What is muscle memory?

Question

Is it true that if you were once athletic and stop working out for awhile and then start back up, your body can be pushed to the same limit as before?

Answer 1

Muscle memory refers to doing a specific action repeatedly until it becomes second nature, and you don't have to think about doing it anymore. The first time you try something (like catching a ball), you really have to concentrate. Just watch a todler or someone who doesn't play sports try to catch a baseball.

But if you play baseball for a full season, catching a ball will become a lot easier, that's due to muscle memory. You don't have to think about the specific actions you need to take to catch the ball, you just think 'catch the ball' and it happens. Some people get so good that they don't even think 'catch the ball', they can't help _but_ catch the ball if it's thrown towards them.

Same thing with swimming, ice skating, skiing, playing piano, martial arts.., pretty much any physical activity. The reason is because when you repeatedly do specific physical tasks, your brain stores those tasks for easy access later on. There are cases of people who have had brain injuries where they cannot improve at physical tasks because the area of their brain where muscle memory is stored is either damaged or cut off from the rest of the brain. Imagine practicing and practicing and never getting any better, at anything... freaky.

Answer 2

When an active person trains movement, often of the same activity, in an effort to stimulate the body’s adaptation process, the end result is to induce a physiological change such as increased levels of accuracy through repetition. Even though the process is really brain-muscle memory or what some call motor memory, the nickname muscle memory is commonly used

Answer 3

Muscle Memory: Scientists May Have Unwittingly Uncovered Its Mystery
By Bryan Haycock, MS

Anyone who has lifted weights, on and off, for several years is familiar with the concept of "muscle memory". Muscle memory in this context refers to the observation that when a person begins lifting weights after a prolonged lay off, it is much easier to return to their previous levels of size and strength than it was to get there the first time around. Even when significant atrophy (muscle shrinking) has taken place during the layoff, previously hypertrophied muscle returns to its previous size more quickly than usual

pasted from an article I read

Answer 4

Talking about two different things. Muscle memmory is doing something so much that it becomes naturally without much thinking. Thats how musicians can play songs effortlessly or how martial artists can block a punch without thinking about it. Muscles do deteriorate after a while so if the body builders wait too long then they wont be able to lift as much.

thats what i think

Answer 5

Muscle memory is more like learning to do something and programming your body to do it by memory. You accomplish this by making the movement many times so your body knows how to do it and can do it automatically.

Answer 6

The context I've always heard it used in was in basketball. Like, if you get into the routine of shooting jump shots from a particular location, when you get back to that spot (i.e. free throw line or 3pt line), you'll instinctively know how hard and far to shoot the ball from the repetition, since your muscles remember the action.

Answer 7

Yes muscles have memory ...... http://www.thinkmuscle.com/articles/haycock/muscle-memory.htm
My brother is proof..And I did taebo for a while and I have defined muscle in my arms and abs and continue to do so cause once in a while I work at it.

Answer 8

I forgot