BEAUTIFUL EVIDENCE OF MUSCLE MEMORY NOW

Memory is not all in your mind. Your body remembers too. It remembers how to ride a bike, climb stairs, whistle, dance, and more, all without you having to consciously think about it. That’s because you have muscle memory.

New studies have shown that once you train your muscles to do something, their cells get bigger and develop more nuclei. When you stop training, your muscle cells shrink back, but the extra nuclei remain, creating long-term muscle memory. Restarting is easier than starting.

Dancers rely heavily on muscle memory. We love how renowned dance photographer Richard Calmes captures the perfectly executed examples of dancer muscle memory in action. 

RICHARD CALMES

In an ironic twist of artistic fate, Richard Calmes -- an architect who focused, as most do, on static structures --  became one of the finest dance photographers, focusing on human movement.

Dancers, as Calmes catches in mid-step, demonstrate that they’ve well-practiced each move. The forms they achieve in these freeze-frame poses have such a high level of perfection, it is obvious that they are evidence of well-developed muscle memory.

Calmes can show us muscles, as sculpture, lit to show off the shapes of all that they have been trained to remember.  

In other photos, Calmes, lets the fluid swishes of organza trail the dancers’ movements, tracing muscle memories in-progress.

Sometimes Calmes harnesses lighting to evoke the moods of specific muscle memories.