Building Your Fingers' Muscle Memory

I recently wrote a new article on Môssieur Ballon's blog. It deals with the importance of muscle memory and shared a few tips on how it can be exponentially beneficial for balloon artists.

For instance, we all know that repetition is a big part of the muscle memory process, but it is not the only one.

How well is the movement executed? If we repeat something regularly, but the wrong way, we will get very good at doing it the wrong way. This outcome is obviously not desirable. So the very first thing to do, if we want to train ourselves to do something new, is to ensure that we are doing it perfectly well straight from the start.

But you ask: "How can I do something perfectly well straight from the start, if I never did it before?"

I'm glad you asked ;-)

The secret is to first visualize the movement we want to emulate, either by watching someone else doing it for real or on a video, of by seeing step by step images of the procedure, or even by closing our eyes and using our imagination.

Then, do the new movement we are trying to imprint in our memory very very... very slowly, and as soon as we notice that we are doing something wrong, stop and go over that difficult part again, correcting any error as soon as we notice it. What we want to avoid is to repeat any mistake as soon and as much as possible and instead replace it with the correct movement as soon and as much as possible.

That is because our brain (which by the way is incredible and has super powers) is very efficient at saving resource and energy, it concentrates on the things that seems most important to us. So anything we are not doing, thinking or talking about anymore is put on the back burner while the focus and attention of the brain shifts towards what we are presently doing, thinking or talking about.

Now, being on the back burner does not necessarily means that it will completely disappear, it simply means that it will get less attention and be almost forgotten. If it ever comes back in the front burner, it can be revived quite quickly, Thus the famous adage: "It's like riding a bike, once you know how, you never forget".

This is precisely why we should avoid imprinting in our muscle memory anything mediocre.

In this article, I also laid out 5 specific steps to follow when we learn a new tutorial on balloon twisting, and shared a few more more tips and tricks on the subject.

Don't hesitate to read the full article on Môssieur Ballon's website.