You don't have to spend all day every day in
a gym. You don't have to spend even an hour a
day. You can spend as little as 30 minutes a
week and you'll still get a benefit and you're
still going to be above someone who's not active
in every instance. Hi, Nate. It's my pleasure
to have you on Evidence Strong Show for the second
time. You blew my mind the first time, so I'm
pretty sure it will be a repeat this time. Could
you please briefly introduce yourself first?
Sure. Yeah, so my name is Dr. Nathan Serrano.
It's a little bit weird saying doctor. Congratulations.
I'm a recent graduate with my PhD. Thank you.
So I'm here at the University of Arkansas in
northwest Arkansas, Fayetteville, and the lab
I'm in is called the molecular... Muscle Mass
Regulation Lab. We call it M3R because it's three
Ms. And so the work I'm doing now is with Dr.
Kevin Murak. He's done a lot of work in skeletal
muscle growth. And currently right now, we're
mainly focused on looking at hypertrophy. He's
done a lot of work in what this opinion piece
is about, looking at myonuclei, whether or not
they're permanent or whether they go away or
this kind of idea of muscle memory. All right.
So I invited you because you have written a piece
on muscle memory theories. So could we start
with some kind of definition? Sure. So this idea
of muscle memory kind of stems from the idea
that kind of anecdotally, people that lift or
do sports and participate in sports, we kind
of noticed or we've come to know that when you
stop exercising and then you restart exercising,
you tend to see some muscle growth a little bit
quicker than when you first started. So, for
example, I weight lifted for several years. And
if you take, say, like three months off because
you had a slight injury or whatever personal
life experiences that happened to you, you take
some time off and you get back into lifting.
We generally tend to see the rebound to be relatively
quick and so we thought this idea of muscle memory
is like that there's something there that's that's
keeping track of our progress to get us back
to that same point that we left off with the
idea is when you stop and then you restart you
bounce back faster than you would expect service
so you're not starting from zero that's basically
right and that's the general idea there and i
think a lot of people that have been around exercise
sports or weightlifting kind of know that Just
from experience, when you take some time off
for whatever reason and you get back into it,
yeah, you tend to bounce back a little bit quicker
than you might expect. So the follow -up question
is why? I mean, with anything, it's an active,
pretty active field. So I think early on, we
thought that it had to do with this idea that
the nuclei within your muscle cells. So muscle
is pretty unique in that it has many nuclei for
most of the cells. in our body it's we're limited
to one nuclei per cell and so muscle cells they
have thousands of nuclei per muscle fiber and
so early on we thought the memory came from those
nuclei and it does but how we hold on to it is
kind of a little bit more nuanced and so early
on we thought you know we can do these these
training studies we look at the muscle and sure
enough we see an increase in myonuclei or the
nuclei specific to the muscle fibers and so we
thought okay if the nuclei numbers increasing,
then that's what's giving us our memory is we've
just had more nuclei. And so they're able to
kind of hold on to, quote unquote, the memory
of where we were at in our training. And so we've
done, I say we as collective scientists, because
I haven't done this. So my mentor, he's done
a lot of work in this area. And there's plenty
of other scientists that have done way more of
the work in this field. So I'm just kind of getting
started there. But so we thought that my own
nuclei. would kind of be key there. And so they
run these training studies. And so the training
studies actually showed in humans that we don't
tend to really lose nuclei, or at least within
the time scope that we tend to look at. There
are some studies that show that you can lose
the myonuclei during this period of detraining,
right? So when you stop training, the number
of myonuclei tend to go down, you see muscle
atrophy. And so depending on how you design these
studies, we can see the drop. So that means that
the myonuclear number isn't necessary. necessarily
the answer here. It might be part of it. We're
not 100 % sure yet for that. But there's also
these other mechanisms that we think are probably
more appropriate. And so we have, you know, things
like epigenetics. And so what? The field of epigenetics
is basically we have DNA within all of our cells,
right? Our DNA is more or less set in stone,
right? So all the genes that we have are a result
of the combination of our parents and all the
human DNA that came before them. But epigenetics
is... which of those genes is actually turned
on or accessible to be turned on. And that can
change depending on different processes. So we
have what's called methylation. So you have these
methyl groups that attach to your DNA and they
basically unravel or tighten your DNA so that
when you have whatever stimulus, depending on
your environment, then certain genes will either
turn on or turn off. And so that I think is where
we're heading in this field is that the myonuclei,
yes, adding. more nuclei can definitely help
you to kind of bounce back faster. But also the
memory really is held within the epigenetics
because the methylation tends to stick around.
