Muscle Memory & The Slow Learner

Do you take a while to learn something physical? Does it take you many sessions to learn new psychomotor skills?

Termed as one of the nine multiple intelligences (by Howard Gardner), kinesthetic intelligence (KI) is the ability to learn psychomotor movements through physical activity. Dance, sports, knot-tying, obstacle-crossing, driving, juggling, playing a musical instrument, and the like, are activities that demand use of both gross muscles as well as finer ones. It is part action, rhythm and feeling.

People who are kinesthetically more intelligent learn physical skills fairly quickly. They can tell their left from their right foot, so dancing may be a sport that they take to fairly quickly. When you watch Dancing With The Stars, you may notice that the sportspeople tend to move quite gracefully as they have a highly attuned sense of body and its space. They are seldom described as clumsy. They pick up new sports fairly quickly, including their exquisite ball sense.

Writing is a good exercise, as the process of putting pen to paper is based on unconscious thought. Most people don’t think very much about how they write; they focus mostly on content. Those who write in manuscript and have beautiful penmanship have practiced this physical skill for a long time. When I started learning sleight of hand magic, I had erratic results. Many years of dedicated self-practice with massive amounts of feedback allowed me to hone these hard-earned skills. I am confident to wield a deck of cards and a couple of coins to entertain. My hands are very comfortable with these two tools – muscle memory is reliable.

Tonight, I swam for an hour in the public pool. It was a peaceful session, with less than a dozen swimmers doing their laps beneath darkened skies. I was mindful of what Coach Dion addressed of my swim strokes after Monday’s class, so I focused on having more propulsion from bent arms. 60 minutes later, with a medley of drills, my upper body was pumped up. I am looking forward to my next pool session as well as Saturday’s additional open-water swim. Hopefully, my neurological system makes the adjustment into new muscle memory, and I don’t have to think too much about the strokes, but on the rhythm and the glide.