What is Muscle Memory? (Science Explained)

[@6AnAsianGuy9]

Muscle memory is when your muscles remember all of your life regrets and put it into the gains

[@Seisry2]

That's why I'm so big and strong

[@johnpyershaherblhaddad5723]

😂😂😂😂 Tru

[@milwaukeebuds]

😂😂😂

[@ConstantinGMWeber]

Brilliant🎉 I need this😂

[@Faceless_Chat]

sheeeetttt 🤣

[@internaltext]

can you cover muscle mommies next pls

[@stuartc4]

I found when I broke my leg, my calves which were relatively big completely atrophied but came back really quick, it's crazy how evolution lead to all these intriguing mechanisms. Cheers for the info.

[@Echo-xe5gj]

i've recently been wondering about this quite a bit. i personally had an extremely severe injury that sidelined me from training after having trained pretty consistently for 3-4 years into a low intermediate powerlifting range. even after i had recovered reasonably from the injury i just never got back into the gym due to a lot of factors like starting a family and ultimately over the course of a decade i ended up losing a lot of the muscle mass i had accumulated. recently I started getting active again and have picked up some more bodybuilding-ish low weight high rep training and over the course of just a few months my physique has rebounded quite a bit. not to the peak of my training before, but enough that people who didn't know me when i was very dedicated to training have been very surprised at my sudden transformation.

[@johntwineham6015]

76 yo; weight trained from age 34 to 38. Occasionally lifted over the last 37 years, restarted regularly 8/23. It took me only about 3 weeks to handle the same weights that it took me 2 years to attain in my mid 30s. After 14 months, my bench is 1.3xbw; slightly better ratio than when I was 38 (I weighed more then, to be fair)

[@ChandlerGallant]

Good stuff man👍

[@johntwineham6015]

@Entertainment_Station_ES No juice. Just lucky to have lots of fast twitch fiber. When I was 5'11.5" in my early 20s, with a repaired badly damaged knee, came down with rebound and went back up and dunked it (was not a ferocious dunk, small hands) Worked out from age 34-38, got up to 2x315 plus 2x315 more with much help, but weighed 228 then; I am 183 now. My goal (probably pipedream) is to do 225x12, the NFL combine minimum. At present best I have done is 10 sets of 3 with 215, each with 4 minute rest intervals; did get 4 on 8th set, all with no spotter (felt great then and next day; 2 days later it hit me and I was trashed). Just 14 months in, so maybe I can reach my goal, if I avoid pesky injuries. Injuries however... I stopped lifting at 38 when I ruptured the patellar tendon on my undamaged leg; I got too strong, and ripped it in 2 in the middle; the tendon did not pull off the bone, my quad just overpowered it. Thanks for the compliment, and I hope your lifting is going great!

[@papaspaulding]

Muscle memory is fkn insane. I lifted from my early teens to my late 20's and hit my genetic natural limit and got really big and strong as a result. at 5,7 I was around 238ibs and pretty lean (visible ab's, veins, and serrations on some muscles at that weight) I got far bigger than I ever thought I could get basically. I then took ten years off doing nothing in that time. slowly over that time lost all those gains until after around 8-10 years returned to a DYEL baseline. I started lifting again in my late 30's My muscles just blew up like balloons every workout I was getting bigger and stronger, my numbers were shooting up by pretty big increments week to week. it felt like near over night. within a few weeks I was looking big again and after just a few short months had gone from 170 ibs to 200

[@Austinaf55]

I've been having the same experience, these bodies of ours are amazing! Thank God for muscle memory lol

[@greyly_]

Now in my fifties, I've regained muscle that I lost ten years earlier. It came back very easily, with only 2-3 sets per muscle group per week, 1-4 RiR. When I initially grew that muscle in my twenties, it took a lot more than that.

[@miss.apprehended]

Anecdotally this is a legitimate concept. Age 2-9 I was involved in gymnastics; during early 20's was overweight due to medications- after having gone off of the weight-gaining meds it's been easy to maintain a physically fit form w/little to no resistance training compared to many I've seen spend hrs in the gym + eat a strictly controlled CICO diet. I believe early gymnast training has certainly made it easier to achieve gains w/little effort especially where there were muscle groups utilized especially for different apparatuses.

[@robscott333]

Especially back and core it seems, totally agree with this

[@SirAlexanderdeLarge]

Great content! 👏🏼

[@jeremyjjbrown]

I recently went through a scenario where I've gained back over 20lbs of muscle after well over five years off of training. I am having a hard time believing that muscle memory can last for that long. I wonder how much of muscle memory is actually just your first definition. I know how to do all the lifts and can get back to my genetic potential a lot faster now.

[@rbarreira2]

How long did it take to gain those 20lbs?

[@rbarreira2]

Studying people recovering after a long coma could provide useful data here. Do they regain muscle as quickly as people recovering from shorter periods of inactivity?

[@TeckNoobie]

If you watch Wolfs last video on muscle memory on his other channel, research seems to suggest long hiatus (ie 20+ years) in elderly folk that used to exercise when they were younger has some muscle memory return when they start exercising again.

