For just as there is a memory of sensory impressions, of the sights we have seen and the sounds we have heard, so is there a memory of motor acts, of the movements we have performed, and of the mode in which we have accomplished them. We have a sense memory and amuscle memory, and ideally revived movements form a no less important element in our mental stores and process than ideally revived sensations.
In fighting we have an illustration ofmuscle-memory. A fistic encounter calls forth as diversified and complicated a series of activities as almost any species of manual labor, but a ten-year-old boy of fighting stock will stand up to his first fight and play his part with a skill and address and promptitude such as he could not acquire in any industrial pursuit without considerable training.
1893 July 25–28 (date delivered), Adelaide E. Wyckoff, “Constitutional Bad Spellers”, in N. A. Calkins, editor,Proceedings of the International Congress of Education of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July 25–28, 1893[…], New York, N.Y.:[National Education] Association, published1894,→OCLC,page762:
Let any one watch himself in writing slowly, and he will perceive that the words flow from the pen under the suggestive influence of a series of mental images.[…] Let him write more rapidly, and these images fade to mere suggestions of themselves; yet some clew remains by means of which an automatic series ofmuscle memories is aroused and the hand is guided in the correct motion.
My shadow / Change is coming / Now is my time / Listen to mymuscle memory / Contemplate what I've been clinging to / Forty six and two ahead of me
2007,Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee, “Dueling Body Maps”, inThe Body has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better, trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.:Random House,→ISBN,pages29 and 32:
Your body schema is also informed by a library of what many people call "muscle memories," although the term is rather inaccurate. These memories actually reside in the brain's motor maps, not down in the muscles proper, as the term would seem to suggest. Thesemuscle memories give you an intuitive understanding about how your body is able to move and what it is capable of. This implicit knowledge includes things like how far you can bend over, what parts of your back you can reach with your hands, and what objects on the dinner table are within arm's reach without leaning.
2011, Ryan Flavelle,The Patrol: Seven Days in the Life of a Canadian Soldier in Afghanistan, Toronto, Ont.:HarperCollins Publishers,→ISBN,page20:
The key ismuscle memory and automating one's responses. By constant repetition, soldiers learn exactly how their kit is organized and laid out, how to quickly tie their boots in the morning, where and how magazines are stored in the tactical (tac) vest, how to access each pouch on their kit without looking at it. All of these movements become mostly unconscious.
2014 January 22, Cathy Covell, “Tissue Memory and Its Effect on Healing”, inFeeling Your Way Through, Bloomington, Ind.: Balboa Press,Hay House,→ISBN,page96:
Most people easily understand an example of what is calledmuscle memory as it applies to sports. If we didn't havemuscle memory, athletes would have to relearn how to shoot a basket, hit a baseball, or throw a football each time they played a game. Muscles have memories and, with practice, the actions they perform can be done without thought.
physiological adaptation of the body to repetition of a specific physical activity, resulting in increased subconscious neuromuscular control when performing that activity again
muscle memory on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
, Oxford:Oxford University Press, December 2024.