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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

I don't have any science behind this, but it makes sense that training more complex motions would trigger greater brain improvements.

Dance vs basketball or some other high coordination/skill activity might have less disparity than say dance vs. exercise bike.

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Speaking as someone who tried to take a tap class as an adult, only to discover it was for people who were already experienced dancers: yes, dance training is vastly more complex than exercise.

Update: what absolutely killed me is that we would run through a complex step two or three times, and we were expected to be able to practice at home. I didn't understand what we were doing while we were doing it, there was no way I could reproduce it.

You got thrown into a class above your skill level. That's bad on the teacher for not telling you really. Once you know the basics the rest is easier to build on top of that, but otherwise it's like trying to tell someone about design patterns while they're still struggling with syntax in programming.

If you liked the idea, give it a go with beginners again. You'll get back to that higher level soon anyway.

I've danced extensively, and tap can be brutal for the sheer number of steps you need to remember. Other dance disciplines, like ballet, tend to chunk sets of smaller movements into a larger, named one, so once you learn those sequences, it's easy to learn and recall longer routines. The way ballet is put together aligns with advice from brain science about chunking objects in memory for better recall. But tap has few of those chunked sequences, other than the "time step," so you're left trying to parse long strings of very finite instructions. "Left ball right heel left flap ball change..." Personally I found it overwhelming and didn't pursue tap into the most advanced levels for that reason.

Aside: it seemed like neurotypical folks struggled less with tap than I did as an AuDHD person, so tap may land differently with different neurotypes.

>chunking objects in memory for better recall //

Can you share your source on this?

Tangentially related wittering (I have flu, I'm a bit illucid rn): I do karate, I find sequenced moves to be a real mental struggle. But then I couldn't skip until I was a teenager. I blame/describe that as arrhythmia. I can't clap in time either.

The book “Peak” - and other works by that author detail studies related to this.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak:_Secrets_from_the_New_S...

> The book was written partly as a response to the misrepresented but increasingly commonplace idea of the "10,000-hour rule," popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2008 book Outliers and which Gladwell had based on Ericsson's own research.

Thanks for that reference. Having read Outliers years ago, Peak sounds like a useful follow-on and the concept of “deliberate practice” makes sense to me.

I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult). I’m mostly self-taught (justinguitar.com) but have recently started a music class to get feedback on my playing. My wife is also learning Mandarin and it sounds like the kind of book that she’d be interested in.

> I’ve been learning guitar over the past couple of years and I still struggle with many aspects (with good rhythm and timing being the most difficult).

Same, same and same, here.

Good luck to you!

Sure. There’s a Wikipedia page on Chunking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)

Arrhythmia and trouble doing sequenced moves… that’s interesting. I can’t quite make the connection but wouldn’t be surprised if there is one. On the flip side, I’ve actually used rhythm to help me memorize things at times, e.g. saying multiplication tables like they’re a poem or a chant. My kid just picked this up from me and started doing it on her own and it seemed to accelerate her learning.

>>chunking objects in memory for better recall //

> Can you share your source on this?

I haven't seen the research on this, but it makes intuitive sense to me as a musician. It was the only way I could learn long complex pieces.

Have you tried verbalizing as an aid to learning sequenced moves?

People are different, I tap danced for years but I found ballet almost impossible to pick up for it's complexity and dumb poses.

I have experience with a few types of dance including salsa and bachata, and also compete as a strength athlete- and find some of the more complex weight lifting moves- such as the push jerk- a lot harder and more technical than anything I’ve learned dancing. If every aspect of your timing and form aren’t perfect, it simply does not work at heavier weights, and can take years of constant practice to perfect. The extra burden of having to output 100 percent effort while trying to do everything else perfect is very mentally demanding.

I have 20 years experience in dancing couples dances, with lots of private classes on technique in some styles, as well three years in weight training with several times per week with a PT who specialized in and taught me weight training technique. (I am not very muscular, though, so I am not saying this to brag, just to give you some idea of my background).

I have had a really bad body coordination, so I have had to learn everything the hard way. So I know A LOT of theory -- and over time, I have learned to coordinate my body much better. But some kinesthetic people are still naturals and move better than I do.

I agree with you that the major difference between dancing and other sports is probably not in the complexity of the movement. I think that the biggest difference is in improvisation and need to harmonize movement with your partner and music.