[@TomAlderman1978]

This is fascinating!

[@tlniec]

I needed to be reminded of this. I recently took a long vacation, then got sick right afterward, so it has been close to 6 weeks since I've been able to do any real lifting. I feel and look deflated and have been nervous about how things will go when I am able to restart training. Hopefully I'll experience significant muscle memory effects.

[@raydosson2025]

Wow! What a great video. Just subscribed for more. :)

[@bahalana923]

You had me at take 3 weeks off, 1 week on. Got it.

[@BR-lq6fc]

Great overview

[@xntumrfo9ivrnwf]

I took a “break” of around 15 years, coming back to training just under 2 years ago. I’ve had better than expected gains, but of course being a sample size of 1, it’s hard to definitely say it was due to muscle memory.

[@bullinvginshop9011]

I took off about 7 years after training for about 15. It took me about 2 years to get it all back and then some.

[@xntumrfo9ivrnwf]

@@bullinvginshop9011 awesome!

[@DumptruckFrye]

Came back to lifting in October 2022 after not lifting since 2004 (with a brief flirtation with bench press in 06), and other dudes in the gym seem surprised that I’ve only been lifting for two years.

[@xntumrfo9ivrnwf]

@@DumptruckFrye similar situation here... although I don't talk to anyone at the gym :(

[@DumptruckFrye]

@@xntumrfo9ivrnwfI lift at a college and use the gym on my lunch breaks. The students are super outgoing, and it has gotten me to liven up a little myself.

[@ArthursAtman]

Thanks for this clarification: the subject has been really confusing to me. I can attest that even taking 3-6 months off of training, my years of hard work really do give me an advantage, and I regain strength and form much more quickly than some of my friends who are doing it for the first time. We can do the same training regime, but on week 3 I'm morphing noticeably and they are not

[@Yupppi]

I'm surprised that muscle memory can be seen in effect in just mere weeks. I would've guessed you had to train for a decent time and have the gains "solidify" before you have anything worth talking about disappearing and rebuilding back. This was a great video for people who are stressing out about gains too much in a lifestyle or situation where they can't dedicate to gym perfectly. Just like trying to hit the gym as much as you can in a situation where you can't do it optimally is still a big benefit.

[@ozzy6162]

So those athletes in various sports who are cheating by using steroids etc., COULD develop strength/power that they're able to reproduce (or at least up to a point), because of the extra myonuclei created, when they come off the juice. This possibility is really important for sport and drug testing - research should be looking at whether this is possible as a priority. Such a result would be particularly useful in trying to convince the world sanctioning bodies & state commissions in professional boxing to take doping seriously. Their current suspensions are a joke (usually 6 months) and probably encourage some boxers to risk taking PEDs.

[@sidfortress9998]

Absolutely

[@lily-ux7ex]

this is a complicated question, but if you guys read this than cool. muscle growth has both a systemic element of hormones or whatever washing through your body(at least to my understanding) and a localized one, so if I dont workout 1 specific muscle group(quads maybe) but work the rest of my body, will my rate of muscle decay by slower?

[@Stranden]

Considering that all cells in the body is swapped out after a period of 7 years on average, maybe "memory" is gradually lost while muscle cells get swapped? Or can muscle cells be replaced? Muscle cells dont really divide like skin cells, do they?

[@quarkraven]

what were the age ranges of the study group? at what age ranges of healthy individuals does muscle memory work well, and when does it (presumably) begin to decline? thank you

[@flexlikeag]

Could bilateral transfer of strength be a cause of why the single leg study didn't show similar results?

[@erric288]

Just reading these anecdotal comments, it seems like the myonuclei transfer from stem cells seems to be permanent. Or at least whatever epigenetic changes that are occurring due to the training stimulus are permanent.

[@TheHybrid350]

Great

[@madtitan9639]

Milonuclei is how I say it now.

[@gokukakarot1855]

For the algorithm

[@NBsTube]

guys for god sake if you consider yourself a scientist stop using the terms "theory" and "hypothesis" interchangeable.

[@Hedgeflexlfz]

TDLR

[@rogerm3708]

Muscle Memory or should it be called Muscle Efficiency. As a lifter gets better at a lift, the lifter isn't always necessarily stronger but has increased their skill at that lift

[@rbarreira2]

That relates to the nervous system learning, this video is about the actual muscles being able to regain size quickly.

[@rogerm3708]

@@rbarreira2 Muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. Many mistakenly use muscle memory to describe faster growth. Muscles become more efficient in converting resources through repetition and time

[@rbarreira2]

@@rogerm3708 Did you watch the video? There are two different definitions of muscle memory, the video mentions both but mostly talks about muscle size and not learning.

[@bastipear2864]

FIRST!

[@bastipear2864]

Human

[@glenoh88]

lol, more of this stupid crap to get 1% extra muscle….how about using your phd to explore then benefits of continuous training. Maybe injury (just minor injury) prevention training. Study the effects of tendon irritation and its impact on training. It’s not sexy but the results are probably more impactful than that time you spent studying the 0.01 % of lengthened partial vs full rom training…..