Not practicing makes perfect??

[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. 

Comments

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

I do know at least with perception studies this is true. The guy who went around with the goggles that inverted his view of the world for a week (and got very good at not bumping into things) started going back and forth with wearing and not wearing the goggles and eventually found that he could attain close to full visual-spatial abilities within five minutes of taking the goggles off or putting them on.