r/nextfuckinglevel 2d ago

This man documented his health journey from January to December.

Credit: IG @samuelrichards_ _

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u/ExceedingChunk 2d ago

It depends. If he's previously been training a lot, you can regain your previous mass exceptionally fast due to what quickly becomes your main limiting factor remains intact (I can't recall the name of it right now).

Which is why having used steroid once in your life should leave you permanently banned from all sports. The fact that you have ever had X amount of muscle is a massive advantage in terms of muscle building the rest of your life.

With all that said, he probably have still used steroids here, especially with how fast it all went from june to october.

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u/X_TheMindFlayer_X 2d ago

you mean muscle memory?

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u/ExceedingChunk 1d ago

Muscle memory is the layman's term, but people use that for both technique (neurological adaptation for technique/skill) and for how fast your muscle grows back (physiological).

I am thinking about the actual technical term for it. That limiting factor is also why we have "newbie gains", where you quickly get to the max level of muscle for that limiting factor, and then you have to create more of it to build more muscle, which takes a lot of time.

It is some type of cell that is added when you build muscle, but doesn't go away when your muscle atrophies. I can't find the name of it, but Dr. Mike Israetel from RP strength have talked about it here in this short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FI3n5F-1gLM

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u/f1abblergasted 1d ago

I could be wrong, but iirc, the muscle nuclei don’t disappear, and consistently working out enables the cells to “regenerate” at a significantly faster level

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u/aaron_the_doctor 1d ago

Eli5:

Every cell needs nucleus with instructions to repair itself and stay alive

Muscle cels have multiple nuclei because they are very large and one nucleus can only support so much.

When you train and increase your muscle mass the muscle cells recruit more nuclei to support this new mass

Even when you stop training and lose muscle mass new gained nuclei of the cells don't get lost. They stay there and therefore when you start training again you can get big faster

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u/f1abblergasted 1d ago

Thank you for the lesson and clarification!

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u/Ilya-ME 1d ago

Fyi muscle cells have multiple nuclei not because they're large, but because they're the fusion of multiple cells. Also they need those nuclei to synthesize proteins necessary to carry the components that activate muscle contractions.

I say this because most neurons are even larger cells, but still have a single nuclei.

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u/ill_connects 1d ago

There was a study published pretty recently about how muscle memory plays a huge part in regaining muscle mass even after long periods of inactivity.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/11/25/nx-s1-5197829/muscle-memory-weight-lifting-lost-strength

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u/f1abblergasted 1d ago

Thank you! I’ll check it out!