repetition doesn't always create mastery

"Brainy What-Why-How"

Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.

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What (the TL:DR)

You've probably heard "practice and all is coming" about 10 million times, and you may have seen people (maybe even me!) spouting the virtues of just showing up and doing the reps and "then the skill will come!"

But what about when you show up and show up and show up...and the skill ain't comin'? 

Plasticity isn't driven by repetition alone. It's driven by the strength and significance of the neural signals. 

Why (the geeky neurology)

Imagine you're trying to get your friend's attention from across a noisy, crowded area, like a music festival. 

If you just said their name, it doesn't matter if you said it 1000 times -- they probably won't hear you. 

But if you:

• wave your arms

• shout their name

• wear a bright yellow hat

• stand on your really tall friend's shoulders

...then they'll probably notice you. 

The brain works a bit like that too. 

Every movement* is controlled by neural networks talking to each other. 

But sometimes, those neural conversations become quiet -- perhaps due to injury, pain, spending a long time avoiding a movement, or a number of other reasons why that particular network isn't getting much use. (Use It or Lose It)

If those brain cells are only getting a tiny signal, repeating the movement over and over might be like just saying your friend's name across a festival field. 

The signal just isn't loud enough for the brain to decide: "This is important. I should get better at this." 

Instead, we can make the signal louder by giving the brain a lot more useful information about that movement. 

The cool thing is that your brain doesn't only learn from moving!

It also learns from what you see, feel, balance, pay attention to, and even what you expect (your beliefs about your capabilities). 

When SEVERAL of those pieces of information all point towards the same movement, it's a bit like lots of friends all calling your name at once. 

In applied neurology, we call this "stacking" -- stacking multiple inputs so that now the brain pays attention. 

How (apply it to your life)

Let's say you're trying to improve your wrist extension (the position you need your wrists to be in for handstand, arm balances), but it always feels stiff and pushes you out of these balances.

Instead of simply spending more time practising stretching it and expecting all to come (repetition), you could experiment with giving your brain a few extra clues. 

For example:

👀 Look at your wrist while you move it. 

🖐️ Touch your wrists, forearms, hands before you start moving -- it could be rubbing, massaging, scratching, vibration, or even applying hot or cold.

🎯 Hold an object while extending the wrist (personal fave: 5kg dumbbell)

🧠 Really pay attention to what the movement feels like. Apply curiosity rather than fear or judgement.

🌍 Change your head position as you put weight into the hand; turn your head, bring each ear to each shoulder, nod your head.

👐 Close your eyes, then with both wrists pulling into extension, try to match the position of one to the other. Check your work by opening your eyes. Repeat as needed to make the two match. 

🙄 Spend 20 seconds vividly imagining your wrist moving effortlessly before actually moving it. 

👂 Move your wrist into and out of extension in time with a metronome 

Doing some of these together at the same time could be really game changing. 

Perhaps on their own, each of this is "meh" for the brain and your wrists. 

But together, they can make the brain's "conversation" about wrist extension much louder. 

Sometimes practice and all yes...it comes. But sometimes it's stop, pause, take a breathe...

and find ways to give your brain more helpful information about the thing you're asking it to improve. 

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I hope you enjoyed this and it's been useful to you. Let me know, how will you give your brain more input around something you feel "stuck" on? 

Stack to get unstuck,

Adell xx 

*by "movement" you can think of it as a single joint moving. So when I say "movement" in this context, I don't mean, say, "walking". I mean, just "big toe extension" as one single part of the overall, integrated skill of walking. It's important to distinguish this, because of course we could still get the job of walking done if our big toe doesn't extend. But the entire skill will be compromised by that one joint not pulling its weight (i.e. compensations.)

Imagine this in a skill you're trying to learn, like handstand, or a split, which demands multiple areas of your body to dance this coordinated dance. If one or two areas aren't taking part because the brain isn't getting the necessary drive to learn, then the whole skill can be slowed or halted. 

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P.S. this blog's contents mostly come from the research done by Dr. John Krakauer, Dr. Edward Taub, Dr. Norman Doidge. The notion that plasticity doesn't happen through repetition alone has become well established thanks to their work in stroke rehabilitation, where areas of the brain are damaged but function is able to be regained. It's so cool.

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