If Practice Makes Perfect, Why Do Some Skills Transfer?

neurologyhabitsmotor learning
Written By Adell Bridges

"Brainy What-Why-How"

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

🧠

What (the TL:DR)

Your brain gets better at exactly what you train. 

Not what’s similar to what you train.
Not what you intended to train.

And yet…

Transfer of skills absolutely happens.

For example, if you train press handstand drills before you can confidently hold a handstand, you may improve your handstand balance—even if you don’t nail the press straight away.

Confusing? A little.

Fascinating? Absolutely.

Why (the geeky neurology)

Neuroplasticity—the fact that your nervous system can change throughout your life—comes with a few important rules.

One of them is specificity: your brain gets better at exactly what you practice, over and over again.

And yet…

Some skills clearly transfer to other skills.

Take press handstands and kicking up to a handstand.

They’re different movements. Different coordination patterns. In your brain, they’re not the same skill.

But press drills often improve your ability to find and hold balance in a handstand.

Why?

Because your brain doesn’t learn "movements". It learns "solutions to problems."

Both press handstands and handstand balancing involve questions like:

  • Where is my body in space?

  • Am I stacked?

  • How much can I push through my shoulders?

  • How do I shift my centre of mass without launching myself into a panicky chaos?

As your brain gets better at solving those problems, some of that learning carries over.

Your brain loves specificity, but it’s also a thrifty little queen. If two skills overlap, it’ll happily recycle useful information.

And my favourite part: 

sometimes training a skill that’s slightly outside your immediate goal can reveal weaknesses, improve adaptability, and help you build more robust movement patterns than simply drilling the same thing forever.

How (apply it to your life)

At the end of the day, if you want to get good at something, you need to practice that thing.

Groundbreaking advice, I know. 😜

But here’s the question:

Do you want to play one song really well?

Or do you want to be able to play a whole playlist?

Recently I worked with a woman who could hold a beautiful straight handstand for over a minute.

But the moment she moved her legs into a straddle or tuck, she’d fall.

Why?

Because she’d spent years training one specific balance problem: holding a straight line.

Her brain got incredibly good at that one thing. Not so good at adapting when the problem changed.

This is why I love teaching my handstand students things like press handstands, leg movements, and shape changes—even when they’re still learning to balance away from the wall.

It gives the brain more pathways, more options, and more opportunities to learn how to solve balance problems.

Until next time, remember:

Your brain is always learning.

Make sure you’re giving it interesting problems to solve. 😉

Adell 💋

Want to go way deeper with me? 👀

Adell Bridges
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