And so the memory within your DNA for basically
telling which genes are able to be transcribed
seems to be playing a larger role than the number
of nuclei. Wow. So is it that we thought before
that nuclei, myonuclei, are being built as you
progress in your training. They are added to
the muscle fibers. And then the stronger you
get, the more hypertrophic the muscles get, the
more nuclei you acquire. And when you are going
through detraining, they stick. But you say,
depending on the study design, so I assume depending
on the period, how long that... Exactly. So depending
on the length of the period that you're actually
looking at detraining. So when does it start
to dip down? isn't super clear. And how long
do they hold on to this quote unquote memory
is also not super clear. So for human data, these
studies are pretty tough to run, right? Because
you have to gather people, you have to train
them, and hopefully they're not previously trained,
right? So they have to be pretty novice training.
And then you train them for three months. That
in itself is a feat. And then you have to detrain
them, make sure that they stick around and that
they're not actually trained during that detraining
period. And that can go from, you know, one month,
three months, six months. and then you have to
retrain them. So that's a lot of time, right?
So you have to put in nine months to like a year
or longer to really do a study like this. And
we've done these studies and they're definitely
out there, but they're very, very few. And so
the information we can really gather and then
apply on a grand scale is a little bit limited.
But with that said, we do see that with... training
within novice individuals, we see that increase
in the myonuclei. And generally speaking, when
we look at hypertrophy, what's happening is we
have the addition of myonuclei into the muscle
fiber, and that basically donates the capacity
to build more proteins and send more signals,
not only for further hypertrophy, but also to
repair the muscle tissue. So the larger the muscle
gets, the more nuclei you need to then repair
that muscle. And so adding nuclei is very beneficial
in that sense. And so as we detrain, we tend
to see muscles get smaller and we do see a bit
of a fiber type specific loss in some nuclei.
And so it seems that the fast fiber types tend
to drop nuclei a little bit quicker or sooner.
And so that kind of goes back to some of the
work that I did in my previous lab and even in
my master's work where we're looking at fiber
types, both in weightlifters and just kind of
general population. These fast fiber types seem
to be pretty important. on which fast fiber types
you're looking at, they have different kind of,
not side effects, but they are different. So
we have 2X fibers, right? So generally speaking,
we don't really see 2X fibers in humans, but
we do see a lot of these 2As and 2As seem to
be very beneficial, mainly because they share
some metabolic properties that are both sugar
breakdown properties and also fat breakdown properties,
or we don't see with 2X. And then with our slow
fiber types, they're mostly just... fat burning
machines. And so as we age, but also with strength
athletes, we see more of these 2As and a lot
less of these 2Xs. And so with detraining, we
tend to see an increase in what are called hybrids.
And these hybrids are generally speaking 2A,
2X hybrids with detraining. So that means that
the fiber types are actually shifting from 2A
towards 2X mainly. And this is still a hypothesis
and the field is trying to get the answer, but
not really getting it. too much closer to it
essentially we think that the 2x fiber type is
kind of the default expression when you're not
moving or not stimulating the muscle tissue it's
interesting because within like human development
or i guess mammalian development so all mammals
tend to express 2x first within like their early
development and then as they become more ambulatory
or start moving around then we start to develop
the different fiber types and so within sedentary
or quote unquote detraining, right? So if you're
injured or whatever, you're on bedrest or you
can't walk because you broke your foot or whatever
it is, then you're not stimulating that muscle
tissue the same way that you were before. You're
not sending neural signals to the muscle tissue,
which motor units tend to drive, at least in
part, some of the fiber type adaptations. And
so the less firing you have there, the less stimulation
you have to either have that two -way or type
one muscle fiber. And so you tend to express
two acts kind of by default. Yeah. Can I just
stop for a moment? Because it sounds like 2X
is, I will say harshly, it's a bad option. Yeah,
and I struggle to say that it's like a bad fiber
type because... What are consequences metabolically
for having a huge number of 2X? You said 2A,
very good in burning both sugars and fat. So
what 2X? is doing that we know exercise is good.
