have you ever heard the phrase muscle memory what do people even mean by that because it's not like your muscles store memories or at least in the way that we think of memories maybe you've also heard people say don't worry it's like riding a bike and this is referencing muscle memory as once you've learned a skill apparently you never fully forget it but then people in the fitness world will often refer to muscle memory a bit differently as once you've gained a certain level of muscular size and strength if you were to take some time off from working out and lose some of that size and strength due to muscle memory you could gain it back much more quickly than you did in the first place so today we're going to figure out what is actually going on in each one of these scenarios by looking at some of my favorite structures in the brain as well as by looking at what is going on inside the muscles to see if they can store some type of information that also contributes to muscle memory it's going to be a memorable one so let's jump into this anatomical awesomeness so let's start with the brain and how it contributes to muscle memory and we're going to focus on two areas of the brain one is this area here referred to as the motor cortex and the second is my favorite structure of the brain and that is the Sarah Bellum I mean just look at how beautifully amazing the structure is and if I show you the other half of the brain and you look at the medial or the ins inside surface of the cerebellum it's equally as beautiful in this area that kind of looks like branches of a tree is called the arbor VY which actually refers to the tree of life but we'll come back to the cerebellum in just a second and again this fold is the motor cortex and a fold of the brain is just referred to as a gyrus and admittedly when I was a student and first looked at the brain I was like how do you know what the motor cortex is there's folds everywhere well if you look closely you can see this crack or Groove going from the top all the way down to the temporal lobe and this prominent groove on the lateral side of the brain is called the Central sulcus and just in front of this groove is that motor cortex now when you decide to engage a muscle maybe you're going to start walking ride a bike or lift a weight that signal will come from the motor cortex travel down the spinal cord and eventually down to a skeletal muscle causing it to contract but before that signal makes it down to the spinal cord and to the muscle the sellum has a few things to say about this one of the main functions of the cerebellum is to evaluate how well movements initiated by that motor cortex are being carried out when these movements are not being carried out correctly the cerebellum detects this and any discrepancies and then sends an inhibitory signal back to theot motor cortex to help correct any errors in those skeletal muscle contractions essentially we need all the muscles involved in the movement to contract and relax at the appropriate times and so the cerebellum Smooths the movements and allows you to complete cordinated and complex sequences of skeletal muscle contractions but what's interesting about this is that the cerebellum didn't know how to do this just from the beginning it learned how to do this through repetition now all of us tend to learn very similar movements we all learned to walk we all learn to talk we learn to write but not all of us learn how to play the piano or the guitar not all of us play specific Sports and so what is incredible about the cerebellum is that as you practice certain movements over and over and over again the cerebellum will start to coordinate these movements at a subconscious level and the movements start to feel as though they just come naturally and we don't have to think about or worry about Contracting our muscles when we walk we just decide to walk and the cerebellum does the rest so some of you have practiced a musical instrument and can have a full conversation with somebody while playing that instrument assuming it's not a win instrument but this also can be applied to resistance training especially for beginners one of the adaptations that allow someone to lift more weight or even improve in a vertical jump or Sprint speed is simply just learning and getting more coordinated with the movements so as On's Sarah Bellum learns and gets better at coordinating the movement patterns of the squat a deadlift or vertical jump they will be able to lift more weight and jump higher in the case of the vertical jump now obviously there are other adaptations that contribute to one's increase in strength size speed and explosive power like adaptations within the actual skeletal muscles which we're going to talk about in just a second and even another nervous system adaptation where the nervous system learns to recruit more motor units and therefore more muscle fibers on demand and while we're talking about the nervous system coordinating movements and recruit muscle fibers I do want to mention that how your nervous system and muscle fibers create Action potentials or send these electrical signals that ultimately leads to muscle contractions is through the use of electrolytes like sodium and potassium so I do want to take a second to say thank you to the sponsor of today's video element element is a zero sugar electrolyte drink mix and sparkling electrolyte water each stick pack delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes