Yes, the muscle has a memory, it's not a white lie from your coach
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Loading... - Tayer Brown
- 07 Nov 2022
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Going back to the gym after a season is hard. It doesn't matter if you've trained every day for five years; that first day after the holidays or a long bridge you will suffer as if it were the first time. It will be then when you will hear the magic phrase: "Cheer up!, the muscle has memory". A trainer will surely say it to convince you that next time it will be better because you have "fund", your muscle is going to reward you for your dedication and discipline in the gym, an effort that now seems to have vanished.
Aaron Santos is an independent personal trainer and has said the consolation phrase a lot. “I am referring to the brain 's ability to remember movement patterns and send the correct order to the muscle. The longer you have trained, the more internalized those movements will be in the brain. If you stop training for a month, it is possible that the first exercises cost a bit, but after ten minutes you will have recovered the rhythm”.
But does muscle memory exist or is it a white lie from the coaches? Apparently, it is possible to speak of something similar to the memory of certain movement patterns, that mechanism by which riding a bicycle is a skill that is never forgotten. However, the latest research underpins the literal meaning of the term and suggests that there may indeed be a memory capacity in the muscle fibers.
These studies show that the nucleus of the muscle cells seems to have its own memory, beyond the memory of the motor neurons, which would rather be a merit of the brain. In 2010, a study with mice already showed that the nuclei of muscle cells that multiplied in response to training overload did not disappear during periods of inactivity, but remained retained in the muscle fibers, waiting to be reactivated with training. .
Experts believe that this mechanism is replicated in humans, and that even if exercise is stopped, muscle cell nuclei will be preserved and muscle growth will resume when training resumes. This conceptual change has served to retrain some atrophied muscles, due to injury or disuse, which until recently were considered lost.
This is how Diego Jerez, coach of the Metropolitan Club, explains it. “Muscle fibers are cylindrical and elongated and their nuclei multiply with training. With the bodybuilding work, the fibers thicken and create new nuclei that are not lost even if you stop training and the muscle returns to its previous dimensions. When you go back to the gym, and that's why muscle is said to have memory, you make three times faster gains in muscle mass because those cores are already built from previous workouts." Read More…
