Out of all the stages of a fitness activity, it is in the beginner phase that the most amount of consistency should be followed. This is because, for the muscles, it is the first stage or the cognitive phase of learning new moves and patterns. Just like you typed on a keyboard for the first time, or learnt how to catch a ball, smash a pickleball, or tie your shoelaces. The more you do this task, the more the body starts understanding other factors like how much weight is too little or too much, what is your preferred width for a bench press, what driver you should use in which hole on a particular golf course. The examples are endless, but muscle memory is a fascinating subject which when understood, can make your fitness journey more rewarding.
“As your muscles don’t have the capacity to retain memories like your brain does, they increase the amount of muscle fiber nuclei (myonuclei) within the trained muscle cells. Think of these as crew members on a boat. The more crew members rowing the boat, the better it will perform in a race. As myonuclei increase, so does your muscle mass. This helps you build strength so you can perform the task with ease,” says a medically reviewed article, titled Muscle Memory, on Cleveland Clinic’s website.
Not just for beginners, this is also especially important to know for those who want to try and resume a sport or fitness activity after a long gap. This gap could be months or years long. It could be something as simple as getting on a bicycle ten years after you last rode one. Or it could be returning to the football pitch after a long-term injury derailed the regularity with which you played. It’s natural to be apprehensive in this case, to question your body whether it will be able to do what it once used to.
“Neural memory is what your brain and spinal cord remember: movement patterns like hitting a badminton smash, riding a bicycle, or kicking a football. Your strength and fitness decline with inactivity, but the blueprint for the motor movement often remains. You may be slower or weaker initially, but the nervous system relearns much faster than it learned the first time,” says Dr Udgam Baxi. The 32-year-old is a neurosurgeon in Vadodara who also has a FIFA accredited diploma in football medicine.
The return of muscle memory depends on a few factors, like frequency. Which is why it’s never a problem remembering where to reach out for the salt in the kitchen. But the more complex the task, the more your brain learns. “The more complex the activity, the more neural memory it requires. So something like cycling or a sport returns quickly even after a longer break as the pathway or the circuit for that movement has already been formed. Isometric weight training mostly depends on one particular muscle, so it takes a longer time to come back because this is a move which has been learnt only through frequency,” Baxi adds.
The National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) put out a YouTube video on this topic a year ago, on their Peak Physique Podcast. They spoke about newbie gains – the rapid uptick in muscle size and strength when one starts regularly lifting weights for the first time – and their links with creating new neural pathways.
“People who just start lifting are creating different pathways and will see a sudden rise in the neuromuscular control and strength output. These are especially evident in the first 6-12 months of training and an athlete might gain almost twice the muscle in the same period as a more experienced lifter,” says NASM trainer Andre Adams in the video:
All of which means that maintenance work to stay fit is not just for size and strength, but to make sure the movement patterns you learnt in your fittest days continue to be used. And beyond that lies learning new movements. This is the best thing to develop neuroplasticity: which means the more frequently and correctly you practice a movement, the stronger the neural pathways become. Something as simple as a new exercise on leg day forces your brain to rewire, get creative, and stop relying just on repeated movements.
Baxi shares there is no time limit to returning to an activity or trying a new one: “The biggest myth can be that muscle remembers. It’s the brain and the spinal cord circuits which remember the patterns, and the muscle works simply by using it again and again. However, due to earlier fixed circuits, it’s never too late to make a comeback. Because scientifically, age isn’t an obstacle in building muscle memory.”