Muscle Memory

[Poppa Pump]

I've been doing some research on what has proven to be a pretty interesting topic. What is muscle memory and how can it be created? When one works at and grows their arms to 17 inches from 16, it could take a year. After a lay off they go back to 16, but can recapture that 17 in a matter of months, mabye even weeks. We all know it grows back faster because you had it before....but why? And can this be duplicated by other means? If there are any studdies being conducted on this, it would be amazing. It woud revolutionize bodybuilding. I believe that there has to be some way to do this, because there is obviously something going on that cn be duplicated by some scientific means. I wasn't really looking for any info with this post, i was just looking to lay this question out there and mabye get some people thinking....peace

[Rich8888]

Poppa....Here is a good and detailed explaination

Multinucleation might explain the longstanding anecdotal phenomenon most bodybuilders call "muscle memory". Muscle memory is recognized when someone who has had a substantial muscular mass and then lost it due to injury or layoffs from training, returns to training and regains the majority of the mass in a much shorter time than was initially required to develop it. What could be happening is this: the specific muscle proteins in the muscle were cannibalized by the body for energy production during non-use. However, the muscle retains the higher than average number of nucleii that the previous exercise stress caused the body to create. When presented with exercise and proper nutrients, new protein synthesis can occur at an accelerated rate.

Muscle growth is a specialized form of protein synthesis. As we saw above, a steroid hormone (testosterone) enters the muscle cell by diffusing directly across the cell membrane, combines with a receptor in the cell and then stimulates gene transcription and protein formation via the DNA -> mRNA -> tRNA -> protein pathway. Specific receptors and genes are involved.

Muscle cells, as mentioned before, are long cells called myofibrils. They differ from most other cells in that when muscles grow, the individual cells simply become thicker and longer instead of dividing into entirely new cells. Muscle cells also differ from most other body cells in that muscle cells are multinucleated. A myofibril may increase in size up to 28 times its initial size.

The interesting questions come in as we start looking at exactly how and when this process occurs. Human growth hormone (hGH) and insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) seem to play an important, though somewhat unclear, role.

hGH is released from the anterior pituitary and travels through the blood. It acts on the liver to release IGFs. Both IGFs and hGH are peptide hormones; IGFs are structurally very similar to a large section of the insulin molecule - hence their name.

What precisely happens at the muscle cell is not known, but we can make some fairly well-informed speculation. Since IGFs are similar to insulin, it makes sense to think that they would also have a similar function. So IGFs probably work to increase uptake of amino acids and glucose into muscle cells. It is not clear whether muscle cells have receptors for hGH, but if they do, then it could be that hGH increases nuclear division in muscle without triggering cellular division (mitosis).

We have seen how DNA and RNA are critical to protein synthesis, so it is clear that having more nucleii within muscle would be very beneficial for more rapid protein synthesis (muscle growth). It turns out that each nucleus has a sort of effective "range". When the muscle grows, it can only grow as far as the nucleii will "reach". So the number of nucleii control the ultimate size of the muscle fiber. One of the major functions of hGH is to stimulate cell division. Now, if there are hGH receptors in muscle, but muscle cells lack the ability to divide, and hGH has an anabolic effect on muscle, it stands to reason that hGH is increasing the nuclear division process (and thus the total number of available nucleii in the muscle), but the cytoplasmic separation process never kicks in. Perhaps the mechanism for it that is found in most cells has been lost over time in muscle as an evolutionary adaption. (There is no doubt that muscles are very important to survival!)

It seems then that hGH and IGFs might have complementary functions in stimulating muscle growth. hGH could be instructing the muscle cells to "build more factories" for muscle while IGFs could be stimulating the cells to take in more "building blocks" for protein synthesis. Both hGH and IGFs may affect other important components in the process as well - such as increasing the production of hormone receptors or tRNA or activating enzymes that accelerate transcription.


Copyright notice: The entire contents of this document are Copyright 1997 Paul L. Moses. Redistribution for personal, noncommercial use is permissible, so long as the document is distributed in its entirety, including this notice. Any other use requires an express written request and consent from the listowner. All rights reserved.

[Whoisdaman]

here's some good reading if you are still interested:

http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/magaz...stretching.htm

Muscle memory is a very interesting topic.

[Poppa Pump]

Originally posted by Whoisdaman
here's some good reading if you are still interested:

http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/magaz...stretching.htm

Muscle memory is a very interesting topic.

Yeah, i've read that article. But i feel that the fascial stretching is bull. If that were true couldn't someone just hop on synthol for a few weeks, and then upon getting off of it they can reach those results in a matter of months? I feel it has to be a lot more complicated than stretching out your fascial. Peace

[Whoisdaman]

You don't have to believe every fact about muscle fascia stretching, there are some other good points on muscle memory in the article though.