‘Motor learning’ describes our ability to learn new skills, such as playing tennis or riding a bike. In youngdults, such motor skill learning uses automatic brain systems, called implicit memory. A new Cam-CAN study shows that as we get older, motor skill learning starts to rely on a different type of memory, called explicit memory, which relies on the hippocampus. Changes in the hippocampus explain why for many people, this type of learning gets more difficult as they get older.