Have you ever worked on a movement that was challenging, and, without practicing it much again — or even at all — found yourself better at it a few days or weeks later? That’s what offline gains are; sort of delayed motor skill improvements that happen after we are performing a task (e. g., playing an instrument or learning a choreography).
During this consolidation phase, we may have the impression to be stagnant and to not improve at all. But, surprisingly, the area of the brain processing that particular motor skill is still active and assimilating it, even when we are not directly practicing that skill (Lugassy et al., 2018).
Bönstrup et al. (2019) suggests that in order to better assimilate a new skill, taking short breaks of only ten seconds is more effective than practicing a skill without a break during its execution. Even more interesting: consolidation of a new motor skill isn’t, contrary to popular belief, sleep-dependent — at least in healthy adults. Whenever your brain isn’t working directly on that specific motor skill, the consolidation happens, whether you sleep or not. Basically, you’re not learning when performing the movement, but after performing it (Dezso et al., 2010).
Learning a new skill isn't just about repeating it, since many factors are playing a role in its retention — and taking a break is one of them.
Bönstrup, M., Iturrate, I., Thompson, R., Cruciani, G., Censor, N., & Cohen, L. G. (2019). A Rapid Form of Offline Consolidation in Skill Learning. Current Biology, 29(8). doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.02.049
Lugassy, D., Herszage, J., Pilo, R., Brosh, T., & Censor, N. (2018). Consolidation of complex motor skill learning: evidence for a delayed offline process. Sleep, 41(9), doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsy123
Nemeth, D., Janacsek, K., Londe, Z., Ullman, M. T., Howard, D. V., & Howard, J. H., Jr (2010). Sleep has no critical role in implicit motor sequence learning in young and old adults. Experimental brain research, 201(2), 351–358. doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009-2024-x