Just Like Riding a Bike
Photo by British Postal Museum & Archive on Flickr
Hey Guys,
A common question asked on Yahoo! Answers is: How come you never forget how to ride a bike? Most people grow up riding their bikes around their neighborhoods, but as soon as you get your driver’s license you graduate from two to four wheels. There are a quite a few blogs dedicated to this common phrase. People who haven’t ridden in 10, 15, 20 years, hop on the two-wheeler as if they were 10-years-old again.
So how come you can never forget how to ride a bike? Have you ever wondered how after years of not doing something you’re able to pick up the skill with little practice?
It has everything to do with muscle memory. According to some research published in Nature Neuroscience scientists have “identified a key nerve cell in the brain that controls the formation of memories for motor skills such as riding a bicycle, skiing or eating with chop sticks.” Our brains are designed to recover memory movements.
Maybe that’s why we say “it’s like riding a bike, you’ll never forget”. Turns out there are truths to that phrase. So what are some other things that we never forget? And why do we forget so many other types of things so easily? Please leave a comment below.
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It’s like when I pick up my flute and I can play a song that I haven’t played in over five years! It’s like my fingers are moving on their own, and I don’t have think about what notes to play in my head.
cool. I have not ridden my bike since i was 8 years old. i would love to start again
There was this piece on the piano that I haven’t played in years…I found it and was like “This looks difficult…”
At first, I was a little shaky, but then my brain remembered it instantly, and I could play a piece I had totally forgotten as if I memorized it.
Or sometimes, if there’s a song I haven’t heard since the 90s, if someone sings a little snippet of it, all of the rest of the lyrics will come pouring into me, as if I had memorized them, too.
This has been known for like, 40 years, just not the exact location in the brain where the nerves fire.
I think that this is a good article. Muscle memory is a very cool thing, I can still do a great number of things that I haven’t done in quite some time. Such as archery, and canoeing.
I just wanted to say that I did forget how to ride a bike at one point in my childhood. I was living in Germany when I first learned how to ride a bike without training wheels. We moved back to the States after that and I had to learn all over again.
I’m wondering if it had anything to do with my inner ear(s). I have had issues with my ears since I was very, very young. I had a really bad ear infection that was very painful at one point. I also had problems with adjusting to higher altitudes. My ears would take a very long time to pop no matter what I did. I’m talking days. I’ve also had tinnitus since I was a kid.
More recently I’ve had vertigo issues since 2009 that will not go away even after doing the Epley maneuver several times a day. So I just suffer.. doctors don’t have good answers for me or just won’t help me for whatever reason.
Anyway, I don’t ever use the phrase, “It’s just like riding a bike.”
Unless I’m talking about forgetting things, that is..
I’ve never forgotten how to ride a tricycle.
I’ve never forgotten how to tie my shoes. I can remember the first time I tied my shoes all by myself without my mother there to help me.
I remember how to climb trees, but after my first year of college, I found I had become too big for the trees in my neighborhood !!
I remember how to swim.
I remember how to walk and chew gum at the same time.
I learn’t to ride by been pushed by my siblings when i was a wee young boy. Know i ride most days to work and lose quite a bit of weight each week
Swimming is another thing we don’t forget
swimming
NO, I DID forget how to ride. After riding in high school (1975), I never touched a bike again until 2005. I had to Re learn–took a few falls-! (Still scarred!)
But, it Did come back .It was only “easier” to learn this “second” time.
Now that I have a license and car again, I still occasionally use the bike. It saves gas, and, if it isn’t 110 degrees,or, i don’t need to get something big; I use it. But, if I don’t ride every two weeks…oh-oh. I have to relearn to keep my balance. It only takes a minute, though,
Dan-Oh
actually i could ride a bike very well when i was little, and now i cant. is there something wrong with me?
when you become inconsciously competent in executing a task(riding the bike with almost no mental effort), the processes that constitute that task become imprinted in your subconsious and deleting/forgetting them becomes almost impossible.
see deprogramming, and reprogramming procedures for more info.(NLP)
Last month, I bought a bicycle. After 15 years of not riding, I can state with absolute certainty that you DO forget how to ride a bike. The MISCONCEPTION that you never forget results from the fact that MUCH of the skill involved in riding a bike is actually the same as walking, which most people do every day.
I tried getting back on a bike after 5 years…i went over the handlebars 40 yards down the road
took me 3 days to learn how to ride a bike again, it took me 5 days to learn the first time.
contrary to popular belief you can forget how to ride a bike…or at least how to just hop on any bike and ride, maybe if it was the same bike i had five year ago and i wasn’t 2 and a half foot taller now it would’ve been different
at the very least i can conclude that from 11-16 you can struggle to ride a bike without 3 days practice to at the very least relearn your weight distribution and braking…and i don’t mean gran turismo style wall braking.
