Health Management & Body Shaping
Personal Training, Nutritional Advice & Exercise Tips in London
Muscle Memory
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From Brain to Bicep
Muscles are like your brain – they have a memory and can be trained to be more efficient and stronger. Just like your brain, the less you use them the less well they function. But similarly if you go back to a previous activity you will find that your memory soon returns with the information you once learned.
Have you ever taken a break from training, and then gone back to the gym to find that it is only a few short weeks before you are back to where you were before? This is the memory that each of our muscles posses. Scientists call this 'kinaesthetic memory' or 'neuro-muscular facilitation'. This way of learning is referred to as 'sensory-motor' learning, since you are combining sensory input (what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste) with motor output (i.e. moving your body).
A Simplified Explanation
Let me explain how memories in your brain are created. The brain contains 100 billion individual nerve cells (neurons) that form connections with one another every time we experience or encounter something new. They are mapped to activities you know how to do such as walking and running – everything you have learned in life to date. When you learn a new activity, your brain creates new connections and this 'path' of memory communication increases in strength every time the activity is repeated. Sort of like skiing over the same set of track lines down a slope as the person who has gone before you. The more those track lines are ski’d over, the more they will become set in the ground.
If these neurons are not regularly used, neural pathways weaken and their communication strength fades away leaving only a trace element of the original memory. But when the activity is re-assumed, the chemicals reignite and the paths are once again strengthened. This is exactly the same principle whereby muscles increase from training, and conversely the way they can atrophy through under use.
How Can this Help in Practical terms? So the work you do now CAN actually count for years to come, even though you might take a break from the activity and then come back to it. So then it would make sense to build your foundations now. Although slightly deviating from the subject at hand, sticking to good form to ensure balanced and maximal development will only help to instil a good foundation for the future. After a break you will find, following the initial period of re-acclimatisation that you can pick up where you left off and go forward from there.
An Old Concept
Have you ever heard of those studies where two groups of people are taken and one group is given coaching in a sport and given practical exercises, whereas the other is just shown videos of the same sport and told to mentally visualise performing? Well, you need to apply the same concept. You need to imagine your neurons forming these new connections, the communication between the neurons increasing and getting stronger, and in time this will happen and hold you in greater stead for performance in the future. Whether it be weightlifting, endurance running, bodybuilding or a specific sport, your performance now and for the future will be improved by having a greater grasp o how your mind works in conjunction with your body and visualising the results you want. Not only are you what you eat, 'you are what you think'!
Planned Formatting
So taking the concept of a computer, when you format the hard drive you wipe almost everything on there. Trace elements of data can remain though and, in the case of your brain, this will be useful to you. Now I am not suggesting you smash your head in order to delete certain “files”, unless it is related to a minger you accidentally slept with over a drunken New Years party, but I am suggesting a temporary file purge whereby you abstain from a certain activity for a few weeks.
Pick any activity or exercise you have been intensely focused on for many months, and leave this activity for a good eight to twelve weeks. After this period go back to the activity. Two to three weeks is all it will take to get back on track, and then you will see the progress you now start to make again. It will be like a new lease of life! I have tried and succeeded in this way of thinking in various different weight training activities – such as the deadlift and bench press – and found it an invaluable way of moving forward. I completely recommend it based on my experience and that of my clients’.
In Summary:
Muscles are like your brain – they have a memory and can be trained to be more efficient and stronger. Just like your brain, the less you use them the less well they function. But similarly if you go back to a previous activity you will find that your memory soon returns with the information you once learned.
Have you ever taken a break from training, and then gone back to the gym to find that it is only a few short weeks before you are back to where you were before? This is the memory that each of our muscles posses. Scientists call this 'kinaesthetic memory' or 'neuro-muscular facilitation'. This way of learning is referred to as 'sensory-motor' learning, since you are combining sensory input (what you see, hear, touch, smell and taste) with motor output (i.e. moving your body).
A Simplified Explanation
Let me explain how memories in your brain are created. The brain contains 100 billion individual nerve cells (neurons) that form connections with one another every time we experience or encounter something new. They are mapped to activities you know how to do such as walking and running – everything you have learned in life to date. When you learn a new activity, your brain creates new connections and this 'path' of memory communication increases in strength every time the activity is repeated. Sort of like skiing over the same set of track lines down a slope as the person who has gone before you. The more those track lines are ski’d over, the more they will become set in the ground.
If these neurons are not regularly used, neural pathways weaken and their communication strength fades away leaving only a trace element of the original memory. But when the activity is re-assumed, the chemicals reignite and the paths are once again strengthened. This is exactly the same principle whereby muscles increase from training, and conversely the way they can atrophy through under use.
How Can this Help in Practical terms? So the work you do now CAN actually count for years to come, even though you might take a break from the activity and then come back to it. So then it would make sense to build your foundations now. Although slightly deviating from the subject at hand, sticking to good form to ensure balanced and maximal development will only help to instil a good foundation for the future. After a break you will find, following the initial period of re-acclimatisation that you can pick up where you left off and go forward from there.
An Old Concept
Have you ever heard of those studies where two groups of people are taken and one group is given coaching in a sport and given practical exercises, whereas the other is just shown videos of the same sport and told to mentally visualise performing? Well, you need to apply the same concept. You need to imagine your neurons forming these new connections, the communication between the neurons increasing and getting stronger, and in time this will happen and hold you in greater stead for performance in the future. Whether it be weightlifting, endurance running, bodybuilding or a specific sport, your performance now and for the future will be improved by having a greater grasp o how your mind works in conjunction with your body and visualising the results you want. Not only are you what you eat, 'you are what you think'!
Planned Formatting
So taking the concept of a computer, when you format the hard drive you wipe almost everything on there. Trace elements of data can remain though and, in the case of your brain, this will be useful to you. Now I am not suggesting you smash your head in order to delete certain “files”, unless it is related to a minger you accidentally slept with over a drunken New Years party, but I am suggesting a temporary file purge whereby you abstain from a certain activity for a few weeks.
Pick any activity or exercise you have been intensely focused on for many months, and leave this activity for a good eight to twelve weeks. After this period go back to the activity. Two to three weeks is all it will take to get back on track, and then you will see the progress you now start to make again. It will be like a new lease of life! I have tried and succeeded in this way of thinking in various different weight training activities – such as the deadlift and bench press – and found it an invaluable way of moving forward. I completely recommend it based on my experience and that of my clients’.
In Summary:
- Muscle will rebuild more quickly after taking a break from training than it took to build originally.
- A medium to long break can often be a good way to make progress.
- The foundations you build in your physique now could last you for years to come.
- Imagine the communication between mind and body increasing, and this WILL be the case.
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