What's The Science Behind Muscle "memory" With Regard To Workouts?
Muscle Memory
Muscle "memory" is a concept when it comes to training and workouts. Contrary, to the meaning it doesn't imply that your muscles actually remember things. Instead it refers to the neurological adaptations that facilitate the recovery of muscle size and strength after a period of inactivity.
Neurological Aspect
When you start working out a significant portion of your strength gains can be attributed to improvements in your systems ability to activate muscle fibers. This is known as " adaptation." Your body becomes more effective at recruiting motor units (which consist of a motor neuron and all the muscle fibers connected to it). The movements you regularly perform become deeply ingrained in your system creating a sort of memory within the pathways responsible for those movements.
If you take a break from training these patterns and the enhanced coordination they represent linger for some time diminishing at a pace compared to muscle size. This "memory”, within your system enables you to regain strength rapidly when you resume training since your body recalls how to perform those movements efficiently.
Physiological Aspect
From a perspective muscle memory is closely tied to the presence of myonuclei, in muscle cells. When you engage in resistance training your muscle fibers undergo damage triggering repair processes that involve satellite cells (stem cells found in muscles) contributing nuclei to the muscle fibers. These additional nuclei boost the muscles ability to synthesize protein resulting in increased size and strength.
It has been discovered that during periods of muscle atrophy caused by disuse (such as when you stop exercising and experience a decrease in muscle size) the extra myonuclei persist for a period possibly throughout the lifetime of the muscle fibers. If you resume training after a break these myonuclei expedite muscle protein synthesis, enabling your muscles to regain their size quickly compared to starting from scratch.
In essence muscle memory encompasses both adaptations that sustain motor skills and coordination and physiological changes like a number of myonuclei, within the muscle fibers that facilitate speedy regrowth. While you may experience some loss of muscle mass over time without training these enduring adaptations ensure that your body retains its enhanced ability to rebuild muscles.
Additional Resources
If you're interested, in diving into the field of muscle memory you might find the following resources helpful:
- "Neuromuscular Adaptations to Training"; This section, extracted from the book "Sports Medicine " provides valuable insights into how our nervous system responds and adjusts to resistance training.
- "Muscle. A New Cellular Model for Muscle Atrophy and Hypertrophy"; A research paper that delves into the role of satellite cells and myonuclei in muscle memory shedding light on this phenomenon.
- "Forgetting the Muscle Memory"; This comprehensive review takes a perspective, on disuse muscle atrophy exploring how detraining affects function and delving into the concept of muscle memory.
Feel free to explore these resources to gain an understanding of muscle memory and its intricacies.
1 Other Answers To: "What's The Science Behind Muscle "memory" With Regard To Workouts?"
Muscle Memory
Muscle memory, a term commonly used in the fitness community refers to the body's ability to regain strength and muscle size quickly after a training period. Unlike memory associated with experiences or facts muscle memory is rooted in both neural foundations.
The concept of muscle memory, in workouts relies on two principles;
- Cellular Muscle Adaptation;
During training muscles undergo cellular changes. Resistance training leads to muscle hypertrophy, which involves an increase in the size of muscle cells. This growth is attributed to an increase in proteins (actin and myosin) well as an augmented number of myonuclei—control centers within muscle cells provided by satellite cells. During periods of disuse and subsequent muscular atrophy these additional myonuclei remain intact. When retraining occurs these myonuclei play a role in facilitating responses to strength building stimuli. Thus muscles "remember". Rebuild strength and size effectively due, to this preservation of cellular adaptations.
- Neural Adaptations;
Strength training not builds muscle fibers. Also trains the nervous system.The human body has a way of making movements more efficient and effective by optimizing the recruitment of motor units. This means that the nervous system learns and remembers how to fire muscle fibers in a synchronized manner, which leads to strength without increasing muscle size.
Interestingly when someone takes a break, from training this neural efficiency doesn't decline quickly as the actual muscle fibers might. So when they resume exercising the neurological patterns established during training help them make progress effectively.
The term "muscle memory" refers to two types of adaptation; memory that enables muscle rebuilding and neural memory that retains improved movement and strength patterns. Although "memory" typically implies function in the context of muscle physiology and exercise science it primarily refers to retained adaptations.
For an understanding of the mechanisms involved I suggest exploring scholarly articles and physiological textbooks that delve into skeletal muscle adaptations to exercise and the specific effects of resistance training, on both muscle cells and the nervous system.