-Muscle Memory
▪️No training leads to no stimulus, and as a result, we can experience muscle loss.
▪️Is it hard to regain lost muscle ?
▪️Studies show that, “Muscle Memory” is real, and as many of us have likely experienced, it’s far easier to rebuild lost muscle, than it is to gain it for the first time.
▪️Nonetheless, our muscle fibers appear to have an “epigenetic memory” which defines the changes that the cell’s DNA undergoes, including information regarding its previous size.
▪️Although we experience muscle loss pretty fast after a period of detraining, we don’t actually lose the number of myonuclei. This makes it much easier to rebuild lost muscle once we’re back to working out.
▪️Furthermore, motor unit recruitment seems to decrease slowly in comparison to muscle size.
▪️This signifies that once we’re back to working out, we’ll be able to still recruit a decent amount of muscle fibers, and still use high amounts of force, in contrast to when we previously started training, which will allow muscle regrowth to arise at a much faster rate.
Reference: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/japplphysiol.00761.2019
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