Pro Tip: Muscle Memory

June 27, 2017

Cover Photo taken by @samgracemiller @diahannelise

Every master has a very important weapon in the arsenal called the muscle memory. In situations where a lot of repetitive action is involved, your brain learns to automate the process by remembering the movements of your body and hardwiring in the way that you do not have to think about it all and instead can focus on more thought demanding processes, such as creativity.

Without muscle memory no pianist would be able to play the your favorite Bach opuses, no ballet dancer could do dozens of Pique turns in a row and no F1 race drivers would finish their rounds in a timely manner.

Photo taken by @balletzaida , @oliviatarchick

When it comes to photography, the muscle memory also plays the important role. In order to be fully emerged in the creative process you need to outsource changing your ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed to muscle memory. Up to the point when you do not have to take your eye of the viewfinder, practice changing these parameters constantly, even on the idle run.

Practice shooting your camera daily. Have your eye locked on the viewfinder and locate your knobs with your fingers without looking at it. Take your camera to work, shoot it on a lunch break, inside the uber car or metro, just anywhere you can. Teach your muscles to know exactly where all the settings are the same way you can find where the snooze button on your phone is.

When you can work your camera fluently like this, you’ll be able to stay in the moment with your subject much better. All it takes is practice.

Photo taken by @ladymehanphoto

Here are few tips of how to get the best out of each practice session:

1. (Lots of) Practice Makes Perfect. The more you do something, the quicker your brain can instruct your muscles to carry out a task. Take typing, for instance. We all start out with the hunt-and-peck method but in time, we can lay down an unconscious stream of letters, words and symbols. Learning to shoot without watching your fingers’ every move utilizes the same process. You develop a “feel” for shoot by shooting a lot. Practice not only makes perfect, it makes permanent.

2. Long vs. short practice sessions. Understand that there is an optimal amount of time to spend on any given shoot or technical problem per practice session. Practice daily and twice a day when possible, though in shorter sessions. You should stop your practice before you start to tire and get sloppy in your execution because…

3. Muscle memory doesn’t discriminate between good and bad habits. Muscles remember mistakes in the exact same way they remember correct technique, so be sure to get it right. When you repeat mistakes again and again, you build a muscle memory with those mistakes, which makes them even harder to overcome later. Let me rephrase: Perfect practice makes perfect.

4. Muscle memory resides in the brain. Muscle memory doesn’t reside in the muscles as we might have been led to believe; instead, as with all memory, it lives in the brain. Muscle memory is memory for muscles, rather than memory in muscles. Repetition creates new neural pathways in the brain, which literally becomes hardwired to perform the practiced activity. The brain no longer has to work hard to make it happen, so the activity feels easy to you. You just do it automatically, without having to think about it.

5. Be patient. Building muscle memory is a process that demands patience and persistence. The more you try to rush the process, the greater your chances are that bad habits and ultimately frustration will set in. Some researchers believe it takes between 1000 and 30,000 repetitions of an activity for it to become second nature to you. When building muscle memory, commit to it for the long haul. Your ability as a player will grow in leaps and bounds for it.

Photo taken by @lolagraphy_photo

by Wrong Ron

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Pro Tip: Muscle Memory

Here are few tips of how to get the best out of each practice session:

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