Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - “Muscle Memory” is Real and Here’s How It Works

Episode Date: January 25, 2018

If you’ve spent any amount of time lifting weights, taken a break for a bit, and then started back up again, you probably noticed that you seemed to regain strength and size much quicker than the first time around. Well, this isn’t your mind playing tricks on you–the acceleration in progress is a scientifically verified phenomenon often referred to as “muscle memory,” but what is actually going on? Neurological mechanisms can explain the rapid regain of strength, but not muscle size. Do muscle fibers have some sort of “memory” of their previous, more conditioned states? Or is something else responsible for these effects? Let’s find out. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. In this video slash podcast, we are going to talk about muscle memory. Now, if you've been kicking around fitness circles for a while, you've probably heard of muscle memory and you've probably heard from people on both sides of the fence. You've probably heard some people say that it is absolutely real and that there is a good physiological explanation for it. And on the other hand, you've probably heard people say that it is not real and mostly just a figment of people's imaginations.

Now, in case you haven't heard of muscle memory, it's not referring to your muscles literally remembering anything. What it is, is it's really a theory that's usually offered to explain why muscle is much easier to regain once you've gained it the first time. And that is a very real physiological phenomenon that most people that have a fair amount of resistance training under their belts, a fair amount of weightlifting under their belts have experienced. You put in the work to build a muscle the first time, and then for one reason or another, you become detrained, you lose size, and I mean, you can lose a considerable amount of size really. And then though, when you get back at it, that muscle that you gained previously comes back much faster. It's much easier to regain than it was to gain. For example, my arms

fluctuate between 17 and 17 and a half inches flexed, of course, depending on my body fat levels and what I'm doing with my training. So how much direct arm training I'm doing. And years ago, my arms were a bit smaller. Let's say, I mean, I don't have exact measurements from the time, but I would guess they're probably around 16, maybe 16 and a half inches. And I fractured my wrist playing football, my left wrist. And I was in a full arm cast for six weeks, of course, for six weeks, of course, unable to train my left arm. And when I got the cast off, my left arm looked basically like I didn't lift. And I kept on going to the gym and doing what I could do. So I would do exercises for my right arm just to try to maintain at least the muscle there. And I would do lower body stuff until eventually my cast smelled so bad that I had to

just stop. And that was probably for the last few weeks. I just did not know exercise whatsoever because my cast was starting to smell like rotten death. And so I get the cast off and my right arm looks pretty, pretty trained. And my left arm, again, I don't remember taking a measurement. I may have, this was, this was a number of years ago, but I would guess I lost a solid two inches probably on my arm. Again, it looked hilarious. I didn't take pictures, which I really should have just to document it. How big of a joke. Have you ever seen that internet meme of the dude who jerks off all the time with his right arm? It's like a cartoon that went around the internet a lot, right? So he has a super jacked right arm and then a string being left arm. That was basically me when I got that cast off.

And so I got back in the gym right away and I even was a little bit limited with what I could do for my left arm because I couldn't rotate my forearm and put a lot of weight on it. So I had to do like hammer curls, reverse curls, but I just started doing what I could do. Bench press was a little bit sketchy in the beginning, but within a few months, I'd say two to three months, my left arm had caught back up to my right arm. It was back to its original pre-injury size in just a few months. And that took me years of dedicated arm training to get to where I was at before I got hurt. So that's the kind of thing that is usually chalked up to muscle memory. But how true is that? When we look at the physiology in play,

neurological mechanisms can explain the rapid regain in strength, but not quite the rapid regain in muscle size. So is it that your muscle fibers do have some sort of memory of where they were previously, you know, in more conditioned states in the past, and that makes it easier for them to get back to those states? Well, to answer that question, we have to talk a bit about the physiology of muscle cells and muscle growth and how muscle fibers get bigger. or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life,

and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. And the first thing is a rather interesting fact that muscle cells are quite large and are actually one of the few cells in your body that is multinuclear, meaning muscle cells contain multiple nuclei. Now, as you train your muscles and as you stimulate them to grow, primarily by overloading them, as you know, progressive overload is the primary driver of muscle growth. What happens is new nuclei are added to the muscle cells. And that process of adding new nuclei to your muscle cells is what allows them to get bigger. In fact, studies show that the number of nuclei in muscle fibers is one of the most important conditions that regulates muscle size. Now that leads us to a

