A couple years ago my wife and I were asked to join another couple on a ski trip to Big White, in BC. When we were on the plane the other gentleman was eager to plan out our time on the hills including some pretty steep terrain. My wife laughed at me…Dave, ‘you don’t even know how to ski’. It’s true, I hadn’t skied since I was about 13 years old.

Sure I was a little rusty, but I was pleasantly surprised how quickly I remembered to get low, lean into the turns and use the contour of the skis.

You have probably had a similar experience in your life. Something you did in your youth that you retried in adulthood, surprising yourself on how much you retained.   This is motor memory.

Motor memory is a fascinating aspect of muscle memory, but in this blog I’m talking about muscle memory coming from inside our muscle cells.

Do our muscle cells remember? If we were previously bigger, leaner or fitter and then we subsequently lose some of that, do we have to start from scratch again??

In short the answer is NO, you don’t have to start over…your muscle cells maintain memory as well.

Some exciting emerging research helps us understand part of this muscle memory phenomenon as it applies to muscle hypertrophy (muscle building).

Researchers took muscle biopsies (samples) from a group of individuals going through a 7 week strength training program, followed by a 7 week rest period and then re-introduced the same 7 week strength training program. As expected the participants gained muscle mass over the initial strength training program and then lost it back to baseline levels after the 7 week rest period.

During the reloading phase, the authors found that muscles were MORE sensitized by a cluster of genes when compared to the initial 7 week training period. Many of the genes tracked were switched on to an even greater extent during the reloading period, resulting in

1) more rapid growth of lean muscle

2) higher percentage of lean muscle mass

…compared to the initial 7 week loading period.

So what does this mean and why does it matter?

For strength building, if you are not scheduling in prolonged rest periods into a training plan, you are missing out on the innate power of the human body to help gain muscle while doing nothing at all!

More broadly, this means it’s easier to get our muscles back into shape than it is to get them in shape for the first time.

If you get sidetracked for things like injury/surgery, pregnancy, vacation or shear lack of motivation, and even if that detour is prolonged enough to cause your muscles to shrink, you still maintain an advantage to getting back that muscle mass.

Previous research had found that when we hit the gym and our muscles cells grow they create more nuclei, which control the necessary machinery for muscle building. If we stop exercising and let our muscles shrink, researchers found that those muscles still maintain those newly created nuclei. The newly acquired muscle building efficiency doesn’t disappear. It just patiently waits until it’s needed again.

Don’t care about muscle size? More of an endurance athlete? Same principle applies…if you were once a strong distance runner you will have forced your muscle cells to create more nuclei which in turn produce more mitochondria. If you stop running those mitochondria slowly disappear. But the nuclei that produced those mitochondria remain ready to go.

My take home messages:

• Continue to try and push your own physical boundries. Even if you can’t sustain it (for whatever reason), your muscles remember and it will be easier to rise again.
• If you’re contemplating getting back on the bandwagon…your muscle cells remember, and it will likely be easier than you think to get back into shape.