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Comment by yowayb | Hacker News Reader

I spent most of college in the gym. I quickly hit my size limit. Strength seemed to improve slowly. Then I did a popular steroid cycle. Of course I got huge. 5 years later I did trenbolone so I got big AND strong.

But the relevant bit is 5 years after that, I tried 1/4 the dosage, plus only 15 minutes in the gym every day (1 set of 3-rep max of each of the major lifts). I got just as big, and was actually stronger than I had ever been thru the full dose cycles.

Outside of the gym, I regularly halve the dose of any prescriptions or suggested dose of recreational drugs. A friend even told me he saw a Buddhist monk take a tiny shot of liquor and sit and meditate on that single shot for hours.

And finally, if I may take a sad turn, my father got trigeminal neuralgia but he's largely avoided all drugs all his life, so the standard dose hits him way too hard.

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Is this literal muscle memory. The big dose earlier in life sets you up for needing a smaller dose later. Like riding a bike.

No, muscle memory refers to a different phenomenon where nerves outside of our brain can be trained and get better at skills.

I think what you're seeing here is that when you initially build muscle, you are building new muscle cells. When you lose those gains, you still mostly have the same number of cells, but they muscle fibers in them reduce. When you go to regain it, it's easier to regain because you still have most of the celluar framework there.

Or, at least, that's how it was explained to me. I probably have some details wrong.

There are two distinct but related phenomena, both called muscle memory: the motor learning you're talking about, and strength training: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory_(strength_traini...

> Doping with anabolic steroids also seem to act partly by recruiting new nuclei.[7][8] It was recently shown in mice[9] that a brief exposure to anabolic steroids recruited new muscle nuclei. When the steroids were withdrawn, the muscle rapidly shrank to normal size, but the extra nuclei remained. After a waiting period of 3 months (about 15% of the mouse lifespan), overload exercise led to a muscle growth of 36% within 6 days in the steroid-exposed group, while control muscles that had never been exposed to steroids grew only insignificantly.

aqueueaqueue probably meant this part ^. If you do steroid once, then you stop doing steroid, its effects remain, according to wiki (in mice).

It is apparently easier for someone who has done strength training or body building to get back into it then the first time around. I don't know the science behind it but I've heard it from many sources.

I don't know if muscle memory is a scientific term but I understand it as adaptations of muscle and nerves that are skill specific as a result of training. I think it's hard to put a boundary around the brain here. The brain and the nervous system is also a component of strength.

Fair question. There's no way to know rigorously but many friends have said it increased their base muscle permanently

> Like riding a bike.

Or walking. Humans take such a long time to gain the muscle strength and the motor skills to simply take a few steps.

> 1 set of 3-rep max of each of the major lifts

Could you elaborate your training regime?

If you can do 3 reps of bench with 100kg-s, you do:

1. bar x 10, 2. 40 x 10 3. 60 x 5 4. 80 x 5 5. Then do 100 x 3

And then you move to squats and deadlifts with the same approach.

Is this more or less what you did?

No just 3 reps of each then out

So you just start with your 3 rep max with no warmup at all?

I'm not sure if I would start deadlifting with my 3 max without proper warmup. Or any heavy lift for that matter.

What was your 3 rep max for the big lifts?

The nice thing about a deadlift is that, if you're unexpectedly weak that day, the weight is below you.

No warm up but I was 35 yo

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