Everyone has heard the term “muscle memory” but do your muscles actually remember things? According to many studies they say muscles do, but not in the way your brain remembers things. If you have ever been into weightlifting and bodybuilding you have probably noticed your body gain muscle and mass. For example, if you took a long break from working out your body loses its strength you previously had and took months to acquire, but when you start again you regain it back much quicker than before. There is reasons for this that you would not think from the phrase “muscle memory”.
Things such as pitching a baseball or throwing a football people say the more you do the more your muscles remember the action, but this not entirely the truth. Yes the more you practice a motion are activity you will become better but it is not from your muscle’s own memory. Repetition triggers memory in your brain causing your body to perform the task at the intensity and form at which you did previously, hence the “memory” in muscle memory. It works in the same fashion as doing math problems, your memory is used too and has learned the activity or problem and is better at doing it. I believe that with repetition you are likely to become better at anything, but even more so with physical activity. A experiment should be done with randomized subjects who have not done a specific activity before and have them do the rigorous physical activity and score them on their performance. Furthermore the subjects should then do the activity consistently, then be put on a break from it. After weeks of not doing this they should be tested on not the same activity but one much like it and see if they score better than they did weeks before. If they score better you could conclude that from the practice and repetition, they have gained some memory of the motion and proving that the concept of muscle memory is in fact true.
http://angrytrainerfitness.com/2012/01/ask-alfonso-is-muscle-memory-real/
http://www.muscleforlife.com/muscle-memory/
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Without a doubt, muscle memory is real. I play golf which requires so much precision within the golf swing. If I take a break from golf for a few days, I feel disconnected from my golf swing and lose complete distance control with the shorter shots. I would be surprised if further research needed to be done to prove muscle memory is an actual thing. The only thing I am unsure of is where these memories are stored in the brain.
I feel like muscle memory is real. After doing something so many times, it becomes second nature for me. This might just be what I tell myself, but I definitely am curious. Like if muscle memory is not real, how do pitchers repeat their delivery to the plate almost identically every time? Same thing with a batting stance and swing for a batter.
Muscle memory is real. If you start working out and then take a break from it, your muscles grow easier the second time around then if you just started. Ive never heard the term muscle memory in sports before or even with schoolwork, so I found this article to be very interesting. Before this muscle memory was just a term used in working out.
I have been a cheerleader all my life, and one thing that my coach always said to us was to keep practicing because our muscles will remember the movements. I would always look at her confused because I didn’t know how this was possible. The example that you gave about people performing the same activity weeks later, and not having the same results is true, because it has happened to me. After returning to practice weeks after a break or from summer vacation it was a lot harder to perform some of the same moves and throw someone in the air because I spent a lot of time inactive. Thank you for sharing!!
I play a lot of golf and some day I will play lights out, while other days I will struggle. I found that the more I practice the more consistent my swing is, but when I take a break for about a week I will come back a my body and swing feel all out of whack. When I make swing changes it is easy for me to find myself reverting to told swing patterns, which i think is a result of muscle memory. My body/muscles have a tendency to do this for me because the old swing feels more natural to me even though it is costing me strokes every time I play.
I think body system is filled of magics. Muscle memory absolutely one of these magics. I really want to know how does it actually work. Hope further research can prove it.
I think you did a good job assign an activity that is “not the same activity but one much like it” in devising the experiment, since in this case, we can leave out the influence of “brain memory” to an extent and focus on the “muscle memory” better. However, there are still third variables that cannot be controlled such as skill of learning techniques, talents of doing the physical activity, etc. Though the influence of these third variables can be decreased as the number of these experiment subjects become more and more, and the randomization is done better and better, it is difficult to draw a definite conclusion that their performances only due to “muscle memory”. Again this substantiated what we learnt in class: It is truly hard to prove a hypothesis, but it is much easier to say “no”.
I agree with almost everything you have proposed but disagree on one thing.You said, “I believe that with repetition you are likely to become better at anything, but even more so with physical activity.” I just wonder what makes you believe this phenomenon is more likely to occur in physical activities versus mental activities. Would you not agree that by repeating the steps to any given math problem over and over again (with varied examples), one would eventually become better at the process?
I do agree an experiment should be conducted with random test subjects. Having played sports for the majority of my life, I do believe muscle memory does exist. However, it is not always a good thing as it is what causes many athletes to have difficulty shaking bad habits. For example, I was a slap-hitter for my softball team, meaning I batted as a lefty and ran while swinging, and I always had difficulty remembering to push with by left hand and pull with my right. The reason is because I was initially a right-handed batter until I was a freshman in high-school, so I had learned how to bat in a reversed way for over six years.
Hopefully someone prove muscle memory does exist, and possibly even discover a way to reverse the negative aspects of it.