Muscles may "remember" in ways that will allow us to regain fitness once gyms reopen and we start working out again.
For those of us sheltering at home because of coronavirus and unable to visit the gym or otherwise weight train — which, right now, is most of us — a new study of the inner workings of our muscles should be heartening.
It said that if muscles have been trained in the past, they seem to develop a molecular memory of working out that lingers through a prolonged period of inactivity, and once we start training again, this "muscle memory" could speed the process by which we regain our former muscular strength and size, the New York Times reported.
The findings suggest that skipping workouts now need not guarantee enfeeblement later, and if we forget what fitness once felt like, our muscles recollect.
Many of us probably think that muscle memory refers to our well-documented ability to retain physical skills even without practice. Learn to ride a bicycle can never be forgotten, as well as skiing a mogul or starting to walk as a child.
Scientists believe that repeated movements apparently burn themselves into our motor neurons, and remain available for later retrieval from our brains and nervous systems, whenever needed. But it has been less clear whether trace memories of past exercise reside within our muscles themselves and affect how well we respond to future workouts.
Past studies in animals and people suggest that they might. In a recent study, for instance, sedentary older men who completed 12 weeks of weight training gained muscle strength and size, much of which they lost during a subsequent 12-week layoff, but all of which returned within only eight weeks of returning to the gym.
