Practice Makes More Perfect

A study shows those who continue practising tasks after mastering them exert less energy to achieve more

Whether you are an athlete, a musician or a stroke patient learning to walk again, practice can make perfect, but more practice may make you more efficient, according to a surprising new University of Colorado Boulder study.

According to a university press release, ‘the study, led Assistant Professor Alaa Ahmed, looked at how test subjects learned particular arm-reaching movements using a robotic arm. The results showed that even after a reaching task had been learned and the corresponding decrease in muscle activity had reached a stable state, the overall energy costs to the test subjects continued to decrease. By the end of the task, the net metabolic cost as measured by oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide exhalation had decreased by about 20 percent, she said.’

“The message from this study is that in order to perform with less effort, keep on practising, even after it seems as if the task has been learned,” said Ahmed of CU-Boulder’s integrative physiology department. “We have shown there is an advantage to continued practice beyond any visible changes in performance.”

Published in Journal of Neuroscience, the study involved 15 right-handed test subjects who used a handle on a robotic arm, similar to a joystick, to control a cursor on a computer screen. The tasks involved starting from a set position to reach for a target on the screen and involved both inward and outward arm movements, Ahmed said.

With repeated practice of moving the robotic arm against the force fields, the subjects learnt the task by not only cutting down on errors, but effort as well, according to Ahmed.

“We suspect that the decrease in metabolic cost may involve more efficient brain activity,” Ahmed said. “The brain could be modulating subtle features of arm muscle activity, recruiting other muscles or reducing its own activity to make the movements more efficiently.”

So whether it is playing a musical piece over and over again or throwing a ball or swinging a racquet after your coach tells you things look great, sustained practice appears to be beneficial, Ahmed said.

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