Study title says muscle keeps a memory of HIIT training

A new paper in AJP-Cell Physiology is titled "Human skeletal muscle possesses an epigenetic memory of high-intensity interval training," from Andrea M. Pilotto and colleagues at @unipv. The journal posted it to its own feed. Brady Holmer, who shares physiology research, called it "One of my favorite studies to come out in the last year."

Brady Holmer

@Brady_H

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One of my favorite studies to come out in the last year.

That is the whole of what is on the record so far.

What the title is claiming

Epigenetic memory is the idea that a tissue keeps a molecular record of something it did before, a set of marks on the DNA that change how genes get switched on later, without changing the DNA itself. Applied to training, the claim in the title is that muscle that has done high-intensity intervals is not the same muscle afterward, even once the fitness itself has faded.

Runners will immediately see where that goes. It is the scientific version of the thing every coach says about an athlete coming back from a layoff, that the base is still in there somewhere and it comes back faster the second time.

What it actually means right now

Be careful. The only text available here is a paper title and one researcher saying he likes it. That is not nothing, Holmer reads a lot of this stuff and he picked this one out of a year of papers. But a title is not a result.

Nobody in these posts says how long the memory lasts, how many subjects were tested, what the intervals were, or whether any of it shows up in performance rather than in a lab assay. So if you see a version of this going around that says your VO2max sessions from two years ago are permanently banked, treat that as unsupported until the full paper is read.

The honest summary is that a respectable journal published something with a very interesting title, and one person whose job is reading these rates it highly. That is a reason to go read the paper. It is not yet a reason to change a training block.