Muscle Memory and Muscle Maturity

Training Over 35 Lifter
22

I think muscle is a lot like fat. Once built, its very hard to lose. You can lose strength and volume, but unless you’re body goes into critical survival mode or a few other serious medical conditions and begins scarfing protein from the actual muscles it isn’t going anywhere.

In my experience the loss of strength and volume can be recovered relatively quickly (relative to initially getting it!) even after prolonged periods of layoff or inactivity.

Edit:
I’m a little slow, so please forgive that the convo has moved on.

23

I know loads of people including myself who have trained for 20 years or so and still have plenty of muscle to add.

I think training is really the easy part but eating enough and getting enough protein is key.

I realise as well looking back that playing rugby I did spend half the year just maintaining/ getting weaker each week in season and the summer just getting back to status quo and I’ve had quite a few injuries but if I knew then what I knew now I’d be a beast (in my eyes).

24

Thanks for sharing. Have you followed any progression and always kept the main compound lifts in your programmes?

Just interested really to hear if that’s ok. Sorry for the peppering of questions.

25

I played a couple of years of rugby in law school. I wasn’t tough enough to play longer than that! I can definitely see how that would impact long term ability to gain muscle and size, especially when you factor the injuries in. Even if you’re training consistently during the season.

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26

No worries ask away. I always followed a simple one body part each week split early on with great results. I did try a Westside Conjugate routine for awhile to increase strength but went back to the one body part a week routine eventually. Now I’ve gotten older I have switched it up to training each muscle twice a week and had success. Now im back to less days a week and having success hahaha…juat keeping the body guessing I suppose has really helped. But I’m really liking less volume. I hit it hard once a week and I feel more refreshed the next time around. Similar to a Dorian Yates split

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27

I also eat the same on training and non training days. I look at the rest days more as Growth Days. I think there is a good artice on this site saying the same thing.

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