Due to shifts in training regimen, workload at work, and basic interest, I’ve added, lost, regained, lost, regained again and then lost maybe 15 pounds of muscle over the years. Because of this, it seems much easier for me to regain muscle mass than other people, including my brother.
I read somewhere that it’s easier for Male A to regain 15 pounds of “lost” muscle mass (that he once had) than it would be for his identical twin, Male B, to add 15 new pounds of muscle.
I’ll also note that when I’ve lost the muscle–though I was hardly “massive” at my peak–I’m still stronger than probably 90 percent of the guys (in my gym) who are my size, which leads me to think there’s a connection.
I’ll wish you luck, Carnac The Magnificent. There are very few fields that have as large a collection of conflicting “facts” as muscle development. You can find lots of useful stuff, but there’s always another source that says, “No, not that. You’re wasting your time with that.” I think maybe there are a dozen right answers to every muscle question. Nearly everything works, if you keep at it.
I can’t find any good biological explanations, but the existence of muscle memory seems to be pretty well-established. At the very least, I’m not seeing any real controversy about it, and that in and of itself is notable.
My simple explanation would be that when I first started lifting weights, I probably wasn’t very good at it. I had a limited repertoire, and probably did a lot of things wrong. Now that I’ve lifted for awhile I’ve figured a lot of stuff out. What works and what doesn’t.
So, if I took a few years off, and lost it all, and then wanted to get back into it, my learning curve would be much sharper. I could hit the ground running, so to speak.
That is part of it, but there is a biological aspect of muscle memory as well. As ultra said, it is a well known biological concept that lost muscle comes on quickly. I have put 1/2" on my arms in a week solely from doing bicep curls due to muscle memory, and I have heard of people claiming 20 lbs of muscle growth in a month due to it.
I’m gonna call bullshit on this one. Gaining 20 lbs. of muscle in a month requires a huge caloric surplus. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s far more likely that these people are either lying or mistaken.
I’m also not convinced that it’s necessary that muscle memory be a biological phenomenon. It’s well-known that visualizing the results you want can motivate you to get them, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to visualize based on memory rather than imagination.
Call bullshit if you want. I remember it from a fitness magazine when I was young. I can’t verify it.
Muscle memory is most likely biological. To assume a person can gain large amount of muscle solely by skill and visualization doesn’t add up. Visualization, doesn’t even improve muscle mass. It improves strength by improving neuron connections to muscle fibers.
Proper lifting technique is important, but technique doesn’t begin to explain this phenomenon. From past experience, I absolutely know that if I hit the weights again, I would gain very noticeable muscle mass in 4-6 weeks–far more than had I done this the first couple times around. Unless you’ve experienced this, it’s hard to imagine. I once heard Mel Gibson make the same claim and chalked it up to steroid use. But my experience–and that of many others–inclines me to believe otherwise. Muscle memory exists.
I’ve gained about 7lbs in a month when I picked up weights again after a hiatus.
20lbs a month is not at all unbelieveable if the lifter in question was juicing. Granted, some of the 20 would have been water but hey, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.
I can’t cite my source, but I also seem to recall something about muscle memory being at least partially a function of the fascia around the muscle being initially stretched to accomodate the muscular hypertrophy. During a layoff from training, the muscle atrophies at a rate greater than the shrinkage of the fascia. When one resumes training, the muscle is able to expand into the already enlarged fascia without having to overcome the elasticity of the fascia.
Or at least thats kinda how I remember it…
Muscles get bigger and heavier when you from not using them to using them because they store water. So within a short time of starting to work out again, the water starts coming in, and your muscles get significantly bigger and heavier - this isn’t growth. Creatine also creates an illusory effect of added muscle mass for similar reasons - it encourages muscle storage of water.
When you do resistance exercise (ie weight lifting) you are creating micro tears in the muscle fiber. These tears heal by laying down new muscle cells and filling in the separations. This is why working the same muscles daily is a bad idea. You don’t allow time for the fibers to regenerate.
Once you’ve layed down that new muscle fiber, although it will atrophy, if it isn’t used, it’s still there. In other words, you have a greater number of muscle cells than you did before you ever worked out. Recruiting the existing muscle comes faster than building it from the raw materials. Testosterone helps maintain the dormant (for want of a better word) muscle fibers.
When you start training again, at least in the beginning, your recruiting those dormant muscle fibers.
Obviously, there’s new muscle forming as well, because the same tearing/healing is going on whenever the muscle is stressed to failure.
However, it doesn’t work forever. If someone was a body builder in high school, then didn’t work out for, say, 20 years, the process begins at the beginning.
Women lay down muscle in the same way. Women who train seriously and then stop see the same phenomenon, but it isn’t as long lasting. We only manufacture a small amount of testosterone ( in the adrenals, you guys make a little estrogen too) so, the muscle lost in a year’s slack time is more significant for a woman.
Sorry I don’t have a cite, it’s stuff I learned in anatomy and physiology a century ago.
The magic word is “microtrauma”, in case anyone cares to Google. I was under the impression that the notion that lifting can grow you new muscle cells was a fairly recent discovery, but I could be mistaken.