You haven’t been training for few weeks or months, but now want to get back in shape. So you should know what is muscle memory and how does it work. You train your muscle; you feed it with food, new nuclei adds up in the muscle cells, small cells start to expand in the new nuclei which end up growing your muscle and makes you stronger.

So, what’s muscle memory and its work?

It’s the ability to build super strength and never lose it, to hone skills on the sports field and to injury-proof every exercise – all without ever having to think about it. Get to the gym and start making the most of yours. It’s a no-brainer.

You know how muscle growth happens (resistance training, rest and food). When you stop working out for some good long period, your muscles shrink, and you slowly face muscle loss. It’s a fact that the number of nuclei which has formed in the muscle cell doesn’t sink at the same pace. This helps you to gain back the same amount or more muscle when you get back to training. Even strength drops when you detrain, but it comes back slowly when you get back to training.

Basically, your muscles get to know that you are going to work again, so it adapts to the labor work aka volume increment week to week or month. Muscle memory can be negative too. How? If you haven’t learned the skill and correct form of any exercise, let’s say squats, so your brain takes time to learn the skill and form when you get back to training. So make sure you know form very well to gain back what you lost.

How to get best out of Muscle Memory? 

Lifting weights are the best way to gain back what you lost. Muscles and strength come back as you move out of your detrain zone. Make sure you know how to perform exercises with proper form. That’s the best way to gain muscle and strength back. If you lack behind in this then it will take weeks to learn the form and skill, muscle and strength will come later after learning.

Yashovardhan Singh is a fitness coach with GetSetGo Fitness and a former national football player. He likes to keep a no-nonsense approach to fitness by applying scientific literature to provide results to his clients. Reach him at yashovardhan@getsetgo.fitness for coaching.