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How Fast Can You Lose Your Gains? | Nutritionist Explains... | Myprotein
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Jan 30, 2025
Does taking a break from working out mean you'll lose all your gains? Is going on a two-week holiday, making you worry you'll see a decline in your gains? In this video, Richie Kirwan, nutritionist expert - talks all about the idea of muscle memory and how your body can lose and regain muscle mass over time. But is someone really going to lose all their gains if they can’t go to the gym for a few weeks, and is it possible to get back those lost gains? *** Chapters 00:00 - Intro 00:55 - How quickly can you lose muscle? 03:41 - Science behind muscle memory 06:43 - Got any more questions on muscle memory? ********************************* Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/MyproteinUK?sub_confirmation=1 If you like this, you'll love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ujiVguTxTw Find more expert nutrition advice here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk... Download the Myprotein App: https://bit.ly/3dhVVUE
View Video Transcript
0:00
will you lose all of your hard-earned
0:01
gains if you missed the gym for a few
0:02
weeks let's talk about that
0:04
[Music]
0:06
how's it going guys my name is richie
0:07
kirwan and today we're going to talk all
0:09
about the idea of muscle memory and how
0:11
your body can lose and regain muscle
0:14
over time in 2020 the whole world went
0:16
into lockdown and people who had been
0:18
hitting the gym regularly suddenly
0:20
couldn't go anymore for a lot of people
0:21
that caused the sudden panic of oh my
0:23
god i'm going to lose all my gains and
0:25
it also spurred the explosion in home
0:27
exercise equipment sales and just to
0:29
give you an idea of how big an explosion
0:31
that was in the first five months of the
0:33
lockdown sales of home exercise
0:35
equipment jumped by over five thousand
0:38
eight hundred percent in the uk alone
0:40
five thousand eight hundred percent but
0:43
is someone really going to lose all
0:44
their gains if they can't go to the gym
0:46
for a few weeks and is it possible to
0:48
get back those lost gains let's see what
0:50
the science says first off let's have a
0:52
look at an extreme example of how
0:54
quickly we lose muscle in one study they
0:56
took a group of young healthy men and
0:58
kept them in bed for an entire week for
1:01
some people i'm sure that sounds like
1:02
the kind of research you would love to
1:04
be part of at the end of that week of
1:06
virtually no activity or even movement
1:08
they measured their muscle mass and
1:10
found that they had lost 1.4 kilograms
1:13
of lean body mass some people can
1:15
actually spend months trying to gain 1.4
1:18
kilos of lean body mass so it really
1:20
sounds like it sucks to lose it all
1:22
after just one week so yeah if you stop
1:25
training losing muscle is going to
1:27
happen
1:28
and you want to know what's worse the
1:30
better you are at gaining muscle the
1:32
more muscle you'll probably lose if you
1:34
stop training in a study with 24 men
1:36
they got all the participants to do a
1:37
strength training program for 10 weeks
1:39
and then they had them stop all training
1:41
for a total of six weeks they measured
1:43
their muscle mass at the start of the
1:44
program after the 10 weeks of training
1:47
then again after the six-week break from
1:48
training after the 10 weeks of training
1:50
they divided the men into three groups
1:52
based on how much muscle they gained in
1:54
their vastus lateralis which is one of
1:56
the muscles of the quadriceps in your
1:58
leg the group that gained the most size
2:00
greater than 15
2:02
increase was called the high responder
2:05
group the next group was called the
2:06
medium responders and they gained
2:07
between 4.5 and 15 in muscle size and
2:10
the last group was called the low
2:11
responders and they gained less than 4.5
2:14
percent in muscle size now you might
2:16
think that a 4.5 increase in muscle size
2:19
is pretty good for only 10 weeks of
2:20
training but bear in mind that the
2:22
participants weren't regular weight
2:24
trainers meaning these were all newbie
2:26
gains when they measured the muscle mass
2:28
again at the end of the six weeks of
2:29
de-training guess what only the high
2:31
responders showed a statistically
2:33
significant drop in size in some early
2:36
research in this field they put a group
2:37
of young women through a resistance
2:39
exercise program for 20 weeks obviously
2:41
enough they gained strength and muscle
2:43
size then they were detrained meaning
2:45
they stopped training completely for 32
2:48
weeks or almost 8 months a pretty
2:50
serious layoff from the gym what they
2:52
found was that their strength dropped
2:54
considerably but their lean body mass
2:56
only changed a little but didn't fully
2:58
go back to the levels from at the start
3:00
of the study so pre-training then they
3:02
trained again for another six weeks and
3:04
