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muscle memory

rottsnhell

Registered User
Feb 6, 2009
245
0
0
I'm a believer in muscle memory. I saw a discussion on this subject on another board and i read alot of guys saying noway, you loose your muscle tissue and you have to work out to regain them to get your size back. I havta disagree with that. First you have your skeletal muscle then you have fascicles which are bundles of muscle fibers and in the fibers you have myofibrils. So when you stop working out you dont loose muscle fibers, thats a falicy. Yes you will loose mitochondria within muscle cells and the individual muscle fibers will decrease in size due to the progressive loss of myofibrils, but the fibers will not be lost. This is called disuse atrophy. Yes you can loose muscle fibers, but this is like if you are bed ridden for 6months to 2 years then you pretty much shut down nerve impulses to the muscle tissue and eventually you loose the nerves. that is called denervation atrophy, that is when muscle fibers will be replaced by connective tissue. Thats when you loose muscle. Anyways i'm rambling, your muscle fibers will shrink but not dissapear, when you resume working out you will gain more myofibrils which will fill in the muscle fiber again and make it larger. So i am a firm believer in muscle memory...rot
 

mgkc155

Registered User
May 21, 2005
145
0
16
i definitely believe in muscle memory.my brother will work out real hard for like 8 months and then because of his work schedule not train for a couple of months.his body will start looking sloppy and all he has to do is go to the gym for like 3 weeks and he looks like he never missed a day.thank god for muscle memory
 

iraqkev

New member
Dec 29, 2008
17
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Iraq
Your spot on there. Muscles getting bigger or smaller is not due to more or less muscle fibres. You pretty much have the same amount of muscle fibres your whole life. Working out just makes them bigger or smaller.

One thing to note is that although you don't lose muscle fibers there is the possibility of changing the quick twitch muscle fibers to slow twitch muscle fibers. Slow twitchers are the muscles fibers used by endurance athletes eg marathon runners and don't swell like fast twitch muscle fibres can. Its important to do power work in the gym to keep the fast twitch muscle fibres. Power work is low-med weight moving the weight as fast as possible in the 3-4 reps range. Add on weight every week to keep growing and don't work to fatigue. Fast twitch muscles don't fire when you are fatigued so if you want to get them big you give them plenty of rest between sets.

Once those fast twitchers become slow twitchers they stay slow twitchers. You cannot make slow twitch muscles into fast twitch once they have changed.

Before I lose the run of myself I better get to my point which is: Vary your training. If you work out slow for 8 weeks, work out fast for the next 8 weeks. that way both sets of muscle fibers will keep growing.
 

richusa

Registered User
Dec 13, 2008
34
0
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Cali
I definitely agree, although as I get older (54) it seems as though Altymers sets in ocassionally
 

MR.X

Registered User
Feb 8, 2009
39
0
0
i hope it still exists. I've taken layoffs b4 and my muscles always bounced right back but this time has been the longest due to personal and physical shit. I'm giving myself aprx 3 wks to prepare and then its back to the gym hitting it twice a day six days a week. I'll keep u posted on the results..............................
 

The Grim Repper

Super Moderator
Sep 26, 2008
4,351
3
38
Making it Happen Somewhere
i hope it still exists. I've taken layoffs b4 and my muscles always bounced right back but this time has been the longest due to personal and physical shit. I'm giving myself aprx 3 wks to prepare and then its back to the gym hitting it twice a day six days a week. I'll keep u posted on the results..............................


Wow X. that's some serious frequency in the gym! What's the breakdown on that? Personally, I'm presently looking to scale back volume even more from my Max-OT style training to a Doggcrapp style for a bit. (Blasphemy!! LOL)


TGR