Some food for thought
https://www.t-nation.com/free_onlin...8F649744CF0F3F8EED2BB104423774.hydra?pageNo=7
''Muscle memory'', or more appropriately the ''plasticity of muscular adaptations'' is very real.
I have often seen it in action first hand with my hockey players. They will often lose up to 10-15lbs of lean body mass (mostly muscle) during a 82 games (around 150-160 days) season. This is due to several factors:
- No time to to anything but some maintenance strength training, and more often than not they skip that part unless they are injured. There are some warriors who do continue their workout regiment, but when you are playing every 2 night, always on the road, living in hotels and practicing every day, it is hard to be consistant.
- Shitty eating habits during the season. As I mentioned, athletes are more often on the road than at home. Heck, even at home they often live in hotels to avoid distractions! So they do not have the luxury of cooking their meals. Most of them thus rely on take-out and even fast-food. Plus, because of their schedule, few of them can eat more than 2-3 meals a day, compared to 6-7 in the off-season (when they do it right).
- Very high cortisol levels. This is both from the practices/games themselves, then mental stress associated with the in-season lifestyle, the pressure of the game, missing their family, and especially plane travels. Furthermore the fact that most hockey games are played at night completely screws up the cortisol pattern (should be high in the morning than taper off in the evening). They actually have elevated cortisol throughout the day and can even suffer from adrenal burnout due to excessive cortisol production demands. If that wasn't enough they often take the plane right after the evening games (at around midnight).
- High cortisol = low testosterone. Both hormones use the same raw material (pregnenolone_. So the more you make of one, the less raw material is available to make the other.
All this creates the scene for the worst possible muscle gaining/muscle maintenance scenario. You are actually in prime muscle wasting shape!!!
Then the off-season comes around and everything changes...
- Your activity level basically drops to zero, that alone ''frees-up'' around 3000-4000 calories per day for growth: take the game and practices out and that's how much calories/energy you are saving pe day. So right off the bat you are in a ''relative'' caloric surplus without even having to change your diet!
- If you are a serious athlete your diet becomes optimal. From 2-3 meals a day of a lot of junk and low protein, it goes to 6-7 meals per day, high protein, high essential fats and adequate carbs. Not to mention optimal peri-workout nutrition.
- From 1-2 weak ass lifting sessions per weak (IF that) you go up to 4-5 high quality ones.
- Cortisol patterns get back to normal... no external stress and no evening cortisol spike. This also means higher testosterone production.
In their cases the first 4-6 weeks of their off-season they are basically complete newbies BUT since muscle that was once had can be regained much more easily, then they just blow up!
I've had my fare share of hockey players gain 15-20lbs in 6 weeks. But I do not mention that fact because to me that is a common thing and it is do to what I mentioned above, not on the superiority of my methods.
A prime example is a player that I trained who went from 165lbs on 6'2'' to 190 in one summer... then dropped down to 170lbs during the season and finished the next off-season at 200. That last off-season it looks like he gained 30lbs of muscle, but in reality it's only 7-10 (which is still very good) since around 20 of it was regained muscle.
