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cjtoday at 11:35 AM2 repliesview on HN

Building muscle is much harder than maintaining muscle.

And if you went 3 years without exercising, you'll be able to get your muscles back much quicker than had you never had the muscle before.

It's pretty comparable to skills. You don't need to practice as hard to maintain a skill than you do to build it. And if you let the skill atrophy, it's much easier to recover the skill compared to building it from scratch.


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mywittynametoday at 3:22 PM

> And if you went 3 years without exercising, you'll be able to get your muscles back much quicker than had you never had the muscle before.

This very much depends on age. I went on statins about 18 months, which destroyed about 15lbs of muscle over the course of a year (160->145). Along with that muscle loss came about a halving or more of the weights I could lift in any given exercise. I interpreted the "do you have any weakness on this medication" question as inability to function levels of weakness, it wasn't until I showed my training logs to my physician that she asserted that I was having weakness.

It's been a year since I went off them and I'm still lifting barely what I could in high school. I'm exploring some different training plans, but AFAIK, there isn't much research into if different weight/volume breakdowns work better for older guys.

euejetoday at 12:38 PM

Again you are not understanding the comparison.

I’ve got 20 inch lean arms - I know far more about muscle building and retention than you. I train just as hard to maintain them as I did to get them there.

The people who say “oh it’s easy to maintain” LOL it’s easy to maintain 16 inch arms.

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