Hooray for Muscle Memory
It’s been 13 years since I trained as a figure skater, but my body still remembers how to jump. I skate once a week for fun and fitness. Despite lacking good conditioning and the kind of guts figure skaters need today I can still land a good number of doubles. It always amazes me how easy it is as long as I don’t think about it too much. If I can trust my muscle memory and not my intellect it’s almost always a sure thing.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:18 am
It’s amazing what our bodies’ muscles can remember. I played competitively with the national junior level volleyball team back home and even though I am nowhere like the player I used to be, I can still do a lot of things I thought I would never be able to.
Can you land a triple still?
April 9th, 2010 at 12:13 am
I thought this “muscle memory” was a load of hoakum, until I took up figure skating at the ripe old age of 37. I had never set foot on ice before, but former ballet training has “reminded” my body how to stand with good carriage, use the arms properly, etc. After all, skating is ballet on ice!
It had been about 25 years since I had taken ballet lessons, and although I’ll never land a double jump, my spiral (AKA “arabesque” in ballet terms) is quite nice!