It is good metabolically for the body. So I assume
there is a connection there. Yeah. So 2X is an
interesting one because it's mostly sugar utilizing.
It has almost no ability to really process. fats.
If you look at muscles that express a lot of
these two Xs, they tend to not have a whole lot
of mitochondria, which means that they're not
producing a whole lot of energy for themselves,
but they burn through that energy pretty quickly
because they're rapidly contracting. So whatever
energy sources that they do have, they burn through
them pretty quickly. And so essentially they're
mainly relying on like glycogen stores. So sugar
stores within your muscle tissue that they will
then burn for contraction. And this is where
I get a little bit hung up because I don't want
to say that they're necessarily bad. They have
their their role in human physiology, obviously.
Otherwise, we wouldn't have them. Right. We just
don't fully understand what their use is yet
because they tend to come up by default. They
also tend to come up when we're inactive. Some
people that are high performers do express some
of these pure type two X's. The case that always
comes to mind is a world champion hurdler. He
this is bad. Back in like 2001, maybe or early
2000, I forget the year, but a group of Ball
State basically got a world champion hurdler
and they took biopsies from his leg. And then
they look at the fiber types and he expressed
24%, I believe, like pure type 2X, which is just
unheard of. Why that was the case, I have no
idea. Obviously, it's the case study. So that's
not, you know, it's not intended to be like,
oh, if you're a world champion sprinter, like
you're going to have these fast 2Xs. That's not
necessarily the case for every. one but yeah
the the 2x is interesting in that sense but it's
also interesting because when people are injured
say like a spinal cord injury and they lose all
neural input they express these 2xs as well so
are they detrimental potentially yes and i tend
to lean towards they they are generally metabolically
disadvantageous okay so we don't necessarily
want a whole lot of these 2xs because They don't
allow you to really burn our normal fuel sources.
And I say normal because we tend to rely on both
glycogen and fat burning. Can you burn, I guess,
protein? Sure. But that's also detrimental to
muscle tissue overall. And I guess with that
as well, you kind of start losing some of the
other metabolic proteins like your glucose transporting
proteins that actually shuttle glucose from your
bloodstream into your cells for either storage
as glycogen. or to use immediately for muscle
contractions, those tend to start to go away
as well as we shift towards these two Xs. So
detrimental, yes. Bad is necessarily the right
term, I think, but they're definitely not very
beneficial to what we would term as normal metabolism.
I may make it up, but did you do some research
with people with obesity or was there something
to it too? Yeah, there are several ways to...
get to poor metabolism right so having an excess
it seems an excess in not just calories but an
excess and sugar in your blood as well as lipids
in your blood so as we eat high sugar high fat
diets which is kind of our western diet or kind
of what the most of the the world is kind of
getting used to at these at this point and so
when we have these heck super high calorie dense
foods that are high in sugars added sugars i
should add not just sugar on itself because sugar
is good just add in sugar and then excess in
fats that results in obviously higher blood glucose
also higher blood lipids. And that requires that
insulin be secreted throughout your system to
then bring all of that stuff into your tissues
if you're not using it. And so this is where
it becomes really detrimental to have a lot of
blood or high blood glucose and lipids is that
insulin is then increased for a long time because
it takes a lot longer to actually shuttle in
and store lipids from your blood. Oftentimes
they stay in circulation as fatty acids. And
that's kind of a part of where we get, you know,
our... HDL and LDL from. And I think most people
would understand what those are. And so those
constantly in circulation seems to be detrimental
to not just muscle tissue, but obviously the
whole system. What tends to happen is we get
low grade inflammation, which is a pretty common
or known kind of side effect or symptom of obesity
is we have low grade inflammation, meaning you
have you're kind of walking around day to day
with some level of inflammation and inflammation.
