The first repetition after a break belongs to the comeback, not to a competition with your old record.

Returning after an injury, an illness or a long gap puts you beside your own history, and history makes a poor training partner. The first session measures a body that has been resting, not the one that set the number you remember. Judged against the old figure it looks like a loss, and judged as a restart it looks like exactly what it is. That comparison is what makes most people stop again.

Give the first week back the single job of happening at all. Write down where you actually are today and measure forward from there rather than from the year you missed.