impressively regained the high levels of
3:06
muscle size and strength that they had
3:09
gained after the initial 20-week
3:11
training program so what all this means
3:13
is that while it took them a while to
3:14
build up their strength and size even
3:16
with training they held on to a lot and
3:19
were able to get back to their maximum
3:21
levels pretty quickly with just a few
3:22
weeks of retraining so this whole area
3:24
of research is commonly called muscle
3:26
memory and it's good news for anyone
3:28
worried about missing time in the gym
3:29
basically our muscles can remember
3:31
previous training experience and if we d
3:33
train for a while and lose some size and
3:35
strength once we retrain we can use the
3:37
memory to regain that size and strength
3:39
much quicker than it took to build in
3:42
the first place so how does that happen
3:43
well that's something that researchers
3:45
are still trying to figure out and there
3:47
are probably a lot of different factors
3:49
involved one of the better studied
3:50
reasons has looked at the amount of
3:52
nuclei in muscle cells if you remember
3:54
from high school biology almost all
3:56
cells in our body have a nucleus which
3:58
is kind of like the control center of
3:59
the cell and it contains the dna that
4:01
allows transcription of all the proteins
4:03
that make a cell work well muscle cells
4:06
can actually have multiple nuclei this
4:08
is because when we train and damage our
4:10
muscles a special type of stem cell
4:12
called satellite cells joins with our
4:14
muscles to help their recovery stem
4:16
cells are special types of cells that
4:18
have the ability to turn into other
4:19
types of cell
4:21
under the right conditions so when we
4:22
train hard and regularly we gradually
4:25
start to increase the amount of
4:26
satellite cells that merge with our
4:28
muscle cells and this increases the
4:30
number of myonucleia myo is the greek
4:32
word for muscle in our cells these
4:34
myonuclei can actually stay around for
4:36
months or maybe even years even if we
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d-train this means when we retrain the
4:41
myonuclei can all work together to help
4:44
increase protein synthesis and muscle
4:46
growth much faster than it took us to
4:48
grow the muscles in the first place
4:50
however
4:51
satellite cell fusion and increased
4:53
myonuclei probably only account for a
4:56
small part of muscle memory so what
4:58
other ways could muscle memory work at
5:00
the moment one of the main areas of
5:02
interest is something called epigenetics
5:04
if you think back to high school biology
5:06
again we all have genes that determine
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everything about our bodies you probably
5:10
have also heard that we can't change our
5:12
genes and this is true with a big butt
5:15
we know that genes can be modified
5:17
slightly by our lifestyle or our
5:19
environment to make them more or less
5:21
likely to become active these
5:23
modifications to dna are studied in the
5:25
science of epigenetics the greek word
5:27
epi means over or outside and refers to
5:30
the fact that epigenetic changes happen
5:32
without changing your genetic code one
5:35
of the ways a gene can be epigenetically
5:37
modified is by methylation basically a
5:39
chemical group called a methyl group
5:40
gets bonded to certain genes and it
5:43
changes how often those genes get
5:45
switched on in general more methylation
5:48
means a gene is less active and less
5:50
methylation results in more active genes
5:53
we also know that epigenetic changes
5:55
play a huge role in our health and can
5:57
stay around in our genes and even get
5:59
transferred to our children some very
6:01
interesting new research has shown that
6:03
resistance exercise can cause epigenetic
6:05
changes in some of the genes involved in
6:07
muscle growth it turns out that exercise
6:09
can cause some genes to have less
6:11
methylation which makes them more active
6:14
and these changes can last even during d
6:16
training then when someone retrains
6:18
because their genes are already
6:19
epigenetically primed for growth they
6:21
can get back to the previous levels of
6:23
muscle size and strength pretty quickly
6:25
the truth is we're only starting to
6:26
scratch the surface of what we know
6:28
about muscle memory and in the future i
6:30
think we'll probably find a lot of other
6:32
ways that our muscles remember their
6:34
former size and strength but for the
6:35
moment rest assured that you're not
6:37
going to lose all your gains from a few
6:38
weeks out of the gym and even if you do
6:41
you'll probably build it back a lot
6:42
quicker than it took you to do in the
6:44
first place so what do you think did
6:46
that explain what muscle memory is as
6:48
always if you have any questions let me
6:49
know in the comments below and remember
6:50
to like and subscribe to the my protein
6:52
youtube channel for more great
6:54
evidence-based nutrition information
6:59
[Music]
7:05
you
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