PT Personal Trainers

Muscular Memory

Who has never done or knows someone who has taken a break from their workout or exercise routine, whether for work or studies, vacation, health or injury reasons, or even for demotivation?

Don't stop, train even on vacations

During the stopping period, there is a decrease in muscular strength performance. However, when you return to your workouts or exercises, and with a correct diet, you feel that you quickly return to your previous performance status, where your muscle mass gain is big.

This result, the gain of muscle abrupt in a short time, has an explanation: it’s called Muscular Memory.

Muscular Memory is the ability of our body / organism to, after a period of break from training, re-assimilate the force work done over a continuous period and even increase the levels previously achieved.

Scientifically, the nucleus of cells is responsible for the control of chemical reactions through the transcription and translation of the information contained in the DNA, it means that these changes affect the genetic expression and that will have a direct impact on the proteins produced by our organism.

Thus, training elevates gene expression through a so-called methylation process that has two strands:

• Hypermethylation - when methylation process increases, gene expression decreases;

• Hypomethylation - when methylation process decreases, gene expression increases; 

Don't stop, keep your workout 

In the period of training or exercise pause, individuals lose both muscle mass and strength, but maintains levels of gene expression, that means that our muscles memorize previous levels of gene expression.

When we return to strength training and muscle mass gains, individuals with workout routines are more likely to achieve higher and faster performance states.

With age, this physiological process is smaller and the capacity to produce muscle memory is reduced, hence the importance of starting work on force earlier, to maintain the effect of muscle memory later.

So, with a good diet and return to the workout routine, it will not be a break that will cause significant differences in your muscle mass and strength. If you are returning to training and need help of a professional do not hesitate to contact a professional of Personal Trainers Portugal.

Good training!

João Matos text