Though I’ve mostly stopped playing music, I find that my body seems to remember how to play better than I do. The last time I played the violin on stage was about 5 years ago, yet my fingers almost snap in place when I pick up the instrument. Certain scales and exercises are embedded in my brain from the countless times I practiced them.
When you work out, you are tearing your muscle fibers apart. This is why people get sore after extended use of their muscles. In an attempt to repair these fibers, the body uses protein which may increase muscle mass. It is this same mechanism that essentially causes muscle memory. Whether you dance or play an instrument, you are using the same muscles over and over again to perform specific movements. The same muscle fibers are being torn and repaired over and over again, Instead of simply increasing muscle mass, our bodies repair those muscles in such a way that makes it easier to make those specific movements (Snijders 2020).
Figure 1: Shows the relationship between the number of myonuclei per fiber vs muscle fiber size
Muscle memory shows up in all walks of life. Playing sports, music, and dancing are all activities where muscle memory is advantageous. If you do any of these activities for long periods, you’re essentially ‘built different’ as your body is elastic enough to repair itself in beneficial ways. In some cases, people who formerly did these repetitive activities where still able to do them in old age, though they may have forgotten other things. Former prima ballerina Marta C. Gonzalez was dancing to swan lake in a now viral video. Though she had severe memory loss due to her old age, she was still able to dance with her upper body to the movements as if she was still on stage. The connection between body and mind is one that can never be truly severed.
For my last piano recital, I played an arrangement of “Surf” from the Pokémon soundtrack. Though I cannot remember the first part of the song for the life of me, I remember where my fingers are meant to go to play the beginning. I also remember the texture, almost crunchy feeling of the arpeggiated chords in the song.
References.
Snijders, T., Aussieker, T., Holwerda, A., Parise, G., van Loon, L. J. C., & Verdijk, L. B. 2020. The concept of skeletal muscle memory: Evidence from animal and human studies. Acta physiologica [Internet] [Cited 16 April 2025] 229(3), e13465. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/apha.13465
Tsioulcas A., 2020, Struck With Memory Loss, A Dancer Remembers ‘Swan Lake.’ But Who Is She? [Internet] [Cited 16 April 2025] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/10/933387878/struck-with-memory-loss-a-dancer-remembers-swan-lake-but-who-is-she