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Quitting Smoking, Over-Practicing, Bill Nye on Believing Science

Curiosity Weekly

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How Much Practice Makes Perfect?

If you practice a physical task tothe point of exhaustion, you're practising too much. That kind of practice can actually make you worse. The 20 19 study could have looked at any task, tennis, guitar playing, black jack, dealing but they kept it simple. They gave each participant a device that measured force and asked them to pinch it between their thumb and forefinger. Then the participants practised varying the intensity of their pinch to move a curser across a screen. One group practised past the point of muscle fatigue where their maximum grip on the device started weakening. Another group stopped just before that point. People who practised to exhaustion mastered the pinching task more slowly than

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