Returning to exercise after a break? A personal trainer explains how to rebuild strength, reduce excessive soreness and make your routine stick.
Time away from training can make an old routine a poor starting point. Personal trainer Bruno Pontes explains why a more measured return can help rebuild consistency without turning the first week back into a punishment.
Returning to exercise after a break presents a slightly awkward temptation: you know what you used to be capable of, so it feels natural to start there.
Same exercises. Same weights. Same number of sessions. Perhaps even a determination to compensate for a summer spent outside the usual routine.
That, according to personal trainer Bruno Pontes, is precisely where a September fitness comeback can begin to unravel. The useful target for the first few weeks is not yesterday’s performance. It is a training routine your body can recover from and that you are willing to repeat.
Pontes, an ACSM and AFAA-certified personal trainer at fitness app Muscle Booster, says: “One of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to pick up exactly where they left off before the summer. They attempt to lift the same weights, complete the same workouts, or train just as often, even though their body has had time away from that routine.”
There is a fairly simple test for a successful return: can you come back and do it again?
Your old workout is not necessarily your starting point
A break from regular training means the body is no longer adapted to precisely the same workload it was handling beforehand, Pontes says. Returning immediately to previous levels can result in excessive soreness, slower recovery and an increased risk of injury.
The problem is not ambition itself. It is allowing one ambitious session to interfere with the next three.
“It’s easy to think that pushing harder will help you regain fitness faster, but in reality it often has the opposite effect. If you’re too sore to train again for several days or you pick up an injury, it’s much harder to rebuild consistency,” he says.
For strength training, Pontes suggests beginning with around 20–30% less than your usual training load. Rather than using the first session to find out how much strength remains, the immediate aim is to become comfortable with the movements again.
If an exercise causes discomfort, his advice is not to force the set: reduce the weight and start again.
DOMS is not proof that a workout worked
The first sessions after a lay-off can also bring an old badge of honour back into circulation: delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.
DOMS is the pain and stiffness that can develop in the hours or days after unfamiliar or strenuous exercise. Pontes says it can become more common when people return after a break because their muscles are again being exposed to demands they have not encountered recently.
Soreness, however, is a poor performance metric.
“Many people believe that the sorer they are, the better the workout was, but that’s a misconception. Excessive soreness can affect your movement, reduce the quality of your next workout, and make it much harder to stick to a regular routine.”
The more useful question comes later. Are you sufficiently recovered to train properly again?
As Pontes puts it: “A successful workout isn’t measured by how sore you feel afterwards. It’s measured by whether you can recover well enough to come back and train again.”
Your first sessions can be deliberately modest
A return to training does not require a 90-minute declaration of intent.
Pontes recommends keeping early workouts to around 30–45 minutes while the body readjusts. He also suggests beginning with two or three sessions a week rather than constructing an ambitious six-day programme that proves difficult to maintain.
There is something refreshingly unheroic about that approach. The first week back does not need to settle any scores with August.
“Remember, the goal is finishing your workout feeling like you could have done a little more, not completely exhausted,” Pontes says.
That leaves room for recovery and, just as importantly, makes another session feel manageable rather than ominous.
Rebuild strength without chasing old numbers
Once regular training is established again, progress does not have to mean adding weight at every opportunity.
Pontes recommends progressive overload: gradually increasing the demands placed on the body. That progression can come through additional weight, but it can also involve more repetitions or sets.
Early on, technique deserves more attention than personal bests. Controlled movement and familiarity with an exercise provide a more useful foundation than proving that an old number can still be lifted on the first attempt.
“Don’t worry about lifting the same weights or hitting personal bests immediately. Focus on good technique, controlled movement, and rebuilding confidence with the exercises first,” he says.
The distinction matters because a fitness comeback is not a single workout. It is a sequence of workouts, each dependent to some extent on how well the previous one was judged.
Make consistency easier before demanding more motivation
September’s back-to-routine feeling can provide the initial push, but Pontes argues that the practical structure around exercise matters more than repeatedly waiting to feel motivated.
His suggestion is to schedule workouts as fixed diary commitments, deciding the days and times in advance. Starting with fewer sessions makes those commitments more realistic; extra training can be added once the pattern has become easier to maintain.
That also changes the way progress is judged. Instead of asking whether a workout was hard enough, Pontes suggests asking whether the same sort of session could realistically be repeated in two days.
It is a less dramatic measure of fitness, but probably a more useful one for somebody rebuilding a habit.
“The goal shouldn’t be getting back to where you were in one workout. The goal should be building a routine that you’ll still be following in October.”
September, then, need not become a month-long attempt to repay a supposed fitness debt. The smarter comeback is the one that leaves enough in reserve for the next session.
About Bruno Pontes:
Bruno Pontes is an ACSM and AFAA-certified personal trainer and group exercise instructor. For the past eight years, he has dedicated himself to helping individuals on their fitness journeys. He believes that fitness is for life and that movement is medicine. Bruno strives to make every workout fun, challenging, and purposeful, tailored to each person’s unique needs and goals.
