Example: How does practicing shooting make you a better shot
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The more you practice something, the more pronounced the neuron connections are for that. Which means they have an easier time taking the same route in the future, and they take less conscious effort in the future.
But it’s important to note, practice doesn’t make better. Practice makes permanent. If you practice a wrong way, that’s what gets stuck with you.
Memory…..
If its physical repetition you are creating muscle memory. The muscle will know what to do next time you are exposed to a certain movement. You will also need to think less on the movement as your muscle memory has part of the movement. This allows you to think on the improvements or optimisations that can be done.
If you are talking about thinking tasks. Well, its about the same. If you memorise your multiplication tables you won’t need to think on them one you go into trigonometry (just as an example). You have mechanised part of the process allowing you to think on the next phase.
On the shot example. As you repeat the movement sone parts of your body will know how to place themselves without your need to focus on them. Then you can think on the other parts of the movement.
The more you do it, the more it becomes something you can do without thinking.
Once you can do the basics without having to think about it, that frees up the conscious part of your brain to do more advanced stuff.
For physical activities it’s literal muscle memory. But it’s still true for mental things. Calculus will be easier if you can do basic arithmetic without having to think about it, and you’ll be able to do that if you’ve practiced lots of arithmetic.
Also, if it’s automatic, you can do it a lot faster.
I’m learning to play a fighting game at the moment. Some of the moves require fairly tricky moves to pull off, it’s not just pressing one button. When I first started I had to keep thinking about where I was putting my hands and which button did which, and that didn’t leave much of my brain left to think about basic strategy. And that’s why beginners of pretty much any game or sport will be more reactive than anything else: they’re too busy remembering the rules and keeping the basics in mind to plan ahead.
But once I got that stuff nailed to the point that it’s automatic… now I could think about strategy. And once I got the physical movements repeated to the point they were automatic, I could do them on reaction without having to stop and think “So I move my left hand like this, then press that at exactly the right time, then press the other button…”
I don’t know anything about shooting but I imagine it’s a similar thing. Once you don’t have to think about basics like how to hold the bow/gun/supersoaker/trebuchet you can start to think about advanced things like the direction of the wind and the trajectory of the arrow/bullet/water/boulder
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