question. So if resistance training causes the body to add nuclei to muscle cells, and that in turn allows muscle fibers to get bigger, what happens when you stop training for a while and then the muscles shrink? What's happening at a physiological level? Well, the answer to that question really gets to the heart of the muscle memory debate because it was once learned that when you become detrained, so when you stop training for a while and your muscles shrink in size and you lose strength, you lose muscle endurance and so forth, it was once believed that your body also shed the additional muscle cell nuclei that were accumulated during your period of training. This loss of muscle cell nuclei, it was believed, accounted for the loss in muscle size and the loss of strength and muscle

endurance and so forth. But we now know that this isn't the case. It turns out that while detraining absolutely does result in smaller and weaker muscles, there's no arguing that, newer research shows that the new nuclei that were added during the training period are retained for at least three months of inactivity. And there's actually even evidence that these nuclei are never lost, meaning that it is very possible that resistance training actually produces permanent physiological changes in your muscles. Simply put, the old idea that nuclei are added to muscle cells during periods of training and then lost during periods of detraining is simply false. According to what we know now, it looks like it goes more like this. So you subject your muscles to overload and then new nuclei are acquired for the first time. And then you train further. You

also do what you need to do with your diet. And then these nuclei synthesize new muscle proteins and that then results in bigger muscle fibers. Then during a period of detraining, your muscles are resistant to atrophy in part because of the amount of new nuclei that they have gained during the period of training. But if the period of inactivity goes on for too long, eventually protein degradation rates exceed protein synthesis rates and muscles shrink in size because muscle proteins are cannibalized however the nuclei that were added during the training period are not lost finally when you resume training at some point in the future your muscles are able to grow a lot faster this second time around

because that first step of adding nuclei, which takes time and takes work, can be skipped. The nuclei are already there, ready to synthesize muscle proteins. And that process explains why retraining is always easier and you always see results a lot faster than training for the first time. Why gaining muscle the first time around takes a lot more time and work than the second time around or third time around and so forth. Now, I don't know about you, but I find this research pretty encouraging because it's nice to know that a lot of the work that we are putting in the gym is actually going to pay dividends for the rest of our lives. In fact, some scientists believe that filling up our muscles with as many nuclei as possible when we're young,

so basically getting as jacked as possible as we can when we're young, can benefit us greatly as we get older. Because A, building muscle and gaining strength does get harder as we get older because A, building muscle and gaining strength does get harder as we get older. It's never too late. You can gain muscle and strength at any age, but it is easier when we're younger than when we're older. And B, persistent muscle loss, sarcopenia, which is the medical term for it, is one of the most serious health risks associated with aging. The bottom line is if we want to look and feel and function as good as possible in our 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond, then we want to have a considerable amount of whole body muscle and strength, period. I find the research on muscle memory encouraging also

because it tells us that taking a few weeks off the gym, even if you have to take a month off, even if you have to take two months off, really isn't that big of a setback because whatever muscle that you may lose, and just so you know, if you keep your diet at least relatively high protein, you really are not going to see any significant muscle loss until about three or four weeks of inactivity. So let's say you have to take a month off the gym and you lose a very small amount of muscle. Who cares? You're going to gain it back very quickly. Even if you have to take six months off the gym and you lose a considerable amount of muscle, it's still encouraging to know that whatever you lost is going to come back very quickly. This is also something to keep in mind when you're cutting,

because yes, if you do everything right when you're cutting, if you get your calories right, your macros right, you get your exercise set up right, you're not doing too much cardio, you're doing plenty of resistance training, blah, blah, blah, you really shouldn't lose any muscle to speak of. But if for whatever reason you do lose some muscle and many people think that they lose muscle when they're cutting, by the way, and it's not actual lean mass, lean muscle tissue that they're losing. It's just water and glycogen. So they look smaller and they're a little bit weaker and they think they've lost muscle. But if you know that you actually have lost muscle due to, you know, whatever it was,

you did too much cardio or you didn't eat enough protein or your calories were too low or whatever, you still can rest easy knowing that, okay, finish your cut. And then once your calories are back, you know, around maintenance, maybe slight surplus, you're going to gain whatever muscle you lost back very quickly. review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share

your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously, though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fish oil supplement Triton. Now, Triton is a high potency, high purity, 100% re-esterified triglyceride fish oil with

added vitamin E to prevent oxidation and rancidity, and natural lemon oil to prevent the noxious fish oil burps that we all know and hate. Furthermore, Triton is made from sustainably fished deepwater anchovies and sardines, and is molecularly distilled to remove natural toxins and contaminants. So if you want to optimize your mental and physical health and performance and reduce the risk of disease and dysfunction, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Triton today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love

my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now, place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.