Rock party how to dress. Rock style in clothes
Muscle memory is a phrase around which there are always disputes and many contradictions arise. Some athletes are confident that they only need to achieve a certain result and the desired physical shape once, and then they can return to their previous “works” in a matter of minutes. short time after a long break. Other athletes express the opinion that all the indicators achieved over the years of training will quickly decline if they only interrupt their training for a while.
In this material we will try to figure out whether muscle memory exists or not, how it works in powerlifting or bodybuilding, and whether it can be developed.
The concept of muscle memory and how it works
The definition of the above term reads as follows: “This is the ability of the human body to remember the level of muscle tone acquired during physical activity, as well as restore it in the shortest possible time after a long break.”
Clearly this concept can be explained with the following example. You trained for a long time, got into sports shape. But suddenly, for some reason, you had to stop the program, for example, due to illness, moving, or going on maternity leave. After a while you decide to return to the hall. At the same time, you will achieve the desired results faster than a beginner athlete. This is due to the fact that the muscles acquire their former state thanks to the remaining information that is stored in them.
When muscles are stressed during any activity (whether strength exercises or game on musical instrument) motor neurons located in the right hemisphere of the brain send signals to muscle fibers. Then the opposite situation occurs - the muscles also send their signals to the brain.
Thus, a kind of connection is created, and the more we improve in our chosen field, the stronger it becomes. Therefore, having learned something once (for example, cycling or swimming), it will be very easy to reproduce this skill even after a long break. This is how muscle memory develops.
Also, muscle fiber cells contain a large number of nuclei. During active exercise, their number increases, and with them the amount of myosin and actin, the parts of DNA responsible for the synthesis of contractile proteins, also increases. Volume muscle mass at the same time it also increases. When training stops, the body spends fewer resources, synthesis slows down, and the muscles lose shape.
But the new nuclei formed as a result physical activity, are not going anywhere. When they resume exercise, they will be able to return the muscles to their original volume and strength.
How to develop and use muscle memory
Training muscle memory opens up horizons for engaging in any type of activity. The most important thing is that the results you achieve will remain forever. To achieve success in a certain sport, it is better to start playing it at a young age.
Long periods of time will help improve muscle memory. proper training and their careful analysis. To do this, it is better to use individually developed programs.
In the security forces sports areas The help of an instructor or an experienced mentor will not hurt. This should be approached with particular seriousness. After all, if for a long time Doing certain exercises incorrectly will not only harm the body, but will also be “imprinted” in the information that the muscles will use in the future.
The development of muscle memory can also be done on psychological level. Such options are secondary and based on self-hypnosis, but they help to achieve results faster in combination with physical activity. At first, these methods seem pointless, but with intensive training they are very useful.
There are two ways:
- When going to bed, you need to close your eyes and imagine how perfect you would like your body to be. In this case, you need to wake up 2-3 times during the night and, when falling asleep, repeat the same manipulations again;
- Imagine a hot ball in your hands, fully feel it and begin to roll it over all parts of your body. Then imagine such a ball moving towards your throat. It needs to be redirected to the solar plexus, then to the hip area and finally to the legs. This psychological exercise It is better to do it before bed and repeat 5 times. It seems to help break through new roads to nerve endings.
Does muscle memory work for any training? The answer is unequivocal - yes. The muscles fix the technique of performing various exercises, be it a barbell press or crawl swimming. Even after a long-term break, you will be able to remember how to do it correctly and return to your chosen field of activity.
Also, when you resume your training course, your joints and muscles will hurt less and you will remember how to recover quickly. In this regard, it is much more difficult for beginner athletes.
Now you know how to develop muscle memory, so temporarily stopping classes and losing the results you’ve gained shouldn’t scare you. Previous indicators can be restored in a fairly short time. But for this you need to exercise regularly and properly and develop your muscles.
Video: What is muscle memory
– long-term structural changes (restructuring) of muscle and nerve cells that develop under the influence of physical training and ensure rapid restoration of athletic shape after a long rest.
