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Old 01-25-19, 06:34 PM
  #2326  
carleton
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You ever hear stories about roadies who retire for years then train for a month and can win competitive crits? The saying is that it's because he/she "has thousands of miles in their legs".

Here's the proof that the phenomona is real.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_relea...-mmd011719.php

More details: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...018.01887/full

The old adage "use it or lose it" tells us: if you stop using your muscles, they'll shrink. Until recently, scientists thought this meant that nuclei - the cell control centers that build and maintain muscle fibers - are also lost to sloth.

But according to a review published in Frontiers in Physiology, modern lab techniques now allow us to see that nuclei gained during training persist even when muscle cells shrink due to disuse or start to break down. These residual 'myonuclei' allow more and faster growth when muscles are retrained - suggesting that we can "bank" muscle growth potential in our teens to prevent frailty in old age. It also suggests that athletes who cheat and grow their muscles with steroids may go undetected.
That last part is interesting, too. Basically, the benefits of steroid use don't go away after atrophy. The muscles continue to be conditioned and can easily return to that form without the use of steroids in the future.
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