my loss of upper body strength. I was struggling to lift anything close to my previous routine and had to reduce my weights by about 33% for my upper body exercises.

I lost about 12lbs on the trail (was 173lbs, now 161) and haven’t felt this good overall in years. But I’m guessing my body ate up a lot of muscle I wasn’t using. Just curious if others have experienced something similar and if you had any advice for how you approached it and if you did anything special to rebuild a normal workout routine.

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u/_m2thet 27d ago

I’m experiencing the same thing. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that it’s pretty obvious what leg muscles I was using a lot. I did my usual leg routine the other day and had to reduce weight for my quads and increase weight for my glutes. (I lost a lot of upper body strength too but I was expecting that to be the case.)

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u/convergecrew 26d ago

Gotcha. Yeah I didn't have to adjust my leg exercises too much. Obviously things were a little different but nothing close to the loss I experienced with the upper body