Do you know what muscle memory is? It is the act of doing a certain movement without thinking much or focusing on it. Don’t you wonder how your mom makes fabulous round phulkas at the speed she does, while watching a daily soap on tv and also paying attention to the sabji cooking in kadai? Yeah, that is muscle memory.

It is because her body is so accustomed to the task. But how? Her muscles have memory of moving a certain way to complete that task because it remembers how to do it from years of practice. It is the same reason why we never forget life skills like cycling, swimming, sweeping, playing a sport etc.

What is the inside story to this?

Your muscles are multi nucleated; as in, they contain more than one nucleus in each muscle cell, called myonuclei. When you repeatedly do a certain movement, the number of these myonuclei increase in muscle cells and register it to save information. This information gets retained even if you stop doing the said activity for a period of time.

How is this related to exercise?

If you had a habit of exercising before, discontinued it for a few years but you plan on getting back into the habit again, your muscles will respond better because they already remember what it feels like. Your muscles just have to reactivate their pathways and it becomes easier for you to form the habit.

This is why it is recommended to introduce the concept of regular exercise to kids at a young age. Their muscles will always have memory of it and they can bounce back into the habit even later in life with minimal effort.

Physical activity in children also results in better bone health in adulthood. If your muscles have been trained since childhood, you also have better muscle strength in adulthood.

Importantly, stronger muscles lead to injury prevention in adulthood!

Train your children young; they might forget to thank you for it but they will have better physical strength as adults!