When everyone comes to the gym, they dream of getting the desired body shape and put a lot of effort into it. But life can be unpredictable. It can disrupt the training schedule developed over the years: sudden financial difficulties, sick leave and temporary health problems, vacations to remote places where hotels are not equipped with comfortable gym and much more. What happens if you stop training for a certain period of time? Will you lose your hard-earned muscle mass and strength?
How long-lasting are the results of years of hard training? Is the game worth the candle? Or, more precisely, strength training. These questions are asked not only by those who are hesitantly standing on the threshold of the gym, but also by novice athletes and amateurs. There are two diametrically opposed opinions on this matter. Some believe that strength training should not be interrupted for a week under any circumstances. As a result of even such a minor break, the athlete will lose his excellent physical shape: gained muscle mass, strength, endurance.
Others are more optimistic and believe that the acquired physical fitness and strength indicators are constant, and nothing will happen to them, no matter how long your break is. Once you sweat and achieve significant results, this beautiful form will remain with you forever. Although they are somewhat true, both of these opinions are wrong.
If we start to fight the myths of strength training, then it is worth mentioning the influence of steroids. The use of steroids both in sports and in personal training in the gym is not regulated by anyone - this is the personal choice of each athlete or amateur. There is no need to demonize them, but before deciding whether to start a course of steroids, the athlete should have very realistic ideas about the results, as well as the possible consequences of taking them. Indeed, steroids speed up the process of gaining muscle mass, but subject to a professionally designed training program. Unfortunately, the use of steroids does not guarantee results: if the athlete’s training is not intense enough, then the expected increase in muscle mass, as well as strength and endurance, will not occur. However, this misconception still continues to exist among strength training enthusiasts.
Another unpleasant truth about steroids: they help an athlete to be in amazing physical shape and have excellent strength indicators, but only while taking the drug. After stopping it, all your great results in the form of a mountain of muscles and remarkable strength will disappear. Until the next steroid cycle. Therefore, breaks in the training of an athlete taking steroids is a separate issue that has its own nuances. But we can absolutely say that stopping training will have the most negative impact on the volume of muscle tissue and on indicators of endurance and strength.
Training breaks and muscle memory
An important problem in strength training - the problem of breaks - is inextricably linked with the question of how muscle memory works in the human body. This question is sanctified by science, which studies the human body as a biosystem. Muscle memory is that after repeating a certain movement, it is remembered. This mechanism is due to evolution. If you repeat a movement over a period of time, it will be stored in the long-term memory of the muscles so that it can be performed unconsciously. Therefore, no matter how long the break in training is, your muscles and neurons remember everything. If, of course, you have been doing strength training for a sufficient amount of time to form new neural pathways.
On average, a person without serious health problems and the absence of contraindications only needs 2-3 years to achieve excellent results and realize his full potential inherent at the genetic level. It is during this period that an athlete can develop his maximum muscle mass and strength. The main thing is a program drawn up by a professional and competent trainer, a change in diet, the introduction of necessary microelements and, of course, motivation. Having reached the genetic limit, athletes continue to improve their physical fitness for many years: working on symmetry various groups muscles and their quality. This is the beauty of bodybuilding.
What happens to all this body wealth accumulated over the years - muscle mass and strength - after a break in training? This question worries not only athletes who have interrupted their training, but also scientists. WITH scientific point From a perspective, this issue is studied in most detail within the framework of space medicine and biology. The problem of a break in active muscle activity and the consequences it has on the body after it is of interest to research in this area, because this is exactly what happens during a stay in space. The state of weightlessness completely replicates the state of a destrained organism, the musculoskeletal system, during a long break in active muscular activity, but this is expressed to an extreme degree.
