It’s well known that physical rest is important for athletic training but mental rest/relaxation, is also a very important factor. An excellent article1 and primer2 on this topic was recently published and the major take away was: “muscle memory”/motor-control is set during rest through a “mental replaying” of the training-activity. In other words, if you want your final kick in a 5k or marathon to feel natural, make sure you get plenty of sleep after workouts!
REFERENCES:
- Ramanathan D.S., Gulati T., Ganguly K. Sleep-dependent replay of ensembles in motor cortex promotes skill consolidation PLoS Biology 2015 13, e1002263 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002263
- Genzel, L.; Robertson, E.M. Primer: To Replay, Perchance to Consolidate PLOS Bio 2015,13, e1002285 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002285
- Black, C.D.; Gonglach, A.R.; Hight, R.E.; Renfroe, J.B. Time-course of recovery of peak oxygen uptake after exercise-induced muscle damage. Resp. Phys. Neurobio. 2015,216, 70-77
- Akahori, H.; Karmali, V.; et al. CD163 interacts with TWEAK to regulate tissue regeneration after ischaemic injury. Nat. Comm. 2015,6, 7792
- Boron, W.F.; Boulpaep, E.L. Medical Physiology, 2nd ed. 2011 Saunders
This work by Eugene Douglass and Chad Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
