Almost two decades later, Adam teaches and runs a lab at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo. In 2018, his research group was the first in the world to show that human skeletal muscle possesses an epigenetic memory of muscle growth after exercise.
Epigenetic refers to changes in gene expression that are caused by behavior and environment. The genes themselves aren’t changed, but the way they work is. When you lift weights, for instance, small molecules called methyl groups detach from the outside of certain genes, making them more likely to turn on and produce proteins that affect muscle growth. Those changes persist; if you start lifting weights again, you’ll add muscle mass more quickly than before. In other words, your muscles remember how to do it: They have a lasting molecular memory of past exercise that makes them primed to respond to exercise, even after a months-long pause. (Cellular muscle memory, on the other hand, works a little differently than epigenetic muscle memory. Exercise stimulates muscle stem cells to contribute their nuclei to muscle growth and repair, and cellular muscle memory refers to when those nuclei stick around for a while in the muscle fibers—even after periods of inactivity—and help accelerate the return to growth once you start training again.)
Athletes have always known this to be true, at least anecdotally. After periods of injury, as with a torn ACL, they notice that it’s fairly easy to regain the muscle strength they lost. The joints, though, are another story.
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