Evolution has decreed that some unnecessary this moment functions and structures of the body are lost if they are not needed. This is how the body adapts to new conditions. When an athlete began strength training, changes occurred in the body under the influence of constant and very intense physical activity. And they concerned not only physical appearance. The body's systems also changed, adapting to new conditions: structural and functional restructuring took place in the muscles, cardiovascular, respiratory and circulatory systems. It was thanks to these adaptive transformations that the athlete increased his physical performance and gained muscle mass. It is logical - and correct - to assume that during a sharp break in strength training the same thing happens, only in reverse. Now the body adapts to the conditions of lack of training and gradually loses the changes in structures and functions that arose in those days. It is believed that endurance indicators are the first to be lost. Then the gained muscle mass begins to decrease. The last to regress are strength indicators.
Evolutionary laws that are subject to human body, dispel the myth of many athletes that regression in physical performance and muscle volume will be insignificant if you train according to a professionally developed program before the break. Unfortunately, losses have nothing to do with the quality of the program or the competence of the coach. On average, an ideally nourished and trained athlete can lose 40-60 percent of muscle mass and physical performance during a year of not training. However, this is not a reason for despair, because the muscles remember your work. It is quite possible to recover in 1.5-2 months and return to your previous performance. A significant role in this is played by both the quality of the recovery training program and the length of time spent away from the gym, as well as age. The older the athlete and the longer he has not trained, the more difficult it is to restore performance. But there is good news: muscle mass and absolute strength can be restored by everyone without exception. With properly organized training.
How does the recovery process occur after a break in training?
The first to return is your stamina. As is known, the cardiovascular and respiratory systems are responsible for them. They react to sudden stressful situation, which the body found itself in after the break - intense strength training. During training, the need for oxygen increases sharply. Breathing becomes more intense, blood flow to the muscles increases, reserve capillaries open, delivering oxygen to the tissues. The synthesis of proteins increases, which forms ATP and is also responsible for glycolysis and its subsequent synthesis - glycogenogenesis. In the body, ATP is the source of energy for biochemical processes. And this is extremely important during strength training. Fortunately, memory is not limited to muscles and their associated neurons. The body is able to produce the same amount of ATP that it produced before the break in vigorous physical activity. Therefore, after just a few workouts, progress in endurance indicators will be noticeable.
Next, the previous volumes of muscle mass are restored. Due to the structural and functional changes that have already occurred in the cardiovascular, respiratory and circulatory systems, the flow of blood with oxygen and nutrients to muscle tissue has increased sharply. As a result, excess ATP accumulates in the muscles, which increases the production of proteins: structural, colloidal and contractile. As a result, pressure increases in the transverse cavitary muscles due to large quantity colloidal proteins and glycogen accumulates, which leads to muscle growth.
Strength indicators are restored last. Here main role plays by the central and peripheral nervous systems. As mentioned earlier, due to the existence of muscle memory, coordination between muscles is restored immediately after training begins. The interneuron, or interneuron, is responsible for strength indicators. This is a special neuron that enhances the impulse transmitted to the muscles. In young and healthy athletes, its formation takes approximately 1.5 years. If the interneuron was created during strength training before the break, it will recover within 3-6 months. If it did not have time to form, then the athlete will have to work again to increase strength indicators. 
Breaks in training are not so bad. Having quit strength training once, you can always return to the gym and perhaps achieve even greater results. And it doesn’t matter how long the break was: a week, a couple of months or years. Not only you, but also your muscles and neurons remember how you sweated with iron.
Muscle memory These are long-term structural changes in muscle and nerve cells that develop under the influence of physical training and ensure rapid restoration of athletic shape after a long rest. After an injury, the birth of a child, or many other circumstances, professional athletes sometimes have to stop training for a while.
At the same time, without load, the muscles atrophy - myocytes contract in volume, since to maintain low level physical activity requires less organelles and cytoplasm. However, if athletes decide to return to sport and resume training, fitness returns relatively quickly. It takes them less time to increase muscle size, strength and endurance than beginners.
