Honestly I find this to be true. It’s not like starting over, my body wants to return to fit & skinny, it’s easier for me. Just like they say bodies remember fat they remember fit.
Fun story:
I restarted playing volleyball after more than 10 years of not playing.
The reflexes were kinda still there (i’m getting old so I am slower), but the muscles weren’t.
First block I do, I hurt my shoulders stabilisators. They still hurt to this day, but I never really stopped to recover until now.
So they might remember, but they need time to reactivate and become strong again haha
Is this sort of like the nursing home ladies saying that some frail looking men would still have grips of steel? Is that why they are still so “strong” in that sense?
Muscles on my right hand after I’ve found GF
Four touchdowns in a single game, Peg
Peg
When I was about 17 I started training for my first backpacking trip. First shakedown hike I loaded my pack up with about 40 or 50lbs, and I think I lasted about 5 minutes before I went back to my car to lighten my load because I was dying carrying it.
Worked my way up to doing it no problem over the next few months, and for the next few years I hiked and backpacked pretty regularly. I never exactly got in good shape, I had a gut the whole time but I could carry a heavy backpack 10 or occasionally 20 miles a day up and down mountains no problem.
I’ve been a lot more sedentary the last few years just due to being a busy adult with a wonky schedule. I still squeeze in some hikes here or there, but nothing with a heavy pack, and rarely doing more than 10 miles, and usually not going up and down any significant mountains, and I’m definitely not hitting the gym or anything, and I’ve probably packed on about 50lbs of mostly fat since I was 17.
But still, a couple months ago I went backpacking with a friend. Didn’t really do anything in particular to prepare for it, and I still carried about 40-50lbs in my pack
And I did just fine. Definitely huffed and puffed a bit more than when I was in my prime backpacking shape, and I was definitely a bit sore and had some blisters after it, but I was able to hit the trail with a heavy pack and almost no prep and I definitely couldn’t have done that when I was just starting out at 17 years old despite being generally younger, healthier, and more active back then.
So to a pretty great extent, my body definitely “remembers” how to backpack.
I was a good middle-distance runner, did some competitive road cycling with moderate success, and did martial arts for a long time. I’ve also done some long-distance walking, but never with heavy packs. I hate those.
I took an extended break from the martial arts, but recently returned to a related activity. My mind knows what I should be doing, but my body isn’t always able to deliver. But that tells me where I need to train in order to get back to it, and the training has been yielding results.
I had always assumed the memory was in the cerebellum rather than in the muscles themselves, though. That’s where fine muscle coordination happens. So this is an interesting finding.
Do they remember me and my college gf?
My muscles are fine, it’s the fat cells that need to forget.
Reset cache, delete cookies
delete cake
Do they remember all the video games? Will they retain those mad Elden Ring skillz?
Based on getting progressively better each time I played through one of the horizon games even with months or years between them, I’d say yes.
When I first started, I was awful with aiming and stuff (shooters have never really been my thing, I’m trash at aiming, horizon is JUST far enough from a full-on shooter that it piqued my interest and held it solidly), now I’m playing actual FPS/TPS because my skill and muscle memory in that regard has improved substantially. Enough that I got platinum on both horizon games. :)
Look I picked up TF2 after a decade and I was hitting air rockets in no time
They record your saved games.
Anecdotally I’ve always heard this and experienced it myself, interesting to see it’s backed by evidence!
A few years back I regularly ran half marathons. If I missed a few weeks of training due to illness, work or whatever’s, the trainer would often say „the body never forgets“. Thought it was just old guy pseudowisdom, turns out there’s science behind it!
Definitely! I feel like this was fairly common knowledge even a decade ago and why people would quickly rebound back to previous size and strength when returning to fitness- muscle memory due to myonuclei persisting even when the actual tissue atrophies. I guess this is an additional state of memory for the body. Super neat!
Yeah, it’s been my anecdotal experience, too :-)
Same! I used to just explain this to others I was trying to get into working out or into an activity or something. I just assumed it had to be real from experience. Nice to see it scienced!
Jokes on them they can’t remember what they didn’t have
My muscles: “I remember nothing”
My app shows the image as “failed to load” and I’m now a little curious if that is funnier than whatever you actually put there.
It’s not supposed to be an image, it’s supposed to be a link? Weird. But I also like that it shows failed to load, that works too! I am so used to putting image links I accidentally made it an image link first before I made it a normal link, maybe the edit hasn’t propagated to your instance yet.
Shit, they must be very disappointed with me…
The couch potato genes don’t forget.
that’s actually really uplifting to know, thank you for posting this. :)
Its uplifting if you were previously a college athlete who let themselves go, but has the potential to bounce back quickly.
Depressing for someone like me who took up sport and fitness later in life and doesnt have that athletic foundation to build on.
But i guess it also applies to short term injury recovery, so thats good news
Don’t be depressed… start working out and build that new baseline. It’s a new peak whatever age you hit it and it comes back quickly after you take time off abs restart in the future.
I didn’t start lifting until I was 47. Started a strength building program and had great success the first year. Since then, now 9 years later, I’ve had numerous times where I took time off due to vacation or work getting crazy… and it always ended up being longer than I intended. Months and even 1 yr once. Still when I resume I build back strength so much more quickly than I put it on originally.
Starting pt for bench now is 225lb, 5 reps and sets, which is where I ended after my first year. I can get back to 1 rep at 315 in 3 to 4 months, which took several years for me to get to originally. Latest max of 1 rep 350lb, not quite sure how long to get back to it. I was there first in Aug 2024 and again Aug 2025 but I’ve had 6 months off so we’ll see. Nonetheless still far ahead of where I used to be.
Just get started. Don’t beat yourself up over how you’ve disappointed yourself in the past… you can’t change it anyway. Just start now and make a better you for your future.
This isn’t new at all, even the cell nucleus number multiplies
That’s kinda cool to hear! Not that it’s been terribly long so it might not even affect me, but I finally got myself into the habit of working out doing simple body weight exercises for over a year and then I either tore something or got tendonitis in my elbow at work and had to stop for like 4 months now… Glad to know I won’t be losing as much as I thought if I have to say off the arm for much longer.
I’ve had that same injury, from BWF/kettlebell workouts. Its a bastard. Generally called “golf elbow” if on the inside and “tennis elbow” if on the outside.
I found these bendy bars really help rehab it if you do the recommend excersize. I use one of these gyroscopic resistance balls now as well in my current routine to strength the wrist/forearm/elbow and haven’t had a relapse.
Thanks for the tips! It’s on the inside so I guess it’s golf elbow lol
