Practice really does make you perfect

Washington -  Practice makes perfect is an old truism. And now science is proving that those who practise tasks repeatedly, especially after mastering them, exert less energy, performing with greater ease and efficiency.

Whether you are an athlete, a musician or a stroke patient learning to walk again, practice may not only make you perfect, but also more efficient, says a new study from the University of Colorado Boulder.

The study, led by Alaa Ahmed, Boulder assistant professor, looked at how test subjects learned particular arm-reaching movements using a robotic arm, the Journal of Neuroscience reports.

"The message from this study is that in order to perform with less effort, keep on practising, even after it seems as if the task has been learned," said Ahmed from CU-Boulder's integrative physiology department.

"We have shown there is an advantage to continued practice beyond any visible changes in performance," added Ahmed, according to a Colorado statement.

The results showed that even after a task had been learned and the corresponding decrease in muscle activity had reached a stable state, the overall energy costs to the test subjects continued to decrease.

By the end of the task, the net metabolic cost as measured by oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide exhalation had decreased by about 20 percent, she said.