Haven’t Done Endurance Training Lately? Turn That Into An Advantage (Here’s How)

Confession time: this writer, who reads and writes about health science every day, hasn’t done endurance training in a long time. Partly because of time constraints, partly for other reasons, but I sometimes wonder if I could still run pretty much indefinitely like I used to. I’ll find out someday, but not today!

Today we’re going to be looking at making use of that lack of endurance training, by leveraging how muscles “remember” past exercise and bounce back quickly. Good news, you don’t have to bounce back specifically into endurance training if you don’t want to, and in fact, weight training seems to be what’s best.

Here’s how…

Bounce back stronger

Researchers (Dr. Clay Weidenhamer et al.) investigated this topic, using a combination of gene analysis and mouse trials. If you, dear reader, are not a mouse, then worry not: broadly speaking, mammalian muscles are mammalian muscles regardless, and this is one of the most applicable-to-humans kinds of study available.

How the experiment ran: mice ran on a wheel for 4 weeks, rested 4 weeks, then ran again for 4 weeks.

What they found, in few words: the second round of exercise led to greater muscle fiber growth (up to 30% more mass) than the first.

As a bonus, this occurred even when the second exercise phase was much less intense than the first.

Remember that gene analysis that we mentioned? It showed increased mitochondrial activity during retraining, suggesting mitochondria—not just satellite cells—drive muscle memory. This is important, because it means we can boost (or lose) muscle memory in more ways than previously recognized.

See also: 7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease

And, since it is one of the above-linked 7 ways, you might also want to bear in mind: Coenzyme Q10 From Foods & Supplements

On which note, you may be wondering how much diet affects this, and the answer is that while diet can and will play a part, both control and high-fat diet mice showed similar retraining gains, showing that exercise memory can override poor diet.

In terms of what exercise works best, weight training was best, but aerobic exercise still resulted in gains, and primed the muscles to be more receptive to future exercise benefits too.

You can read the paper itself, here: Muscle memory of exercise optimizes mitochondrial metabolism to support skeletal muscle growth

If, like this writer, you have a vague idea that you might like to get back into endurance training, then check out this mythbusting edition with regard to (amongst other things) marathon-runners in older age: Are We Truly “Never Too Old”, Or Are There Some Reasonable Age Limits On Exercise?

Want to learn more?

Check out this truly excellent book that we reviewed a little while ago:

Next Level – by Dr. Stacy Sims ← the focus is on thriving through menopause (including: postmenopause) and going from strength to strength.

Dr. Sims uses the first few chapters to explain the menopause in more detail than most people know it, before launching into the main part of the book, which is the “what to do” section. If you only buy one book of this genre, we heartily recommend this one.

Enjoy!