I was going to say it was Procedural/implicit memory.
This is the memory type that’s subconscious and helps you remember how things work.
A subconscious thought would sound like this if this type of memory was involved:
“If I set my foot down on the pedals and press downward, the chain will turn, thus causing the wheel to turn, and then the bike moves forward. And if I balance the direction of the wheel and my weight on the bike, I won’t fall.”
That’s how you know how to ride a bike. Muscle memory can fade in time, by the way.
even if someone gets amnesia…. he/she does not forgets the language ….
Never forget the face of who you pointed the gun at because they’ll never forget you.
Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood
If you don’t think you never forget how to ride a bike – watch someone who hasn’t been on one in a while.
It’s hilarious – especially if it’s a bigger bike.
I never forgot how to hump my wife
Swimming – I go on holiday once a year and jump straight in the deep end!
you never forget how to eat or how to read or write
Well, you never forget how ro walk, right?
WelI, I don’t forget how to swim when there are years between swims. That’s kind of interesting.
Also, if you know how to do some karate and the like, your body stores that memory so, sometimes, if you’ve practiced often enough, it acts on its own, unprompted. It’s a great thing, ’cause often times in those situations, you don’t have enough time to think through every movement, it has to come naturally.
The same thing may also apply to biking -once both feet leave the ground, your muscle memory, being part of survival, kicks in and balances you out.
Haha funny thing, I just started learning how to ride a bike yesterday and I’m 23 years old hahaha
Actually, you can forget how to ride over time, but it might have to do with how long you rode initially. I rode a lot for three or 4 years, then did fine after a break of a couple years when I was 18, where I rode fairly often for a couple of months. However, when I was around 28 I needed to bike for work and I had completely lost the knack. Even after a couple weeks of going back and fourth I was still terrible, and ended up giving up after destroying the bike in a fall.
Perhaps the reason that this is so is the simplicity fo riding a bicycle. Muscle memory may take a while to really take hold of your body, but with even months of bike riding, your body gets lots of practice (unless you rarely ride). With other muscle memory activities (such as karate or sewing), it takes more complex movements and also lots of concentration after years of discontinuation. Perhaps the combination of lack of training and lack of thought makes it harder for more complex movements.
I believe that writing is something that is very difficult to forget. The formation of letters is a life-long skill that once fully learned is an embedded muscle memory.
Never forget your mums phone number (even if its the old one) i think we forget other things because theyre not important enough or we dont want to remember
well when you learn how to ride a bike you some how never forget it. the reason is that you did it for so long you know it so well that you will never forget it. and it will be put in the memory of your brain filed away so when you start riding it come backs to you. also when you ride a moder bike it is just like a bike except it has a moder on it. it also has two wheels on it to make it run. so you will never forget it because you have it filed in your memory and it takes only a little bit to get it back and ride your bike like a pro
interesting
Okay.
matial arts, as long as you keep up your flexability you muscles will remember what they have to do- mybe not your mind but your muscles will
frig dont know y
You never forget how to skate, first of all.
Like you said, something to do with muscle memory. You might be a bit unsteady if you haven’t skated for a while, and you might forget how to do some tricks, but you don’t forget how to skate (like skating in circles, gliding, etc)
erm… That’s all fine and dandy… but when I was 7 I could definitely ride a bike.
How to take a dump or a leak is something I don’t plan on ever forgetting, how to turn on the TV, how to turn on the radio, how to surf the Internet, how to talk on a phone. As far as forgetting things, that’s harder for me – there’s a bunch of people I wish I could forget even existed in my life as they turned out to being complete douchebags, and I wish I could forget some of the idiotic things I’ve seen on TV (Reality TV comes to mind).
Guess its just the same as hearing a song you havent heard in years and still knowing all the words?
Some things we just weren’t meant to forget, like old songs, how to ride a bike and first Loves.
<3
I think dancing and browsing the Internet could be another thin we never forget. I thing we forget other things easily because our brain interprets them as being more complex, involving more processes and or requiring more capacity. For other things we may forget easily could be chemical formulas, writing in another language script such as Japanese, and of course how many days are in a certain month of the year.
yes, the musscle memmory do sounds reasonable. Alzheimer’s Disease or even a person who has lost all his memmories even his name, can still write, so the command is not commpletly under brain control.
I find that I remember things that I don’t want to remember and I can’t remember things that I want to remember. Why?
Also, once you know how to drive a car with a clutch, you never forget.
I forgot and had to learn all over again :s so there are some exceptions
You don’t forget how to tie your shoes either.
I forgot how to tie my shoes.It took me 5 months after a car accident .
i tried to go swimming a few years ago, i used to be great at it! but i almost drowned. and as for riding a bike, i’ve tried 10 times or so and i still fall off every time, everyone’s different, i think its BS that EVERYONE can just pick it up again
Ice skating. For figure skaters and hockey players at least (and speed skaters too), even if you take 5 years off the ice, you will still be able to skate, not at the level you were before, but still able to ice skate properly. And my friends who went skating with me 3 years ago and not at all since then are better now than they were when they first started, so you just improve upon the skills you have.
I have not forgotten how to ride a bike. I still remember the first song I learned to play on the piano. I remember the first song I ever wrote. Somehow, I think it’s about the things that brought us pleasure in our lives that we never, ever forget. For example, I will never forget my first kiss – riding on a charter bus with my aunt and her club members, and all their kids. I met Ricky. He was just getting hair on his chin., He wore a plaid shirt and sat on the left side of me as we crossed the moon-lit Ponchatrain Lake in route to New Orleans. He kissed me with so much passion. I never felt a kiss like that ever again. I remember the burns of the hair of his chin on my face. I also remember trying so hard to locate him -but it was never to be. I was 12. I’m now 58. I have never forgotten.
I like riding! It`s my favourite hobby in my 18 years
It depends on the person. Some people have a harder time remembering how to ride than others. I think it has to do with that muscle memory thing. Some people have it better than others. My parents started to teach me how to ride a bike when I was five but I just never got it. But then one day, I just hopped on that bike and rode it around the street. I can still remember that. But I haven’t taken any long breaks from bike riding since. I have just upgraded bikes. Back then there was absolutely no way I could even get on the bike I ride today without falling off and getting hurt. It was my dad’s bike back then. But the other day, I tried to hop on that bike that I rode for the first time that day and I could not ride it. I kept falling off. I guess size matters a lot.
That is what they want you to think. In real the government decides that when you learn to ride a bike is the same time they should start tracking your life. After your first time riding they sneak into your house and put a tracking chip in your brain. This records everything you do. The only malfunction is it embeds into your memory whatever you were doing the day you got it put in you brain, which is why you remember how to ride a bike.
i forgot how to roller-blade. pretty sure id fall if i tried
I got run over by a car 10 years ago spent 3 months in a comma. Then had to learn how to walk, tie my shoes, ride a motorcycle, drive a car, and even go to the rest room all over again. And still have been relearded how to ride a bike since.
actually, i did kind of forget. The last time i rode it was 5 years ago, and now when i tried it again, i kept crashing and losing control
When I was younger, I would play video games on the computer and watch TV at the same time. Now, if I play the video game again at the same part as before, I can usually remember what show was on when I was playing that game. And if I watch a show, something will trigger me remembering what game I was playing and what part I was at during this part of the show. It’s hard to put into words, but yeah.
it was slightly harder when ihad not done it for a long time. even writing is harder when you come back from the school holidays…
Riding a bike is simply balancing. If you can balance, you can ride a bike, maybe not perfect, but certainly down the driveway. Practice will make it come more naturally so everyone needs to practice. Every Sunday should be international no driving thru city streets, biking ONLY!
I love very much riding a bicycle , its has many + points
* health
* money saver
*environment friendly
*traffic cutter
*maintenance free
*long life
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i think its our subconscious mind….i mean we dont forget how to drive either righ? or hold a pencil, type without looking at the key board.skating.and so on…
its been so long since i havent ridden a bike!!
That is what they want you to think. In real the government decides that when you learn to ride a bike is the same time they should start tracking your life. After your first time riding they sneak into your house and put a tracking chip in your brain.
Well,I have learnt biking in one year ago.I am 18 now.I learnt it in 4-5 days and then rode it properly.However,after learning it,I never got a chance to ride bike.But I am afraid if I have to learn it once again.Because I had learnt it after lot of humiliation.My friends used to mock me coz I couldn’t ride it during my school times.But some people say,a person should retain biking atleast for a month even after learning to get the thing into muscle memory.But I didn’t do that.I might have rode it for a week not month.But then,I have never rode it for a year.
Is there any chance of forgetting it?
This is really neat! I,ve also tried this w/ my prayers.. to help me remember them, I *act them out* well use my hands mostly…. For example : *Loving*, Father I thank You for your *grace and mercy that work us up this morning and allowed us to *come together* on one accord in Your presence this day”
For “Loving” I make the heart shape w/ my hands,
esp when combined w/ some other methods or memorizing ..so yah muscle memory definetely is something, more dependable than rote XD … this article was nice 
for *Come together* I lace my fingers together* … and it works