A lot has been said about muscle memory in sport, but recently, more thorough research has shed a light on the topic, allowing to further understand what muscle memory really is. In this article, I will share these findings with you, and apply it to karate. Unlike most other articles on this blog, this one is based only on the result of scientific research, (not my own opinion).
While the concept of muscle memory is real, it is not what most people think. There seem to be two types of muscle memory:
* Neurological type
* Physiological type
Neurological muscle memory:
It has to do with muscles remembering specific movements. For example, once you learn how to twist your fist while punching and do it over and over for years, you feel like it is something you can never forget how to do.
However, the surprising thing is the reason why you will always be able to do it. It is not related to muscles remembering, but rather how you initially learned through your central nervous system (both brain and spinal cord working together to create solid neural pathways to transmit any required signal to the body muscle that needs to move). In other words, once you learned a move and practiced it many times, your brain now only needs to process very little to do that specific movement (processed by a different part of the brain than when initially learning the move).
It is obvious how repeated movements during Kata training are building neurological muscle memory, and the more you practice, the less brain intervention is required, so the faster you can be!
This is great news if you are receiving quality Karate training, and are being corrected as you learn and grow your Karate. However, this also means that if you learn something wrong, and no one is around to correct you, it will take incredible efforts to undo it and learn it right! So learning proper moves the 1st time is really a must!
Physiological muscle memory:
This one has to do with the ability to rebuild lost muscles after an extended period of non practice. If you stop practicing Karate for a few years after many years of practice, then start practicing again, your body will rebuild the targeted muscles a lot quicker than when you initially build these muscles. The reason why this is happening, is because new cells are added to your muscles when you initially build them for a specific move, and these cells stay put when you stop practicing, even when you lose muscle mass. These cells are easily reused when you start practicing gain, resulting in the targeted muscle regrowing faster than initially.
This being said, there is little to no research to estimate how long these cells will stick around, and if they eventually also disappear after a long period of non activity for a specific targeted muscle.
Conclusion: Make sure you learn everything right the 1st time, and avoid long period of time without practice!
Toronto, Alpha - KarateBoost blog
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