Ingrained Muscle Memory

Over the last week, Sihing Burke and I have started working on the head stack with the lion. I have now worked on this over the last two years with three different heads; despite this, there is not much change to “proper technique” or what I have to do as a tail (who would have thought). Something that has stood out to me during this practice is how involuntary muscle memory is. 

All of the proper stacking technique I established (but didn’t have the chance to ingrain) two years ago has vanished; but I’m aware of what needs to change. I didn’t even need to look at the videos we took to tell what I was doing wrong; I knew right away. It’s like when you throw a really bad kick and you’re like “oh yeah, I know exactly what went wrong”. It’s mostly timing issues too, stuff I hone with practice and repetition. The only issue is that making those adjustments and ingraining that muscle memory is a much more arduous process with a stack as opposed to a kick; I can throw more kicks in an hour than I can perform stacks in a year, it feels like. 

Another interesting realization for me along this topic came with the opportunity to help briefly with the dragon during practice Wednesday night. I was the tail of the dragon for about 3 years from 2015-2018, give or take. That was also a time where we did a lot of dragon practice; jumping into the tail on Wednesday after 7 years didn’t feel foreign at all. A lot of the subtle movements (what to move, where to move, when to move, how to move) came back super naturally. 

It was interesting to see how muscle memory came back for something I practiced for 3 years after a 7 year absence, over something I practiced for a few months over a year long absence.