How long does muscle memory last?

Muscle memory is typically for life. If you learn to ride a bicycle or drive a car, you will never forget. Similarly, how to do a specific type of dumbbell curl or even a dance technique will stick up there for life.

Looks like the number of nuclei in our muscular cells is related to that. As it is, our muscular cells might have more than one nuclei, and that happens when the cell is stimulated by intense exercise.

If you stop doing exercise, your cell will shrink, but the multiple nuclei will be kept, so the next time will be a lot easier to enlarge the cells.

And looks like this can last for years, which is also coincidental with the experience of a lot of people.

On the other hand, you metabolism do change, and retake the same volume a few years older might be easier from a muscular standpoint, but very challenging from a metabolic standpoint, so don’t think that you can always “save” your muscular state and retake it a few years later.