Muscle (Re)Memory

After correcting someone’s goblet squat form this morning, they proclaimed, “how did I forget that, isn’t muscle memory a thing?” 

Did you ever play a sport growing up? If you played for a while, you may be able to close your eyes and think about exactly how everything of a certain movement felt. I spent hours in my basement as a kid shooting hockey pucks against the cellar wall. I can think back and imagine exactly how the stick blade felt as it dragged across the cement floor. How I shifted my weight into my right hip so my right arm could lean on the stick, creating a bend that snapped the stick straight; propelling the puck ahead as I guided it wherever I wanted it by pointing the stick with my right arm.

I can imagine how softly catching and absorbing a pass feels, I still know what the timing is to take a mega slap shot - even though I haven’t done these things for years. It’s no muscle memory either, it’s your nervous system. After we practice a task so much, we commonly say it has become muscle memory, but really it’s nervous system memory. Our brains know what to do and what sensations to feel.

Taking it back to a goblet squat. After 10 weeks off, you may need to remind yourself of some of the more nuanced cues to clean up your squat. In short, it takes a long time for us to develop these skills and embed them forever in our brains. You’re going to constantly have to remember to sit back, not down, to push your knees out, to maintain weight on the ball of your foot. Just like it took me years and years to master a solid snap shot, it’s going to take a while for your muscle memory to take over your movement, and until that happens, you’re going to have to concentrate hard on how each rep feels. 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain