New research into the muscles of world-class athletes and performance artists has revealed that a small number of "general motor skills" raise these experts above regional-level and novice competitors, with interesting implications for competitive sport and musculoskeletal health.
Contrary to the belief that athletic motor skills are highly specific to individual sports or activities, this research has found that previously unexamined fundamental traits are associated with world-class performance across a range of athletic disciplines.
"We discovered that world-class experts across fields minimise inefficient elastic tissue motions compared to regional level athletes and non-experts," says Dr Praneeth Namburi, a Research Scientist in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab at the Institute for Medical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
These inefficient elastic tissue motions, including physiological tremors, contribute nothing to the net effect of muscles on the movement of body segments, effectively wasting valuable time and energy that the muscles could be using productively.
Using a mix of motion capture, accelerometery and ultrasound imaging with deep learning and optical flow analysis, Dr Namburi and his team simultaneously tracked external body movements and the motion of internal elastic tissue, such as muscles and associated connective tissues, during a simple reaching task performed by world-class athletes and regional-level athletes drawn from diverse disciplines, as well as untrained non-experts.
The researchers were surprised to find that regional-level athletes showed similar body movement inefficiencies to the non-experts but produced better performances by achieving the same amount of body movement with relatively smaller muscle length changes.
"While it may seem intuitive that experts' muscles move differently from those of intermediates and non-experts, it is less obvious that muscle motions of experts in different disciplines would differ from non-experts in the same way," says Dr Namburi. "Yet, we find that experts across fields share common characteristics: fewer tremors, reduced transverse muscle motions, and more effective muscle-length changes."
Dr Namburi became inspired to explore general motor traits after taking up ballroom dance lessons alongside his graduate studies and wanting to explore the underlying motor skills shared by all types of movement. "Highly skilled athletes are re-purposing the elastic mechanisms we all use in everyday activities like walking—they just do it more frequently and reliably than most people," says Dr Namburi.
"This research could benefit athletes and performance artists in developing sustainable training habits, while also reducing healthcare costs by creating a workforce less susceptible to injuries like back pain," says Dr Namburi. "For example, it could alert athletes when their movements are less than optimal, helping to reduce injury risk, or it could potentially aid in identifying those with naturally efficient movement—what we often refer to as talent."
Dr Namburi believes that that the development of motor abilities in modern society is often the product of participation in specific activities, such as swimming, football or ballet. "This approach differs from how we teach reading: we don't simply hand children books; instead, we teach them the alphabet, words, and grammar. Similarly, a deeper understanding of the physiological foundations of general motor abilities would help us create more effective programs for developing movement skills," he says.
This study provides evidence to suggest that expert levels of these general motor skills can be achieved through personal training. "With only a few minutes of tremor-based biofeedback, intermediate-performing athletes reduced their tremor rate and muscle-interface speed to expert levels—albeit by slowing the movement, showing that these indicators are not strictly fixed," says Dr Namburi.
However, Dr Namburi advises caution in interpreting these findings, as while reducing these inefficiencies can lead to world-class movement quality, this alone is not sufficient to perform at their level. "Achieving world-class levels of efficiency in elastic tissue motions through training is like sourcing high-quality ingredients for cooking," adds Dr Namburi. "While premium ingredients are essential for a delicious dish, they must still be used skilfully to create an exceptional meal."
This research was carried out, in part, using the tools and facilities at the MIT.nano Immersion Lab and is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Antwerp, Belgium on the 8th July 2025.