is not good right so you're you're sending signals
out to your body that there's some type of injury
that needs correcting and so you're constantly
breaking down different proteins throughout your
body and so we start to lose the ability to actually
shuttle in some of that blood sugar from the
blood and we also start to lose some of that
ability to shuttle in some of the lipids from
our blood or we'll stop shuttling it into our
muscle tissue and we start inserting it into,
say, our liver for fatty liver disease. Fat tends
to, if it's not going into the muscle cells,
it'll go in between the muscle cells. So you
get these fat droplets that is infiltrating into
the muscle tissue itself and not necessarily
the muscle cells for energy use. It's just there
as storage. And that causes kind of further inflammation
and interference to all the different signaling
mechanisms that we generally have in a healthy
muscle. And so that can also be pretty detrimental.
It seems that there's potential for... kind of
a loss of some of these muscle memory mechanisms
within obesity as well. I'm saying that in the
sense that we lose both the number of myonuclei
in obesity. We also lose some of the DNA epigenetic
markers that we know to be beneficial for kind
of bouncing back super quicker. But also in a
general sense, obese individuals aren't exercising
as much. It does happen. And there is a such
thing as, you know, the health. obese individual
that might be controversial but obese people
can be metabolically healthy even with some excess
fat obviously there's a point there we have thresholds
of kind of body fat levels that is then deemed
as healthy or not healthy and it seems that some
fat isn't the end of the world and i think as
a society we would move a lot into a much better
place if we stop demonizing moderate obesity
because i i don't see the full harm in having
some excess that obviously there's levels of
it. Okay, cheeky question. If you would have
a person who is visually... thin or thin -ish,
does nothing though, sits in front of the computer
the whole day and then in front of the TV for
the rest of the day. So let's assume they have
lots of 2X fibers and then we have a person who
stores a bit more fat, but they are exercising,
doing strength training. They are a weightlifter,
let's say. Their diet is meat, vegetables, lollies
in the gym. Pretty... pretty okay diet maybe
on the weekend they will have a takeout who will
be metabolically healthier you think almost in
every case if they're doing some type of exercise
they're going to be more metabolically healthy
wow even if you're thin and have a generally
healthy diet but you're mostly sedentary you
have a desk job and you spend the rest of your
time in front of the tv you're you're not stimulating
you're so you're we are highly highly adaptable
beings and we will adapt to be very very efficient
in whatever scenario we're in, right? So if your
scenario is desk job and then spending the rest
of your time in front of a TV, our metabolism
is going to start to ramp down at some point.
And then if you're eating generally healthy,
that's great for say digestive purposes, I guess,
but like you're not simulating your muscle tissue,
which is not, our muscle tissue is one of the
most metabolic tissues that we have. And so when
it comes to metabolism, And we want to burn sugars
and fats from our diets. That's not necessarily
a one -to -one there, obviously. But to be quote
-unquote metabolically healthy and cardiovascularly
healthy, we have to stress the system, right?
So if you want to stress the system, you have
to move. Your heart doesn't have a demand to
pump harder and faster if you're just sitting.
In the same case that your muscle tissue isn't
going to grow or become stronger if you're not.
demanding that it lift something that's it's
never lifted before and that's generally what
exercise is it's pushing our bodies to do something
that they haven't done before so they can then
adapt and then achieve that thing that it couldn't
do at one point and I think that's one of the
most fascinating things about exercise and kind
of the human body is how it adapts and I think
that you know those two scenarios couldn't highlight
that more The person that is mostly sedentary,
has an okay diet, is always going to have a similar
level of metabolic health as someone who's obese
and exercises a little bit. The person who's
obese and exercises more than kind of our general
guidelines, which is like whatever it is, American
Heart Association and like the American College
of Sports Medicine have the guidelines set at
like 150 minutes a week or something like that.