I also agree with you that there is almost no limit in either field on how detailed you can be in your body movements.

But even within weight training there appear to be various approaches, based on different goals. In my training, I almost never used 100 percent effort. Rather, the muscles were constantly stimulated with similar but different movements, all the time varying the stimulus. The muscles grow in rest.

It is very similar to how I have learned to dance. On the social dance floor, there are always limitations (such as other couples, tables, walls, music etc.) that come up. When you are improvising, you need to adjust your movements constantly (varying step length, direction, the movement you are doing etc.). And over time, you have experienced everything that can happen, and your body has learned to react to it, so "you" (i.e. your analytical mind) can relax and let the body move.

I don’t use 100 percent effort when actually training- only during competition. Mostly because the risk of injury, equipment required, and safety preparations for 100 percent effort are substantial- and the recovery time afterwards takes a week or more.

That said, when I was a beginner I used ”100 percent effort” a lot- because as a beginner my 100 percent effort was probably only really about 70 percent, I lacked the mental ability and pain tolerance for true 100 percent effort.

I think that's the exception that proves the rule, though, no?

The majority of strength and cardio exercises are fairly simple to learn. Getting your form 100% correct is certainly more work, but generally not much.

Basic partner dancing can certainly seem fairly simple, but you very quickly move out of that and into the realm of most things being complicated. And even with the basics, if you actually focus on the technique, it's already a lot more complicated than most workout exercises.

I do expect that some forms of martial arts could be comparable (or perhaps even higher) in complexity to partner dance, though. But I'm not sure if I'd consider martial arts to be exercise as much as it's a sport or hobby.

(Source: former competitive ballroom and latin dancer.)

At lower weights, it's easy to 'have good form'. The muscles can easily compensate for each other and one doesn't have to think too much about which muscles to contract/focus on.

As the weight increases, it requires more focus to ensure that you are keeping your form and positioning and even just to engage your muscles `in the right way`. Form becomes more important/a pre-requisite in a way that ramps up as the weight increases as mistakes become harder to correct on-the-fly. The tolerances decrease and so the technique becomes more important.

Yeah, still way way easier than even basic dancing though

Beyond fundamental moves in any partner dance style, the complexity increases significantly.

It's not just your coordination and flexibility in placing legs, feet, arms, hands, torso in various positions at the right time, it's also leading your follower, adapting to their own abilities, tension, movement, mobility, and mood, connecting with them energetically, with the music, with the floor, and practicing dance floor awareness to avoid collisions with other dancers, adapt your moves to a rapidly shifting available dance space, and being creative and spontaneous.

I imagine, being an art form, there is almost limitless possibility for complexity and difficulty in dance. However, I would argue the same is also true for strength sports, which ultimately are a type of martial art. I don’t think one is categorically simpler than the other- they both offer people of any skill and ability level lifelong challenges. My point was not to claim dance was easy but that “exercise” is not always something simple and mindless that once learned you just tune out and let your body do. Personally, I can’t stick with something boring- having ADHD, exercise is only possible for me if it is also fully mentally engaging.

I'd argue dance has a higher skill floor but both have a high skill ceiling.

With dance you need minimum 4 limb coordination (its more than this) to get started. You need rhythm and you need to memorize choreo.

At low weights lifting is pretty straightforward even for Olympic lifts. But your form only gets found out as you increase load and there's high risk of injury, and as you say you need a high focus.

As someone said - you chose the exception to the rule and the average person needs to use exercise machines because they lack the body awareness to even attempt strength sports.

That said the technical timing to strength sports is different to rhythm in dance/music. They both take focus but I think the brain is engaged differently. Especially as lifting is usually one movement and the movement is performed in a short burst. Whereas dance is a long sequence and usually a very different energy profile which is important. I do a lot of stuff but I recommend dance to people (as someone who doesn't really dance myself) because it forces you to relax in a way a lot of other exercise forms don't

I think gp’s point was that “exercise” encompasses a range from stationary bike to olympic lifts. Dancing is on the same end of that range as olympic lifting or a sport like basketball insofar as they all require intentional practice.

Try taking modern dance. They have the huge choreography that you need to memorize, with like 19 degrees of freedom and then 40 minutes through the class the instructor says, "flip it over" and you need to perform the mirror image of all those movements. You can't handle the chirality!

