Muscle Memory Explained: How Muscle Memory Works

Muscle memory is a neurological process that allows you to remember certain motor skills and perform them without conscious effort. Skill retention from muscle memory can potentially last forever, barring any neurological or physical ailments.

Muscle memory is most associated with learning new skills and motor learning, such as learning how to play a musical instrument or how to perform physical activity. Performing an action repeatedly activates neurons in certain parts of the brain, particularly the cerebellum and basal ganglia, and creates a new neural pathway between the central nervous system and the muscles you’re moving. Once you’ve established muscle memory, you can accomplish the task without consciously thinking about it.

Muscle memory and motor skill learning can help you master complex skills, such as playing music, and everyday tasks, like typing on a computer or riding a bike. Muscle memory ensures that you do not need to relearn how to do something from zero. When you take an extended break and come back to a skill, your body will still remember how to perform it.

Muscle memory allows athletes to perform motor functions faster and with greater accuracy without having to think about them. For example, muscle memory lets boxers and martial artists move quickly to evade their opponent without requiring extra time to consciously react. Muscle memory also allows dancers and gymnasts to perform spins and other physical feats without losing their balance.

In addition, muscle memory allows athletes to take a break from training and competing. During that time, their muscles and the neural pathways will weaken because of disuse, but when they resume training, they can return to their previous athletic state and gradually regain muscle size without having to start from square one.

When you exercise your muscles via strength training and weightlifting, you damage the muscle fibers; hypertrophy is the body’s process of repairing those muscle fibers and making them stronger. When you engage in detraining or take an extended break from working out, your muscles lose their strength—a process known as muscle atrophy or muscle loss. Myonuclei (muscle fiber nuclei), however, remain in your muscle tissues, and when you work out again, those myonuclei engage in protein synthesis, helping your muscles regrow and regain their strength. Retraining muscles will build muscles faster than working with untrained muscles for the first time.

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