Comming back to lifting after 2 week rest

I’m not a weightlifting expert, but I expect you can better start with lower weight you ended with 2 weeks ago. Otherwise you have more change on injuries, because your muscles need time to be used to weight again.

Hopefully you get also feedback from people with more experience about this.

Cheers,
SDK1987

You definitely shouldn't increase the weight. Most likely you lost some strength but you probably are going to gain that back quickly. Maybe you could try the same weight but with a help from a spotter to avoid any difficult situations.

I didn't really understand what you did with the curls etc but you shouldn't worry about linear progression for the accessory exercises. You can't progress in these exercises as you progress at the big lifts like bench, squat etc because they are isolation exercises and use less and smaller muscles than the big lifts. Just do 8-15 reps for your sets and you will be fine.

Originally posted by ilostmysoul
I finished an 8-week plan on December and decided I would take 1-week rest from weight lifting. Eventually it turned to 2 week rest without any muscle work whatsoever. I still tried to eat as much as I could, but calory couting became impossible, so most likely I lost some weight and muscle.

Question being: now that I'm back, should I start the 1st week increasing the weight, or go through the 1st week with the weight I had before I stopped?

Also, during the last 2 weeks of the plan I tried something out: I would try to increase the weight on my bicep curls, do as many reps as possible for all the sets. If I didn't manage more than 2 reps, I'd still move along to the next set. Then I'd restart the set/rep count back to 0 and restart the exercise with lower weights and tried to get 8-12 reps off. Then I would the same with hammer curls and triceps. I won't do this on barbells tho.
I was expecting overtrainning symptoms, like tendon pain, colds, extreme soreness... But next day everything was normal. Sore, but painless. So, is this a good strategy to get more defined, stronger muscles?

As a person who gives doing gym up all the time I can say that you phisically won't be able to do the same weight you stopped. Actually you will be able but your reps quantity will be less and less in each next set. If you did bench press like 100kg for 10 times in 5 sets, now it will be something like 100kg * 10, 100kg * 8, 100kg * 6 ... It's because your glycogen emount is less. It will take about 2 weeks to get your glycogen level back fully. You'll feel that clearly. So you have to decreese your weights a bit. Actually I'd recommend you to make your weights like they were in a middle of the last 8-week plan, something what you did on the 5th week. Don't be afraid to lose your muscles or something like that. It has a lot of sense to do it this way, but it's too long to write it here) if you will really interested I can explain)

You're not the only one who sees an increase in power after 1-2 weeks of break, mostly due to the fact that the break put your body back on track (cortisol levels are back to normal, among others benefits of that break).
Actually, after 1 week of break, you should be able to do the same number of reps, with the same amount of weight like you used to before break. But usually you'll see an increase in strength. With 2 weeks it depends on how much stressed was your body in the 8 week plan.