[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
you may have a guy who juices all through his 20’s and builds a very impressive physique, possibly even competing at a couple of NPC shows and doing well. Then he takes time away, gets married, raises a family, still trains, but can’t justify the added expense of gear, supplements etc. One morning, on his 40th birthday he wakes up, and gets the itch to compete. He’s still a brick shit house by any non-Ifbb Pro’s standards. He hasn’t touched a pin in a decade.[/quote]
This is broaching a different topic really, but do you think after 7 or 10 years or whatever of being totally off that he’s still got any benefits at all left from his pincushion days? You’re only as big as your dose right? I mean I’m sure this hypothetical guy could still be way jacked, but wouldn’t he have lost 100% of his gains above and beyond his natural potential?
Hell most of the stuff I’ve read says that after you come off your natural levels never actually get back quite as high as they were before. If anything I think he’d be slightly worse off. But I don’t know a ton about the topic really.[/quote]
From my understanding muscle memory also applies to muscle gained while on the sauce. I saw an article awhile back that was going into the science of muscle memory and was theorizing that muscle memory actually had to do with your nervous system.
Basically the more muscle mass you pack on your nervous system becomes more efficient. For example it would be like a 2 lane highway versus a 8 line highway. So when you quit using the highway the muscle will dry up, but the highway remains in tact.
Now as far as able to build the muscle without the use of PEDs… Probably not especially if natural production is shot, but they could very well attain that aforementioned glory very quickly while back on the drugs. So in a sense an advantage is always there.