Whether it’s basketball or piano, this saying will always be true. The more you practice and practice, the better you get. But is the right type of practice more important than we think?
As you repeat an action over and over again, your muscles become accostomed to how the action is performed and how it feels. Your brain starts to remember what to do.
Now, say you play an instrument. You have a song that is very hard, and you start learning it without the help of your teacher. You’ve been practicing all week, but there is a rhythm, fingering or note that you are playing wrong. When you find out from your teacher that you have been playing it wrong, it takes at least twice the time to re-program yourself to play it right than it took to learn it in the first place.
Perhaps you play basketball. You started playing by yourself without a coach, and you developed your own way that feels comfortable to you to throw the ball, but when you join the team, you realise you’ve been doing it wrong. It may take you weeks of throwing hoops before you tell your muscles a new way of doing it.
This is all because of muscle memory! Now you can see why it is important to practice right!
Here are some tips to help you practice right the first time:
– Isolate the problem and focus on improving it.
– Repeat it over and over again to train your brain.
– Practice as often as possible, even if it is just for a short amount of time.
– Visualize what you are doing before and after you do it.
– Never give up!! It may take many tries before you fix the problem!