So if you're hitting that, like you're probably
going to be. pretty healthy definitely more healthy
than someone who's who's sedentary wow this is
huge okay so could we go back a little bit to
more methylation and epigenetics and i would
like you to explain a little bit more how the
adaptation happens there and how long does it
stay forever how big of an investment because
i think in for the body As you said, the body
is adapting. So you challenge the body and then
it adapts. If the adaptation costs a lot. it
will stay for longer because it takes so much
to build it up. So you said nuclei go away after
some time. They stick around for some time because
that's where we came from. So what happens with
methylation? Yeah, so with methylation, so we
get hypermethylation, which means we have a lot
of methyl groups around our DNA. And that tends
to cover up some of the genetic codes. that need
to be expressed for whatever. So if, say, the
genetic code for more muscle tissue is in this
specific part of your DNA, we want to have a
specific methylation pattern to make sure that
those genetic codes are actually being revealed
so that our bodies can then read your DNA and
then send those signals out and then build those
proteins, right? So the central dogma of biology
states that, you know, We go from DNA to RNA
to proteins. And so our DNA stores all of that
information. RNA is basically the signal or the
transfer, or I would say maybe the blueprints,
right? Blueprints are being sent out. And then
we have a delivery system so that RNA is actually
delivered to the tissues that they need to be
delivered to. And then they're read. and then
built into proteins, right? And so that's kind
of the central idea around epigenetics is that
we're using, we're not using specifically us,
but our bodies are then making it easier or more
accessible for certain genes to then be expressed.
And that makes it easier for something like adaptations,
right? So the more we exercise. Those adaptations
change our methylation patterns. And I'm sticking
to methylation patterns because some hypermethylated
regions will drop or downregulate genes and hypomethylation
regions will increase the expression of the certain
genes. And some downregulation is beneficial
and some upregulation is beneficial. And vice
versa, right? Both hypo and hypermethylations.
are good depending on the place where it happens.
Yes. Our general take is the patterns of hyper
and hypomethylation is what's being held on to
in muscle memory, at least in part. And so how
long... that pattern is sticking into our DNA,
we're not really sure. And that's where we get
into a little bit more of the weeds. We have
a lot less data to really say for sure how long
these timescales are very difficult to achieve.
As I mentioned before, for the human data, you
know, you're looking at over a year of these
individuals having to participate in a study
like this. So this is where some animal work
can actually be super beneficial, right? because
their lifespans are much shorter. And so we can
do things in kind of a condensed timescale, but
their lifespans are much faster. So they're returning
over cells a little bit faster than we are. And
so we can see kind of the progression in a similar,
but not a one -to -one ratio, obviously. So it
doesn't transfer as well. And so some of the
animal work that's been done has shown that,
yes. But epigenetics is a portion of it, right?
So the patterns of methylation for these different
regions within our DNA to express certain genes
are important. But again, it still isn't super
clear. And I think we're probably getting pretty
close to answering some of these questions, but
we're not super clear on what that timescale
is. But at the moment, I think it's still up
in the air. We know muscle memory exists as a
concept because we can see that these different
methylation patterns are sticking for some time.
We just don't know how long. And that's both
in humans and some of the animal data. The person
is training, training, training. Then they have
a period they detrain. For some time, muscle
nuclei will hold and then methylation patterns
will hold. Can we see that nuclei drop or start
dying earlier than the methylation? Yeah. Yeah,
we definitely see that happening. Which is kind
of what brought us to think that, okay, well,
if it's not necessarily the dropout or kind of
dying off of some of the nuclei, but we're still
seeing the bounce back. So then that means that
the nuclei wasn't the answer, but there's still
something acting, giving us that faster bounce
back. So what is that? And so we were able to
figure out that it's in part this methylation
patterning. There's also kind of, we build up
some of the machinery. And so part of the machinery
for... Gene expression is what are called ribosomes
are kind of the... contract builders, they read
the blueprints and then they kind of build all
the proteins. And so the more ribosomes that
we have in our bodies, then the more proteins
we can pump out, right? The more blueprints we
can read through and the more proteins we can
build. And so the more we have of those, we think
that increases our capacity to then drive more
adaptation. But that's still a hypothesis. We
see some hints of it here and there in certain
studies, but I wouldn't say that that is a sure
thing just yet. And how long those stick around
as an adaptation is... isn't super clear either.
