Unexpected Lapse in Training Routine
After getting accustomed to weightlifting for a period of time, stepping away from the routine of training can become challenge.
Dedicating time for the gym can become as commonplace as doing any of your daily errands or preparing your meals for the day.
However, there will be periods in your life where you’ll become inactive for some reason and won’t be able to keep exercising as you once did.
Being inactive for as little as 2 weeks can have you lose around 16% of lean muscle mass or more, which brings up anxiety for many. Will all those years of hard work go to waste with a short break from the gym?
Building muscle for years just to lose it all seems like a hopeless waste of time, but our bodies are capable of hypertrophy through muscle memory. Muscle memory causes your body to gain size and strength faster than you previously could by just working out linearly.
Muscle memory can explain why an offseason bodybuilder will quickly diet and look shredded within a month or two on a healthy workout program. For untrained individuals it may take twice that amount of time.
Effect of Muscle Memory on Physique
Our muscle fibers are long, cylindrical cells surrounded by thousands of microscopic nuclei. These nuclei control the rate of growth and repair for the cell and are concentrated on areas of the muscle fiber that are used most often.
These special type of concentrated nuclei are called myonuclei and are the sole reason why we can be inactive for long periods of time and gain most of our strength and power back in no time.
In recent studies, weightlifters were shown to have higher amounts of myonuclei in comparison to inactive individuals in the experiment.
Scientist used to believe that we lost our nuclei when we lost muscle, but research shows that our nuclei stay intact even when we lose muscle:
Once an untrained person starts an exercise program, new myonuclei are created from nearby stem cells. These nuclei remain within the muscle fiber, even after detraining for weeks or months.
This is why muscle building requires time and patience; before any sizeable muscle growth can occur, you have to build a certain amount of nuclei to build up enough strength.
Most weightlifters quit before this point and they never see any of this progress.
If these myonuclei are present in many previously active weightlifters, how long do they stay inside of our cells?
There’s some evidence that says they’re present for decades, but nothing is conclusive as of yet for an exact number. More research is probably needed for this.
The Wrap Up
With how our bodies respond to muscle memory, it doesn’t hurt to take a long break from the gym and bounce back better than before. Your muscle growth may be taking forever because you’re working out linearly instead of with planned breaks of rest in between to allow yourself time to recover. Plan on when and how you want to detrain to maximize your potential from weightlifting.
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