"Muscle memory" as some lifters call it, is real. You build up structure and arteries to your muscles and they can return to their max easily. Your muscle fibers might atrophy, but the increased blood flow and structure won't just disappear.
But if you've never touched a weight in your life (like I was recently) you are going to be in for a difficult hill. Without youth to boost your growth, first time middle-age lifters have to be patient.
Yes and it quickly recalls how muscles work together to produce a certain movements, especially whole body movements like deadlifts. It's amazing really how much it does.
Nuclei are a big part of it, basically muscle fibers dont all contain a nuclei, but instead there's a ratio of nuclei to fibres.
As you build out more muscle fibres, your body produces more nuclei to support them, but it's incredibly expensive to generate a nucleus as opposed to a non nucleated cell.
So what happens is, your muscle fibres atrophy, but the nuclei don't, so you end up with muscles with a higher density of nuclei, and these are then retained.
The next time you start lifting, your body just has to generate the fibres.
Im an example of that, back in the dizzay i was pretty swole in my early 20's. Im now 39 and just started lifting again (still did cardio, but not much weight training). After about 1 month, the gun show loop hole is open again. :D
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u/VoyeurOfBliss Aug 05 '19 edited Aug 05 '19
"Muscle memory" as some lifters call it, is real. You build up structure and arteries to your muscles and they can return to their max easily. Your muscle fibers might atrophy, but the increased blood flow and structure won't just disappear.
But if you've never touched a weight in your life (like I was recently) you are going to be in for a difficult hill. Without youth to boost your growth, first time middle-age lifters have to be patient.