Efficient elastic tissue motions indicate general motor skill

Insights into the general nature of motor skill could fundamentally change how we develop movement abilities, with implications for musculoskeletal well-being and injury. Here, we sought to identify indicators of general motor skill-those shared by experts across disciplines (e.g., squash, ballet, volleyball) during non-specialized movements (e.g., reaching for water). Identifying such general indicators of motor skill has remained elusive. Using ultrasound imaging with deep learning and optical flow analysis, we tracked elastic tissues (muscles and associated connective tissues) during a simple reaching task performed similarly by world-class athletes and regional-level athletes drawn from diverse disciplines, as well as untrained non-experts. We analyzed two types of inefficient tissue motions that do not contribute to the net work done by the muscles to actuate joints. These are transverse muscle movements orthogonal to the muscle fiber direction and physiological tremors. We discovered that world-class experts minimize both of these inefficient motions compared to regional-level athletes and non-experts. While regional-level athletes surprisingly showed similar inefficiencies to non-experts, they used elastic tissues more effectively, achieving equivalent arm movements with smaller actuation-related tissue motions. We establish elastic tissue motion as a key indicator of general motor skill, expanding our understanding of elastic mechanisms and their role in general aspects of motor skill.