mattbell

I use a video game (Dance Dance Revolution) for aerobic exercise.

I usually play around three times a week. However, I didn't play at all between mid-January and this week. Six months of no practice. The first time I played this week, I was not as good as I used to be. However, the second time I played this week, I broke my all-time records on five of the ~40 songs. This is kind of shocking. I don't know if it was my running around the world and feeding my brain lots of interesting data that led me to be more nimble at this well-practiced skill. Maybe it was also those brain games I started playing around with earlier this week that are helping me track the arrows faster. Maybe it was a complete fluke. Unfortunately, running a controlled experiment on this one would take a lot of time.

Generally being an expert at one skill (eg tennis) actually interferes with your ability to perform a related skill (eg racquetball). However, perhaps at my fairly moderate level of physical dexterity, picking up a variety of physical skills instead of purely focusing on one makes them *all* better.