So I know I'm saying a lot of, I don't know,
but I think that's just where the field is at
right now is like, it's still very early, which
is, I think, really fascinating. I mean, it kind
of gets into, we also mentioned in the paper,
the impact towards like steroid use, right? So
if myonuclear permanence or the addition of myonuclein
to the muscle tissue, do they stay? Like if that's
true, and if that's a result of steroid use,
then how can we make sporting fair for someone
who is... already been you know convicted it
is probably not the same the right word but sanctioned
if they've already been sanctioned and then they
they're allowed to participate again is it still
fair right if they're presumably still training
they haven't stopped they may have stopped using
the steroids but are they still gaining the benefits
from that and we're just it's the data is not
clear and and it's it's a tough one to kind of
parse out because we can't really do human studies
on that we can do case studies after the fact
maybe but most of those people aren't going to
want to participate in a study like that anyways
So what we have to do is we have to do animal
studies and the animal studies aren't very translatable
to human data in that case. I have one more question.
How about mitochondria? What do you mean? Because
there were studies on powerlifters and weightlifters
showing that years of strength and power specific
training changes mitochondria, changes how big
they are, how many of them you have. And mitochondria
are responsible for energy production. So in
the muscle specifically, we're thinking expression
of power and strength. So would the sticking
of mitochondria play a role in muscle memory?
So mitochondria has their own, they have their
own DNA. So I don't, I'm completely speculating
because I'm not well informed in the area for
like mitochondria as it relates to muscle memory.
But I would think it probably has some degree
of similarities to muscle nuclei. Simply because
mitochondria have their own DNA, but also they're
able to, they're like pretty robust organelles
in our tissues, not just muscle tissue, but like
they're pretty well adjusted and they adapt fairly
well. And like you mentioned that there was that
study that looked at weightlifters, mitochondria,
and they had all these great adaptations becoming
more efficient, essentially, and larger. And
so I would guess that it's got to play a role
on some level. What that level might be is beyond
me. moment so i couldn't say for sure i don't
think i haven't seen any studies because then
you would have to take if the changes in mitochondria
are brought by years of training then you have
to ask this person who was training for years
to stop training for another two or three years
to show right exactly to see that you're not
going to get that but it is a very interesting
question so thanks i'm wondering whether i'm
doing train any training obviously i'm from the
strength and power perspective more interested
in that part but training in general Could it
be an investment for life? So it doesn't matter
when you start. Doesn't matter do it for. But
whatever you do, it stores in your body in one
way or the other. And it's never wasted time.
Absolutely. I think any adaptation that we're
driving, I think is going to be held on to at
least in part. And so even, you know, the smallest
time frame, say you work out for a week and then
you don't work out again for a few months. That
week wasn't a waste of time. You started the
process. of some of these kind of muscle memory
mechanisms to then store some of that adaptation
so that when you go back into training again,
you'll kind of bounce back and get to where you
were at. Now, it might not feel like it because
we always experience muscle soreness with that,
but I guarantee you there's some level of a faster
adaptation that after each repeated bout of exercise,
you're storing some memory. How much of it is
being stored, I don't know. But I don't think
there's such thing as a wasted workout. I read
a study this week looking at comparing all -cause
mortality and other health -related and healthy
aging -related factors. And they looked at people
who were training regularly, so let's say five
times a week, people who trained on the weekends,
so weekend warriors, and did nothing during the
week, and people who did nothing. And people
who were weekend warriors, so they would do something
on the weekend, not necessarily any other time.