The mechanism of muscle memory
Restructuring of nerve cells
The phenomenon of muscle memory has been known for a long time, and sports doctors associate its causes with work. nervous system, namely, increased excitability of motor neurons and the emergence of new synapses, which leads to improved neuromuscular coupling.
In the motor cortex of a trained athlete who has started training after a break, accelerated growth of new vessels and improved nutrition of motor areas occurs, and neurotrophic factors are secreted.
Restructuring of muscle cells
Norwegian scientists led by Kristian Gundersen (University of Oslo) showed that muscle fibers have their own memory and its mechanism is associated with the appearance of new nuclei. Muscle fibers are the cells that form muscle tissue, very long (up to 20 cm) and thin (up to 100 microns). Usually their length is equal to the length of the muscle. In addition, muscle fibers contain many nuclei - they are one of the few multinucleated cells in vertebrates.
Detailed description of the study
In experiments on mice, in order to load the extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscle, they partially removed another muscle - the tibialis anterior muscle (lat.), or tibialis anterior. Since the partially removed muscle acts in the same direction as the one being studied, the EDL received additional stress as a result of the operation. At different times after the operation, scientists observed what happened to the muscle. Over 21 days, the muscle fibers in the EDL became noticeably thicker, with a 35% increase in cross-sectional area. But these changes were not the only ones. There were 54% more nuclei in muscle fiber cells. Moreover, as the analysis showed, the increase in the number of nuclei preceded the increase in thickness in time. The nuclei began to multiply on the sixth day of increased muscle load, and their number stabilized on the 11th day. And the thickness of the fiber began to grow on the ninth day and stopped on the 14th. They did the same thing with another group of mice and observed them for two weeks. On the 14th day after surgery, there were 37% more nuclei in the muscle fibers, and the thickness of the fibers increased by 35%. After this, biologists simulated the cessation of muscle training - to do this, they simply cut the nerve going to it. Over the next 14 days, the muscle atrophied: the thickness of the fibers decreased by 40% of highest value. And the number of additional cores remained at the same level.
A scientific experiment has shown that the growth of muscle mass during training is a consequence of the increased number of nuclei in muscle cells. More nuclei mean more working genes that control the synthesis of more muscle contractile proteins - actin and myosin. This change is long-lasting - the extra nuclei did not disappear even after three months of muscle atrophy. Latest result was unexpected, since it was assumed that the excess nuclei would soon be destroyed by apoptosis, but this did not happen. The nuclei simply reduced their functional activity and remained in “standby mode.”
Scientists have concluded that it is the new nuclei that form the basis of muscle memory, which is implemented at the cellular level. With the resumption of the load, additional nuclei begin to actively function: protein synthesis and hypertrophic processes, which are regulated by nuclear DNA, are enhanced.
New nuclei in muscle fibers are formed due to fusion with myosatellite cells, which divide by mitosis. With age, their ability to divide decreases. For this reason, it will be difficult for an older person to build muscle if they did not exercise in their youth. And getting back into physical shape is much easier.
How does muscle memory help you gain mass and develop strength? Find out how this phenomenon helps you gain muscle mass after a break from training.
Many people are skeptical about the phenomenon of muscle memory. Maybe this name itself does not quite correctly reflect the essence, but this is a scientifically proven phenomenon. Muscle memory does exist and it is one of the long term benefits of working out in the gym and healthy image life. Today we will look at what muscle memory is, how it works and what its benefits are.
What is muscle memory?
One of the reasons for muscle growth is the ability of muscle cells to increase in size. They become larger, divide and create muscle tissue.
Bottom line
Working out in the gym is almost the same as riding a bike. If you already understand how to train, it will be easier for you to return to training even after a long break. This is possible thanks to muscle memory.
Have you given up training of your own free will, and after several years you are horrified when you look at yourself in the mirror? Don’t you see your former triceps, powerful chest and wide back? No problem. If you were a bodybuilder, then you can easily regain your previous shape. And the secret is all in muscle memory.
