WHAT IS “MUSCLE MEMORY”?

You’ve probably heard the phrase “it’s like riding a bike”, referring to the ability to do something even if you haven’t tried it in a while. This phenomenon is also known as muscle memory, and it is a hooper’s best friend.

When you first learn how to ride a bike, it requires quite a bit of concentration on your balance. Your feet are off the ground, replacing your sturdy legs with rolling wheels as your new anchor. You might fall, or at the very least shake around a lot and over-correct your steering. As you improve, your teetering is replaced by a series of micro-movements to keep your balance, and it’s all smooth sailing from there! As your body learned what movements were required to keep you from falling over, these motions were strengthened and wired into your brain, so even years later, you can get on a bike and the parts of your brain that stored all this information years ago, send it straight to your arms and legs.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE HOOP TRICK:

Muscle memory applies in a big way to hula hooping. Every new trick you are practicing requires the focus of your brain to activate the possibly unfamiliar pathways of the muscle groups you are using. This is facilitated by curious little electrical and chemical transmitters called neurons, the cells that make up your nervous system. Picture the communication of neurons between your brain and body as lightening bolts, firing rapidly in all directions. Neurons can branch out and light up any path to your arm, leg, whatever. After so many repetitions of a certain hoop trick, you will notice that you aren’t even concentrating on what you are doing, your body just does it. This is because the high amount of stimulation that comes from continuously attempting to rotate a hoop around your body in a certain way causes the neurons to repeatedly fire across those specific motor paths. Over time this will lead to the neurons finding the most efficient pathways, meaning your body will find the quickest/best way to send the message since it has to do it so often.

The Neuron

Much of the way the human brain actually works continues to be a mystery, but through imaging technology, we can see which areas of the brain are active during particular tasks. When we are learning a new motor skill, such as an iso-pop, the part of the brain that controls movement coordination, accuracy and timing, called the cerebellum, is active. Then, after we stop paying attention and our iso-pops are looking quick and smooth, the activity has since moved to the basal ganglia (the area associated with habits). Therefore, it is theorized that there are two separate stages to creating motor memories: a short-term memory encoding stage when you are first learning the task, and a long-term memory consolidating stage that allows for permanent, unconscious retention of the task. In other words, if you can practice that trick enough to get it into your basal ganglia, you are solid.

JOIN THE HOOPING MOVEMENT

MY FLOW IS SCIENCE?

Muscle memory essentially allows you to dance with your hoop without conscious effort, and is this not the essence of flow? That’s right, your flow is actually muscle memory! You may have a hooper friend approach you and ask how to do that rad move, and you’re stumped. Ever since you learned it you haven’t really thought about how to do it, have you? That’s because you haven’t spent that much actual conscious thought on it as you are dancing. How weird is that? Once you learn the tricks, you will never truly forget how to execute them and you are free to clear your mind and dance. Your brain has got your back. Consequently, this also means if you have been doing a trick a certain way and want it to be modified, it will be hard to un-learn it. Just think about when you’re driving a car you’re not used to, and keep reaching in the wrong spot to shift into reverse. It’s just like changing the size of your hoop and it’s no longer where your arm expects it to be when you reach to lift it off your waist. Muscle memory can open your hoop practice up for all sorts of hilarious experiments!

So, the next time you pick up your hoop and notice you always seem to repeat the same sequence of jump-through to toss to vortex, just smile and remember you practiced it so much before, that your brain decided to have you do it without asking. Thanks brain.

References:

Atwell, P.; Cooke, S.; Yeo, C. (2002). “Cerebellar function in consolidation of motor memory”. Neuron 34 : 1011–1020.

Ma, L.; et al. “,. (2010). Changes in regional activity are accompanied with changes in inter-regional connectivity during 4 weeks motor learning”. Brain Res. 1318 : 64–76.