Mixed
Knee immobilization causes a disproportionate loss of strength (47%) compared to muscle fiber atrophy (11%), primarily due to reduced neural activation.
After immobilization, expect your strength to be much lower than your muscle size would suggest. This is normal and due to neural 'de-conditioning,' not just muscle loss. Focus on relearning movement patterns and neural drive through resistance training, as strength will return faster than muscle size.
3 weeks of knee immobilization resulted in 47 % strength loss... immobilization significantly and uniformly reduced type I, IIa and IIx muscle fibre areas by 13, 10 and 10 %, respectively... the magnitude of strength loss (47 %) was almost 4-fold greater than the magnitude of fibre atrophy (11 %), suggesting that disuse must affect neural activation.
Why this rating
Clear correlation data and EMG measurements support the neural mechanism claim.
Source
Changes in muscle strength, muscle fibre size and myofibrillar gene expression after immobilization and retraining in humans
Tibor Hortobágyi et al. · The Journal of Physiology · 2000
DOI 10.1111/j.1469-7793.2000.00293.x
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