Slice Cures and Muscle Memory

muscle memory

Muscle Memory – at first it seems like something of a misnomer. How can your muscles remember anything? Isn’t that for your brain to do? Well, first of all, despite the fact that your muscles are part of your nervous system too, it’s true that your brain will always be central to reliable repetition of a good golf swing. Nonetheless, Muscle memory is a fascinating phenomenon that all golfers should learn more about to play better and perhaps cure that pesky slice.

What is muscle memory? A research article explains it well:

We all use muscle memory techniques in our everyday life. Whether it be riding a bicycle, typing on a keyboard or entering a common password or pin number, we have taught our muscles to carry out these commands without putting much thought into them. It takes a great deal of practice and repetition for a task to be completed on a strictly subconscious level. For that professional tennis player or golfer it takes hundreds of hours of practice and repeated shots for the brain and muscles to perform at a world class level.

In other words, perform a muscle action enough times and it becomes ingrained in how you perform that action. The article elaborates a bit on the science of muscle memory, clarifying that it’s critical to be focused on the activity when trying to build muscle memory.

Needless to say, your muscles also have to have the right kinds of memories. Just like a kid trained to remember that 1+1=3, muscles trained to remember a poor swing in golf will lead to a slice every time. If you want to cure a slice, build muscle memory using a swing that’s correct. And as we like to point out, there’s no better way to do that than with Pause N Throw!