The phenomenon of muscle memory has been known for a long time, and sports physicians associated its causes with the functioning of the nervous system. But scientists from Norway, led by Christian Gundersen from the University of Oslo, showed that muscle fibers have their own memory and its mechanism is associated with the appearance of new nuclei.
The image is reduced. Click to see original.
Muscle fibers - the cells that make up muscle tissue - look unusual. They are very long (up to 14 cm) and thin (about 50 microns). Usually their length is equal to the length of the muscle. In addition, muscle fibers contain many nuclei - they are one of the few multinucleated cells. The modern method of intravital observation of cells makes it possible to count the nuclei in it using a confocal microscope and a fluorescent dye injected directly into the muscle fiber. Not in the entire long fiber, but in some part of it.
When an athlete stops training muscles, they (their fibers) begin to atrophy (reduce in size). This is how nature works, so that they always remain at the same size as you pumped them up, you need to train all the time, keep them in shape, give them physical activity.
When you do nothing (do not train), the body sees that the muscles are not used 100% and thinks, why should I spend so much fuel (proteins, carbohydrates, fats) to maintain their size if they are not used anyway. It reduces them in size, and instead stores fat, since it is a reserve source of energy. And if they need energy, they will start using fat.
How to start training again
The first place to start is the gym. And immediately think about the training program. Which loads to choose? The answer is simple. How long have you been away from bodybuilding? If not more than one week, then you could start with the same weights. And if we're talking about about several months or years - here we will talk about gradual loads. It's all about the connections, which have lost their former potential. Therefore, choose a classic weight, 8-10 repetitions with medium intensity. Start with basic exercise per muscle group.
The reaction after training will not be entirely positive, the pain in the ligaments will be incredible. The thing is that ligaments that have not felt stress for a long time are very weak and easily injured. And they will definitely get sick after an intense workout, excuse me, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you want to move your muscles from a stagnant point, give it a little stress. And stress indicates pain, and pain means that your muscles are again gaining momentum in growth.
Don't set unrealistic nutrition goals. Understand that it will take you a lot of time to restore your previous forms and your previous lifestyle. Therefore, start eating nutritiously, developing certain habits. Eat more protein, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. And gradually add additional meals to your regular diet in between the main ones. This way, you will ensure that your nutrition returns to normal.
The main component of your training is oxygen. Don't sit at home, walk more and be in the fresh air. The more you breathe fresh air- the more strength you have.
Become an ascetic. Yes! You will have to sacrifice active recreation with friends, forget about alcohol and sleepless nights. Try to avoid anything that can disrupt your physiology. Afterwards, when you gain weight and achieve the desired muscles, such walks will not be able to harm you, as in the first weeks of rehabilitation work on your body.
After some time, your business will go up. Post-workout fatigue, pain in joints and muscles will not be so disturbing. And this means only one thing - it’s time to increase the intensity of your training. Increase the weights, increase the speed of the exercises, or reduce the training time, but stop at this point. Start in fast pace increase the load on the body.
And don’t think that after training you will have a quiet rest on the couch in front of the TV, no. On the contrary, now you need to move a lot. Movement fires up your metabolism. But don't overdo it either. There is no need to pedal your bike to the point of exhaustion after training. Enjoy your “post-workout workout.” This could be swimming, walking or light running. It wouldn’t hurt to take care of your health - get examined by a urologist, take a blood test, urine test, and check your body’s basic indicators.
In a few weeks, you will notice the results, and the long-awaited changes will be reflected in the mirror with improved body shapes. But the echo of bygone times will be a thick layer subcutaneous fat. It’s easy to get rid of it; all you need to do is change your diet. Change your daily calorie intake. Choose two days from the weekly cycle and eat 25% less on these days than on the rest. But, lowering energy value your diet, do not reduce the amount of protein you consume. Everything here should remain in its place.
That's all you need to know to restore your previous forms. In the future, stick to your diet and training programs. The main thing is don't stop. And you will again become a role model, and your figure will again delight the opposite sex.