They were closer to people who were regularly
training. than to people with lichen. So yeah,
I mean, for as long as I've been in school and
it's been a long time, we've been saying that,
you know, a little goes a long way and it doesn't
take very much to get there either. So yeah,
I think that point of weekend warriors being
just as healthy or metabolically fit as people
that exercise more throughout the week. Yeah,
you don't have to spend all day every day in
a gym. You don't have to spend even an hour a
day. You can spend as little as 30 minutes a
day. You can spend as little as 30 minutes. And
it's a week and you'll still get a benefit and
you're still going to be above someone who's
not active in every instance. So I think, yeah,
like the 10 ,000 step rule is less of a goal
to achieve and more a number to make people just
more active in general. But even still, like,
yeah, you can be a weekend warrior and be just
as fit as most other individuals, which I think
is a great message for a lot of people because
it lowers the bar for a lot of people that. That
might be intimidated by exercise or demotivated
because they can't spend more than a couple days
at the gym or whatever it is. It doesn't take
a whole lot. You can do it once or twice a week
and still get all the benefits or at least most
of them. Everything we've talked about so far
I think is directly beneficial to our weightlifting
slash strength athlete. For those that are highly
competitive and those are... who are just recreationally
competitive I think muscle memory gives us a
bit of an out not necessarily like step away
from the sport but to maybe not take it as I
don't even want to say necessarily not to take
it as seriously but like if life happens which
life obviously happens to everybody and you're
either injured or you have other you know family
time or whatever it may be and you have to step
away from the sport it's not the end of the world
and so I think that is a great benefit of all
the work that was put in prior to that point
right so we spend all of our time and I spent
the vast majority of like my teen years all the
way through my 20s doing weightlifting and strength
training really really hard and then my PhD came
and I trained a lot less and I can tell you now
even with not having been super consistent or
really training at the same intensities as I
was when I was doing weightlifting training so
doing higher intensity say back squats or whatever
the snatches or the cleans it comes back even
a few years after not doing it and so I think
yeah the muscle memory is is a strong adaptation
I think that we're we're still trying to understand
in its entirety but it's definitely a thing it's
definitely there and I think it's this idea in
the grand scheme I think creates a bit at least
for myself it creates a bit of a security to
know that I don't have to be in there day to
day and if I miss a workout it's not going to
be the end of the world and if I have to skip
a week to a month or if I have to take a year
off because I'm whatever, for whatever reason,
like I can always go back to it and I'll bounce
back. And so oftentimes some of the, so it's
interesting because some of these studies that
look at like the shorter term detraining periods,
we tend to see a bounce back that's higher than
the previous sort of. threshold, right? So you
train and you get to a level, you detrain, and
then when you come back, you're a little bit
higher. And so I think that speaks volumes to
letting your body kind of readjust and heal from
all the little minor aches and pains that we
all build up with high intensity training. And
so, yeah, I think it's a great tool to use and
also just a great piece of information to remember
and remind yourself that you're always going
to be able to bounce back. That's a great message.
We should cut it here. Yeah. Finish on that.
On a good high note, yeah. Okay, two short questions
to finish. The first one is, what is your favorite
exercise at the moment? I hope you had one. Oh,
one? I don't know anybody who's in exercise that
has one favorite exercise. So right now, or I
guess for the last several years, my main exercise
hobby has been rock climbing. I've shifted a
little bit from weightlifting to being more rock
climbing. I still do weightlifting, and I've
recently... started getting back into it, which
has been exciting, doing snatches and clean and
jerks and stuff like that in the gym. But having
done it for over a decade, close or a little
over a decade, like I needed something different,
a being that needs kind of phases of hobbies.
So right now, rock climbing is a hobby, but I
still weightlift quite a bit. But if you're asking
for like a particular exercise, I would always
say back squats because they're my favorite.
I prefer to train legs. Almost every day is like
day for me. So yeah. Awesome. Okay. And where
people can find you. if they want to follow your
research and see what... So I'm on Instagram.
I don't post a whole... Now that it has a little
repost thing, I definitely repost more research
and I try to highlight any of the research that
we're doing here. There and my handle there is
drnateserano. I think there's a hyphen in there.
It's like dr -nateserano. We'll post it somewhere,
I'm sure. Yeah, you do. And then I'm on Blue
Sky's drnateserano as well. Awesome. Thank you,
Nate. It was a pleasure. Yep, thank you. Thank
you.