Truth. Sometimes the modern dance movements don’t even have names; it’s a wiggle in this direction or that, so you’re using either photo- or kinesthetic memory to mimic and remember if you’re able.

I teach Karate to kids and many of the forms require some amount of coordination and quick movement. A little thinking ahead and awareness of where your own limbs are (I think it's called proprioception). I've been doing this for a long time and can make reasonable accurate judgments about my physical abilities (how far I can jump etc.). But it's a skill that's quite demanding for new learners and that became quite apparent to me when I started teaching. I think it would be similar learning dancing (especially complex moves).

For forms, we had to practice it till it became muscle memory and then it would automatically come up when we needed it and influence our moves even outside of the forms. I can relate to your experience about not understanding. However, the knowledge is additive and if you start small and keep practicing, you develop a skill to understand the forms/patterns at a larger level with some kinds of cues and it's vastly easier to remember and perform. THis also requires a teacher who can ease you into the complex stuff without dumping it all on you.

What works is to go through the steps very slowly. As it moves into muscle memory, you can speed it up.

Dance training is a whole body thing. There's steps, ankle position, foot turnout, posture, what to do with your arms, what to do with your fingers, where your eyes are looking, and on and on.

The very first thing, though, is getting the steps into your muscle memory. Then one by one, you start layering on the rest.

Another factor also seems to be how learning differs between adult brains, and non-adult brains.

A child's brain isn't finished forming till about age 25-26, when the prefrontal cortex finally matures, from my understanding. [1][2]

Once Adult brain is in the drivers seat, learning isn't how it used to be in school. That can be better and worse. Generally, for adults, it can be more useful to try to start from where they are and learn one step outward from there.

Adults having to learn something new can.. sometimes by different means. A dance instructor friend mentioned they could make two left feet better (not perfect) by teaching them to practice the micro movements, one at a time, sometimes for hundreds of reps, and then putting them together slowly.[3][4]

Anecdotal again, but when I tried learning a move the same way, it wasn't as hard learning it a bit at a time vs just throwing myself into it.

We know muscle memory is a thing for using tools like Vim and keyboard shortcuts, so I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility.[5][6]

References:

[1] Development Period of Prefrontal Cortex "Prefrontal cortex matures around age 25." https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/70083

[2] Development of the Prefrontal Cortex "Prefrontal cortex development extends into adulthood." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-019-0149-4

[3] Neuroplasticity Subserving Motor Skill Learning "Motor skill learning involves neuroplasticity." https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(11)00903-9

[4] Motor Learning and Plasticity "Practice leads to changes in motor cortex organization." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3921001/

[5] Experience-Dependent Structural Plasticity in the Adult Human Brain "Adult brain changes structurally with new experiences." https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/15/4/458/312872

[6] Micro-learning in the Age of Neuroscience https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6401... "Micro-learning enhances retention and mastery."

In fact dance based exercise like Zumba, or boxing even, is very helpful with folks suffering Parkinson’s because it require multiple tasks be processed at once - rhythm, hand, foot, observation of the lead. This induces plasticity which is crucial in staving Parkinson’s decline. So I find it strange to assert exercise alone is the beneficial component as it’s clear in pathological situations where increasing plasticity yields slower declines dance and complex exercise that requires many integrated tasks is superior to simple exercise.

It could also be the social aspect of dance. Dancing requires interacting with people that general exercise does not.

Social interaction has been shown over and over and over to have a beneficial effect on people.

I was thinking the same thing too. I mean shocker: high cardio + spatial awareness > high cardio alone.

For your money, you can't beat games like Pump It Up for a combination of HIIT (High Intensity Interval training) and the additional cognitive load that comes from the choreography of your steps and rhythmic timing.

Sure, it sounds like it would make sense, but that's not necessarily how the brain actually works.

This study doesn't really seem to prove or even suggest anything either way, assuming GP's evaluation of their methodology is correct.

"Armchair neuroscientist" is not a game anyone can play well. (I say this because I know several actual neuroscientists, and they are constantly telling me about ways the brain works that are very counterintuitive.)

Out of curiousity do you have any examples of some of the ways?

Depends on what you mean by "improvements". Is it coordination? Is it sustained increased blood flow? I would imagine that different bike exercise regimens could induce more variation in fitness than the comparison dance vs exercise alone.

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