My little sister has started teaching dance again just 2 months after having a C-section, which I think is amazing.  The human body has an impressive ability to restore itself to a baseline level of existence.  If it’s cut, bruised, or invaded by bacteria, it knows just how to divide its cells, absorb dead bits, and gobble up foreign objects. 

But this tendency toward homeostasis works against us in other ways.  As anyone who has tried learning an instrument, doing an exercise program, or doing fine, dexterous work knows, if you slack in your practice, you lose your skills.  After many years of piano practice, I’ll always have some ability to play, but after several years of rarely touching a piano, I can’t even play scales without making mistakes now.  I’ve recently started practicing the organ during my lunch hour at work (which is quite different from playing the piano).  I’m loving going into the incense-scented chapel at the Episcopal seminary across the street from my office three times a week and playing.  I’m learning about 2 new hymns a month, but I’m finding that if I don’t go through my whole list of hymns I’ve learned at least once a week, I lose the ability to play the hard parts.  It’s so hard to stay sharp.  When my husband is getting ready for an organ recital, he plays about 7 hours a day; it’s the only way to keep difficult music in his hands and head.

The same goes for exercise, obviously.  Just because I ran a half marathon once doesn’t mean I could do it now.  The frustrating thing about exercise is that once I reach a certain level of fitness, it seems to take a doubling of effort to make a small amount of progress.  Yet if I slack at all in my efforts, all that progress dissipates like air out of a balloon.  For example, I have a few workout videos I do regularly.  When they were new, they were hard!  I was sore afterwards!  But now, they’re easy.  So easy I’m wondering if I get any benefit from them.  To challenge myself at this point, I’ll have to switch my 30 minute Pilates for Dummies video for the hard core 60 minute Raquel Welch yoga workout.  And I do not have time for that.  Am I burning the same amount of calories doing my pilates workout now as I did when it was new and more difficult?  Is fitness like business, you’re either growing of you’re dying?

The good news is that motor memory is on some level permanent.  I know how to touch type and drive a manual transmission, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget how to do those things.  And some of the yoga poses in the Raquel Welch yoga workout, like the “standing head to knee,” were virtually impossible when I first did that workout in the ‘90s, but when I did it again this winter I was able to do that pose on just the second try (not that it was easy, but I made it through).  But, maintaining superior archery, dancing, or guitar playing “skilz” is a real battle against nature.