Avery Sun Week #15: Muscle Memory
Avery Sun
Week 15
Muscle Memory
Muscle memory has been the one thing helping me survive a good amount of my extracurriculars, but at the same time, it has been lowering the quality of my performance as well. For every single one of my piano exams, rather than memorizing the notes of the song, I let muscle memory completely take over, and I was so dependent on it to the point where if I even focused for a split second on what I was playing, it would disrupt my muscle memory and I would have to restart. The same thing happened when I tried out for the badminton team this year. I hadn’t touched a racket for around 3 years, and I got a feel for what I was doing through muscle memory; but because its been so long, my form and footwork are very incorrect and its hard for me to correct it because the wrong moves are ingrained in my body.
So how does muscle memory work? In an Oxford study, researchers used MRI scans to track the brain activity of adults learning to juggle and found that after six weeks of “juggling training,” there was an increase in white matter (basically brain connections) in areas relating to vision and movement, allowing for easier hand eye coordination (Medium). When first learning the new skill (juggling), the premotor cortex (responsible for movement planning) and basal ganglia (responsible for movement initiation) had high levels of activity, but after practicing juggling repeatedly, activity levels decreased (Medium).
Another study completed in June of last year showed that having short pauses in between continuous repetition was what helped integrate actions into muscle memory. These breaks allow for the brain to quickly have an “instant replay” of the activity that just occurred and encode the skills into memory (Fields). In this study, participants had to type five numbers as quickly as possible using their non-dominant hand (Fields). They had 10 seconds to type and were then given a ten second break (Fields). This was repeated 36 times, and each time, using an EEG scan, scientists found that the mental flashback that occurred during the break occurred at a faster rate and it was clear that the participants’ speed and accuracy were improving as well (Fields).
If anyone needs to memorize something involving physical activity in the near future, remember to not repeatedly practice back to back and take short breaks in the middle and try to not rely on muscle memory as much as I do. While it is useful, a lot of the time I wish I was more familiar with integrating the right technique rather than what felt right to me when I first started learning a skill.
Hey Avery, I really related a lot to the personal anecdotes you described in the beginning of your blog post. I am taking Drama this year, and honestly when I do my performances, my mind is kind of just blank. It’s almost like I am on some sort of auto-pilot mode. I don’t know if this is technically “muscle memory,” but I end up just saying the dialogues naturally without thinking about it. It is quite interesting, but also kind of creepy how I barely remember anything at all from those 10 minutes. Honestly, though, I do not think you should feel guilty about using your muscle memory. I believe that developing that muscle memory to the point where you do not even have to think about a certain action is an achievement. It took a lot of hard work and practice, which you should recognize and be proud of. However, if you do want to focus on learning the right techniques and being more involved in your activities, I think you should try forcing yourself to think about what you are doing as you are doing it. Good Luck!
ReplyDeleteMuscle memory really is extremely interesting. Some of the things I have "memorized" with my body are things that have little to no use, but are just so ingrained in my mind and body that they still remain. It is like what my volleyball coach used to say: "practice makes permanent, and perfect is up to you." There is nothing much to it more than just muscle memory at that point. The same thing that happened to you for badminton happened to be in my first couple weeks returning to volleyball: my footwork was so messed up and I just defaulted back to my previous swinging motions, which were horrible. It took weeks to get back into it. Muscle memory seems to be both a blessing and a curse.
ReplyDeleteAs a guitar player, I totally agree with this idea of muscle memory. I learned many songs over the course of the pandemic, but quickly stopped having as much time to play around as school started and a significantly higher workload resumed with less time at home. As a result, i haven't really had as many strong sessions of practice. However, picking up the guitar from time to time I'm still able to play the beginnings of several songs I've learned, considering those areas are the ones I've had the most practice and muscle memory for. Thinking about it too much ruins this flow, so muscle memory has pretty much been the only real way for me to play music recently. I think its really cool how muscle memory can present itself, as so many different facets of life can be simplified to just memorization through repetition.
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