mostly in the title, but i’ll elaboration the latter bit— i’ve started running about four miles a day, and unless i’m a lil sore, i don’t notice my legs moving at all, sometimes even, i’ll go further than i mean to because i’m lost, thinking about something else. why, and how does this happen, and why does this become a sort of involuntary movement? thanks!
In: Biology
Your brain remembers movements. When you are learning a new activity, you have to fine-tune every step of the process. This requires getting sensory info, info from the muscle, and decide if it’s going correctly.
Once the ‘flow’ is defined, your brain condenses that whole process, and kicks out all the feedback you get back during the process. The whole thing is executed in one block, not pieces like it is when you’re learning
Neuroscience major here, there are quite a few reasons why you no longer have to concentrate on moving your legs while running, but the simple answer is muscle memory.
Now for the long answer. It’s all based on neurons and the connections that are made by them through repeated movements. When a person repeatedly does the same movement or type of movement then the neurons they activate grow. One specific example of this is guitarists. A right handed guitarist, who uses his left hand for chords shapes, will have a much greater density of neurons in the portion of the brain that controls the left hand than a normal person. Usually their neuron density is almost 6x that of a normal right handed individual.
TLDR: the cells in you’re brain that make the thing work gets buff.
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