free of sugar artificial colors or any other unnecessary ingredients and for those of you who followed our channel for a while now you may know that I love to play basketball I play on Tuesdays for two hours Saturdays for three hours and on the other days I love training to compete in endurance races like Spartans and these often can take 2 to three hours in extremely hot weather and someone can lose over 2 L of water and 1.5 to 3 gram of sodium per hour from sweating during high-intensity exercise especially in hot and humid conditions and imagine if that goes on for 2 to 3 hours so I have actually experimented a lot with different electrolyte drinks and mixtures in order to replenish my water and electrolytes and I really like element not only does it do a great job replenishing electrolytes and helping with overall hydration like I said earlier it doesn't contain any extra additives plus it tastes great to the point where my family members are stealing them so if you're interested you can try this risk-free and if you don't like it element will refund your order no questions asked so you may as well get your free element sample pack with any purchase by going to drink lnt.com slh humananatura um through repetition and many of you have likely noticed that if you've taken some time off from a specific motor skill and then you come back to it months later and in some cases even years later you don't start from Square One it seems to come back pretty quickly in some cases like if some of you have taken an extended time away from riding a bike and then you first get on that bike you might initially feel like uhoh do I even remember how to do this but then as you start getting going and pedaling you start to think oh yeah I can do this I remember how to do this or maybe you took some time off from a sport but then you started playing again and you noticed that those skills come back relatively quickly and even with certain as aspects of resistance training part of the speed at which you regain strength can be attributed to Reawakening those coordinated cerebellar Pathways but I would also argue that your nervous system has some memory of how to recruit those motor units more effectively which also contributes to the quicker return of strength but what about within the actual skeletal muscles is there some ability for the muscles themselves to store some type of information that we could kind of consider a memory well in a way yes and this comes from one of the many cool features of skeletal muscle fibers most of you from biology class probably remember the nucleus and you learned that the nucleus contained DNA all that genetic information and so the nucleus is often referred to as the command center of the cell now most cells in the human body contain only one nucleus however there are a handful of cells that are multinucleated meaning they contain more than one nucleus and skeletal muscle fibers or skeletal muscle cells are multinucleated which in a way kind of makes sense these are huge cells when you compare them to the size of other cells throughout the body they can be multiple inches long and have a much greater diameter than the typical cell so again in a way it might make sense to have multiple command centers or nuclei to take care of that much real estate but one of the main reasons why it is good for skeletal muscle fibers to be multinucleated is because they are so active with protein synthesis and the nucleus directs protein synthesis when you exercise certain genes get turned on and expressed that code for making more proteins for the skeletal muscle fiber and protein synthesis contributes to increases in strength and size but something else that also tends to happen when muscles increase in their size and strength is that the muscle fiber will develop more nuclei which can make protein synthesis and maintenance of the muscle fiber even more efficient but what happens when somebody drains or takes an extended period of time away from resistance training well we definitely know that strength levels go down and even muscular size will decrease or in other words the muscle starts to atrophy and so you might think oh well we'll probably lose those extra nuclei as well however there are multiple studies that have demonstrated that the nuclei will remain even in a drain state or when the muscle atrophies so one of the theories behind muscle memory within the actual muscle again this isn't an actual memory like we store in our brain but the fact that the nuclei remain makes it so the muscle fiber may be able to regain its strength and size more quickly through the ability to have more effective protein synthesis when that exercise stimulus returns now there does need to be some more research on this for example is there an exact timetable meaning do all these nuclei that were developed from the initial strength training remain indefinitely Or is there some time period like months or years or some level of atrophy where those extra nuclei will no longer be maintained either way it's generally recommended that you don't test this out on yourself and try to minimize the amount of time you go without exercise and strength training and as always thank you for watching and supporting the channel everyone hopefully you learned some useful information about muscle memory if you don't mind like And subscribe leave some comments below and we'll see you in the next video