Muscle memory

Muscle memory plays a huge role in much of our lives, from tasks that seem relatively simple like writing your name to more complex activities like playing a musical instrument. Muscle memory also plays a huge role in self-defence and martial arts too, due to the need for us to master complex movements to the stage where we can do them precisely and effectively without needing to think about them.

When I teach students I often talk about muscle memory. But what does it mean? We all have a basic idea of what it’s about but by furthering our understanding we can speed up the process of transferring complex movements from awkward, clumsy movement needing focus and concentration to fast, fluid movements that take minimal brain power. It can also help us train smarter, teach others more effectively and develop better reactions.

Firstly let’s give muscle memory its correct scientific names as it does fall into two categories: Procedural Memory and Automatic Memory. Procedural memory is the learning of a process – for example riding a bike. Automatic memory is a conditioned response to a certain stimulation (Sprenger, 1999, p53) – for example if you hear YMCA by the Village People at a wedding (and you’re drunk enough) then you start doing the dance.

Procedural Memory
Procedural memories are those physical activities that we once found very difficult when we first tried them but, with work, we soon perfected. I’ve already mentioned writing our names and riding a bike but there are hundreds of others like learning to walk. Our bodies were always capable of doing these activities but our brains were not. In Ken Dryden’s book ‘The Game’ he describes how a hockey player grows from a clumsy beginner to an accomplished athlete:

“When first learning a game, a player thinks through every step of what he’s doing, needing to direct his body the way he wants it to go. With practice, with repetition, movements get memorised, speeding up, growing surer, gradually becoming part of the muscle’s memory… Faced with a situation, his body responds. Faced with something more, something new, it finds an answer he didn’t know was there.” (Dryden, 2003, p158)

Basically, when we try something for the first time, that isn’t already programmed into our brain, we rely upon the conscious side to instruct our muscles what to do. However as this is a new activity our brain has to work overtime, which takes a lot of concentration to make it happen (hence why children are easily distracted when learning new things). So while we may be able to manage it, it often feels unnatural and awkward. However, with continued repetition our unconscious mind takes over some of the more basic movements meaning that it frees up our mental bandwidth for us to focus on other areas that we are finding difficult or need to modify to reach perfection.

Automatic Memory
As already mentioned automatic memory is a conditioned response to certain stimulation. For example, “It could be a song that is playing. After you hear the first few words or the opening notes, you begin to sing the song” (Sprenger, 1999, p53). Our brain makes us react in a way that has been conditioned. It can be a very useful learning tool on its own but when linked with emotional memories like pain and hunger it becomes a very powerful way of conditioning a response. Think of the story of Pavlov’s dog that salivated whenever it heard a bell because it thought it was going to be fed.

Automatic memory is easily applied to self-defence, as our movements can be trained as an automatic response to being attacked. For example, when someone throws a punch at an experienced martial artist instead of closing their eyes, screwing up their face and putting their hands up in defence, their conditioned response is to dodge the punch, parrying it with the lead hand and throwing a rear hand punch.

Using the theory of automatic memory we can really start to understand the importance of realistic training for self-defence. To ensure that we create the right automatic response it’s extremely important that we train as realistically as possible. Of course, this isn’t always possible but a great deal of work can be done within class to make it real, whilst staying safe. For example it’s possible to mix the procedural muscle memory of doing techniques in the air, with the automatic muscle memory of something like sparring.

Working with a partner is another way to bridge the gap and build up intensity so that you’re getting to a stage where it’s as real as possible. It’ll never be like fighting in a dark street, late at night, when you haven’t had a chance to stretch and your opponent stinks of beer but by understanding this limitation you can look to reduce it as much as possible.

Using muscle memory in both a procedural and automatic memory sense are really powerful learning tools, especially for self-defence. By understanding how the body learns we can really gives ourselves the kind of edge that might be the difference between life and death in a self-defence situation.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences on this topic as I’ll be doing a second part shortly featuring techniques and tricks that we can use to help us tap into the full potential of these types of memories to help us with out training.

References
Sprenger, M. (1999). Learning and Memory: the brain in action. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Dryden, K., (2003). The Game: 20th Anniversary Edition. Wiley Publishing
Feinstein, S. (ed.) (2006). The Praeger Handbook of Learning and the Brain. ABC-CLIO