<story><title>Muscle memory discovery ends &apos;use it or lose it&apos; dogma</title><url>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190125084106.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IshKebab</author><text>That can&amp;#x27;t be everything though because otherwise your body wouldn&amp;#x27;t physically change when you train and they clearly do.&lt;p&gt;Also why wouldn&amp;#x27;t evolution just make us all strong all the time if it only requires neurological changes?</text></item><item><author>CptFribble</author><text>Yes and no. Individual fibers are either On or Off, but individual fibers are grouped into bundles, and any one muscle is composed of many bundles. When you flex a muscle to move a thing, your brain only recruits some of the bundles. The exact amount is determined by some combination of your willpower, focus, training level, and adrenaline.&lt;p&gt;As you train (that is, try really hard to lift something heavy), you teach your brain that you&amp;#x27;re going to be lifting heavy things a lot going forward, which makes your brain recruit more muscle fibers when you actually go ahead and lift the thing.&lt;p&gt;So you&amp;#x27;re right in one sense, and incomplete in another.</text></item><item><author>__xjb__</author><text>If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, muscle fibers can only fire maximally--a muscle fiber either fires (maximally) or it doesn&amp;#x27;t fire. Isn&amp;#x27;t muscle fiber recruitment what differentiates delicate, precise motions from gross, explosive motions?</text></item><item><author>Fricken</author><text>Developing muscle strength is mostly about training and growing the nerves in your muscles to engage more muscle cells when they fire. If your muscles could fire maximally they&amp;#x27;d be strong enough to rip tendon from bone.</text></item><item><author>hirundo</author><text>From Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s description of muscle memory:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort.&lt;p&gt;But this article is about enhanced muscle recovery and volume, not about motor learning. I wonder if that&amp;#x27;s an abuse of the term &amp;quot;muscle memory&amp;quot; or just a different sense. I&amp;#x27;m not finding that sense used in a quick search. But the term is also used in the review paper that this article is about, so apparently it has a specialized sense in that discipline.&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia muscle memory as retained skills isn&amp;#x27;t about muscle fibers, but neurons.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_memory&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PeterisP</author><text>Strength is generally an evolutionary drawback, in most cases the benefits of extra strength doesn&amp;#x27;t outweigh the calorie cost of building maintaining it.&lt;p&gt;For very costly things like strength and brainpower, evolution is ensuring that we have as much as we require, and not a single bit more; and has all kinds of processes for actively &lt;i&gt;reducing&lt;/i&gt; strength that you had unless you have &lt;i&gt;both&lt;/i&gt; extra calories and the demonstrated need to use that strength; because it saves calories.</text></comment>
<story><title>Muscle memory discovery ends &apos;use it or lose it&apos; dogma</title><url>https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190125084106.htm</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>IshKebab</author><text>That can&amp;#x27;t be everything though because otherwise your body wouldn&amp;#x27;t physically change when you train and they clearly do.&lt;p&gt;Also why wouldn&amp;#x27;t evolution just make us all strong all the time if it only requires neurological changes?</text></item><item><author>CptFribble</author><text>Yes and no. Individual fibers are either On or Off, but individual fibers are grouped into bundles, and any one muscle is composed of many bundles. When you flex a muscle to move a thing, your brain only recruits some of the bundles. The exact amount is determined by some combination of your willpower, focus, training level, and adrenaline.&lt;p&gt;As you train (that is, try really hard to lift something heavy), you teach your brain that you&amp;#x27;re going to be lifting heavy things a lot going forward, which makes your brain recruit more muscle fibers when you actually go ahead and lift the thing.&lt;p&gt;So you&amp;#x27;re right in one sense, and incomplete in another.</text></item><item><author>__xjb__</author><text>If I&amp;#x27;m not mistaken, muscle fibers can only fire maximally--a muscle fiber either fires (maximally) or it doesn&amp;#x27;t fire. Isn&amp;#x27;t muscle fiber recruitment what differentiates delicate, precise motions from gross, explosive motions?</text></item><item><author>Fricken</author><text>Developing muscle strength is mostly about training and growing the nerves in your muscles to engage more muscle cells when they fire. If your muscles could fire maximally they&amp;#x27;d be strong enough to rip tendon from bone.</text></item><item><author>hirundo</author><text>From Wikipedia&amp;#x27;s description of muscle memory:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When a movement is repeated over time, a long-term muscle memory is created for that task, eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort.&lt;p&gt;But this article is about enhanced muscle recovery and volume, not about motor learning. I wonder if that&amp;#x27;s an abuse of the term &amp;quot;muscle memory&amp;quot; or just a different sense. I&amp;#x27;m not finding that sense used in a quick search. But the term is also used in the review paper that this article is about, so apparently it has a specialized sense in that discipline.&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia muscle memory as retained skills isn&amp;#x27;t about muscle fibers, but neurons.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_memory&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ashelmire</author><text>It’s not everything. See muscle hypertrophy: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_hypertrophy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Muscle_hypertrophy&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>