Lost Strength? Your Muscles Remember

Hi Team Gray Iron,

Have you ever stopped strength training for a few weeks, or even a few months, and been shocked by how quickly you seemed to lose strength?

Maybe you were sick.

You had surgery.

You were traveling.

Life got busy.

Or you simply got out of the habit.

You finally return to your workout, pick up a weight that used to feel comfortable and think:

What happened?!

Here's the encouraging part.

You may have lost some strength, but you aren't necessarily starting over.

Your muscles, and your nervous system, remember more than you might think.

Yes, We Lose Strength When We Stop Training

Our bodies are remarkably good at adapting to what we ask of them.

Lift weights regularly and your body adapts by becoming better equipped to handle that load.

Stop providing that challenge for long enough and some of those adaptations begin to fade.

This is called detraining.

You may notice that a familiar weight feels heavier. You can't perform as many repetitions. Stairs feel a little harder. Your endurance isn't quite what it was.

For those of us over 50, that can be particularly discouraging because it's easy to interpret it as:

I'm getting old.

But sometimes what you're experiencing isn't simply aging.

You're detrained.

And there's an important difference.

Your Body Remembers

If you've trained consistently in the past, rebuilding strength is often different from building it for the first time.

You've probably heard this called muscle memory.

Part of that memory resides in your nervous system.

Strength isn't just about the size of your muscles. Your brain and nervous system learn how to recruit and coordinate those muscles efficiently.

Think about returning to riding a bicycle after years away.

The movement feels familiar because your nervous system has learned the pattern.

Strength training involves learning too.

Your body becomes better at coordinating a squat, stabilizing a weight and recruiting the muscle fibers needed to perform a movement.

After time away, those skills may become rusty.

But they aren't necessarily gone.

Your Muscles May Remember Too

There's another fascinating part of the story.

Strength training changes muscle cells themselves.

Skeletal muscle fibers contain many nuclei, called myonuclei, which help support the machinery of the muscle cell. Resistance training can increase the number of these nuclei.

Researchers are still working out exactly how long these adaptations persist in humans and how much they contribute to retraining.

But growing evidence suggests that muscle can retain biological traces of previous training.

In other words, a previously trained muscle may not be the same as a muscle that has never been trained at all.

That may help explain something athletes have observed for generations:

Strength often comes back surprisingly quickly.

Don't Make the Comeback Mistake

This is also where people get themselves into trouble and I speak from experience.

After years of doing most of my workouts at home, I recently decided to return to the gym. I hadn't stopped exercising, far from it, but I hadn't been training with the same variety of equipment and heavier weights that suddenly surrounded me again.

I've exercised most of my life, so everything felt familiar. I remembered the machines, the exercises and, perhaps most dangerously, what I used to be able to do.

So I jumped right back in.

Too much. Too soon.

My muscles remembered the movements, and mentally I still thought of myself as someone who could handle those workouts. But my body wasn't yet conditioned for the loads and volume I was asking of it.

It was a good reminder for me: being fit doesn't necessarily mean you're conditioned for every kind of training.

And years of experience can actually make it easier to overdo a comeback because you remember exactly what you used to be capable of.

Your brain remembers what you used to lift.

Your enthusiasm remembers what you used to lift.

Your connective tissues may have a different opinion.

If you've been away from a particular kind of strength training for a while, don't immediately pick up where you left off.

Start lighter.

Do fewer sets.

Leave a few repetitions in reserve.

Pay attention to how you feel the following day.

Then gradually add resistance.

Your goal isn't to prove how strong you used to be.

It's to give your body the opportunity to become strong again.

You Haven't Lost Everything

I think this is an especially important message as we get older.

Fitness doesn't have to be an uninterrupted upward line.

There will be interruptions.

Vacations happen.

Illness happens.

Injuries happen.

Family responsibilities happen.

Sometimes motivation simply disappears for a while.

Missing a few weeks, or even longer, doesn't erase every workout you've ever done.

And it certainly doesn't mean you've failed.

Just begin again.

There's Another Reason to Start Now

Muscle memory gives us another interesting way to think about weight training after 50.

Every period of training may be doing more than making you stronger today.

You're building experience.

You're improving coordination.

You're learning movements.

And you're creating adaptations that may make it easier to regain strength if life knocks you off course later.

That's one more reason I don't think we should wait until we're frail to start thinking about strength.

Build it while you can. Maintain it when you can. And when you lose some of it, build it again.

Your Gray Iron Comeback

If you've fallen out of your strength routine recently, here's your challenge this week:

Don't try to make up for lost time.

Just start moving again.

And this is where Exercise Snacks can be especially helpful.

You don't even have to begin with a full workout.

Do 10 chair squats while you're waiting for your coffee.

Do a set of wall or counter push-ups.

Pick up a pair of dumbbells and do one set of curls or overhead presses.

Take five minutes and do two or three familiar strength exercises.

That's an Exercise Snack. And it counts.

A few short bouts of strength work can help you re-establish the habit without the temptation to walk into the gym and try to recreate your old workout on Day One.

Then, when you're ready for a full strength workout, make that easier than you think it needs to be too.

Choose a few familiar exercises.

Use a lighter resistance.

Finish feeling like you could have done more.

Then do it again a few days later.

You can gradually add weight, repetitions and longer workouts as your body catches up with your memory.

That's how a comeback begins.

Not with one heroic workout.

With the decision to start again.

Keep moving,

Jennifer

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Logan Franklin
The Gray Iron Fitness Newsletter
www.senior-exercise-central.com