Muscle Memory

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

Did you play sports 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 as a kid shooting hockey pucks against the basement 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 not 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 the nervous system becoming efficient at the task.

Taking it back to a goblet squat. You’ll need to remind yourself of some of the more nuanced cues to clean up your squat or other more complex movements in the gym. It takes a lot of reps until you won’t have to concentrate on sitting back, pushing your knees out and maintaining weight on your mid 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, try to notice how each and every rep feels.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain