I hear this term used all the time by sports announcers, internet posters, and people in general. It does not mean what any of them think it means. It does not mean something like, "I'm a runner who broke his hip and was out of commission for months. I finally started running again and it was surprisingly easy to find my stride again without thinking too much about it." That is not muscle memory. Muscle memory was a term coined by bodybuilders, and I think it may have originated with the High Intensity Training godfather, Arthur Jones. What it means, is that guys noticed back in the early 70s that when they went off-cycle in the offseason from bodybuilding competition and lost mass, they found that they regained their mass and muscularity much, much faster than bodybuilders trying to build up to an equal amount of mass and muscularity for the first time. As I recall, Arthur Jones' trainee, the great Casey Viator, injured himself and was off-cycle and not training for the better part of a year. He dropped like 30 pounds of mass. When he was cleared, he went back to training and went back on the juice and regained all that mass and then some very quickly. This same phenomenon happened with other bodybuilders. Once you attain a level of mass, your muscles "remember" how to regain that level of mass, and thus you can be at the level much quicker than someone who is trying to build to that level of mass the first time.
That is muscle memory. Sorry, but I get tired of people misunderstanding it.
You almost certainly know this, but Jones and his H.I.I.T. ilk all held up Casey Viator's mass gain in 30 days as some great vindication of his training methods.
It was all driven by the prior mass loss you referenced, along with getting back on juice.
...Learning, as it relates to the golf swing, occurs when an effort to move the body in a certain way is transformed from a conscious action to an automatic action requiring no thought. This automatic motion is called Motor Memory, or more commonly—muscle memory. For all intents and purposes, it's as if the muscles have a mind of their own and they can perform amazingly complex motions without a person having to think about them.
Link: MM
I'm as annoyed by people redefining words in sports, as in politics, as in the pulpit. Everywhere.
And golf pros (and piano movers) are also who I had in mind when lamenting this particular misunderstanding. Dollars to donuts he also says "that begs the question" when the premise isn't begging anything.
He uses the term "muscle memory" even though he knows it's not accurate. Why? Because it does accurately convey the concept in a way people understand.
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And without thinking, I slip outside your cross and throw a liver shot, lead hook, round house. We need a term for an automated physical process don't we? If not muscle memory, what term should we use?
The idea that we will resemble an action hero in a fight or crisis situation. The reality for most is the "Fife Syndrome."
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After aIl it's the nerves associated with the muscle, not the muscle itself, that remember your movement. If you repetitively practice a movement, you make your brain reacts to these movements much quicker.