I recently came down with a bad case of mononucleosis and I’m trying to figure out how long it’s really going to take me to recover my muscle and strength. For reference, prior to the illness I weighed about 216lbs at 10.2% bodyfat. In the gym my maxes were roughly DL: 550-575, Squat: 450-460, Bench: 300-315.
Given how bad the illness was, I wasn’t able to eat for about 10 days, so I dropped down to about 192lbs at the lowest (my scale wouldn’t give me a bf reading when I was that low). I’ve currently gotten back up to about 200lbs (8.5% bf), so I’m effectively down about 16lbs.
Last week was my first week back in the gym and it was absolutely brutal. I was able to do close-grip bench for 205x4 (prior was 230x4), Tempo squats were 315x3 (prior was 365x6), and DL was 420x2 (previous was 505x4). So my strength is down probably 20%-30% across the board.
Would love to hear from anyone else who has been through this, how they recovered and how long that recovery took?