What is muscle memory? Muscle memory is doing a task or moving in a certain way without thinking about it. This happens through repetition and continuously practicing the same movement. Your brain and your skeletal muscle work together to learn movements where it becomes automatic.
What is muscle memory? iStock-photo credit: Makhbubakhon Ismatova
How long does your muscle memory come back? It changes from each individual but if you are learning a skill in a competent way and you stop doing it for some time it is extremely easy to relearn the skill because of the memory.
A good muscle memory example or analogy is playing basketball and being a great free throw shooter. And then you stop playing basketball for 10 years and then you decide to restart back up again. Your brain will recollect the muscle memory of how it used to make free throws and the form it took to execute that task.
Your muscles will still have the Myonuclei of previously training muscle cells. Many people think the muscle memory is stored in the muscles, but it is actually stored in the brain.
Muscle memory isn’t just for athletes or fitness enthusiasts, it’s also for regular folks who are opening their refrigerator, driving their car, washing their car, going to the bathroom, etc. Basic common daily things we do require muscle memory to complete the tasks.
The stages of Muscle memory are cognitive phase, associative phase and autonomous phase:
Cognitive phase– You think about what you are going to do before you do it.
Associative phase– What you are doing starts to become automatic with frequent repetition.
Autonomous phase– You’ve executed the task enough times where you don’t have to think about it.
There are a couple of factors that help to establish muscle memory and that is the complexity of the task, how frequent you do it and the familiarity you are with the task.
Long term memories are formed in the temporal lobe which is the hippocampus and muscle memory is stored in the frontal lobe.
The Bottom Line is muscle memory is executing a task in a certain way without thinking about it. And this happens through repetition and continuously practicing the same movement.
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References
- Camina E, Güell F. The Neuroanatomical, Neurophysiological and Psychological Basis of Memory: Current Models and Their Origins (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28713278/). Front Pharmacol. 2017 Jun 30;8:438. Accessed 2/19/2025.
- Gavin CF, Theibert AB. Learning & memory. In: Amthor FR, Theibert AB, Standaert DG, Roberson ED, eds. Essentials of Modern Neuroscience. McGraw Hill, 2020.
- Gundersen K, Bruusgaard JC, Egner IM, et al. Muscle memory: virtues of your youth (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6138283/)? J Physiol. 2018 Sep;596(18):4289-4290. Accessed 2/19/2025.
