Tag: dance lesson

Countdown to Desert Classic 2019: 26 Days – How To Tell If You’re “Ready”

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Are you ready?

This question can have very simple implications or very deep ones. If I asked you one morning if you were ready for work, you’d run a simple checklist through your head and be able to quickly respond yes or no. But if I asked you if you were ready for the big presentation at work that took you months of preparation, you might hesitate as you processed last minute jitters and considered more than just a checklist to determine your readiness.

Same can be applied to ballroom (and really, what can’t?). Are you ready for your lesson? Simple yes or no. Are you ready for your last lesson before your competition? You might need a little more time to consider.

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Our Bodies Are Meant to Move

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Did you see my social media post from a few days ago?  I finally got the green light from my physical therapist to dance full out in my lesson. No more marking or holding back! I was excited, relieved, and a little nervous. I was tired of having to hold back. I just wanted to dance!  But what if my knees didn’t do well? What if I regressed right back to the pain I was experiencing before starting PT?

Interestingly, I did feel like I took a step back this week, but not because of dancing. Quite the opposite.

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Patience and Persistence Equals Progress

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Is anyone else really feeling the time change this time around? I’ve been enjoying sunrise occurring before I walk the dogs in the morning before work, but when I woke up at 6:30am this morning, it was DARK. Ugh, I guess it’s back to walking the dogs in the pitch black again. Yay.

Anyhoo, another week of ice packs and heating pads has gone by. I wrote in my last blog post about the difficulties I was having adjusting to my new reality in which I can’t go full out in a Zumba class or I’ll have to limp home with crying knees. It was also disturbing and frustrating how achy my knees felt after a 45-minute dance lesson. I had a lot of questions swirling around in my head (still do) about what my apparent limitations meant for me and my dancing future.

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Feeling the Burn! Final Results

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You know those days when you have all these great plans to get a lot of productive work done, and then you get nothing done? That was me last weekend. It started off in good shape. I did a 6-hour group training/working session with my business coaches on Saturday. After that, I can’t even tell you where things went wrong. In any case, obviously, I did not get this blog post written, so we’re doing it now!

Last weekend also marked the first post-Burn weekend! Our last class and final fit test was on February 14. Before I go into my final results, please allow me to paint you a picture of the previous six weeks.

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Do You Need More Lessons Or More Practice?

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I was talking to another student at my book signing at SM Dance Fashion yesterday. In about a year, she’s taken on learning three different styles of ballroom and has competed in two of them. She’s been able to do so much in so little time because she takes about eight lessons a day, five days a week! The one thing she hasn’t really done is practice on her own.

Then there’s me. Over my six-plus years of dancing ballroom, I’ve also learned three different styles and competed in two. I usually take two lessons a week, and I practice at least once a week for at least one hour.

The extreme differences in our dance training journeys got me thinking. I’ve said before that lessons with your teacher and your solo practice are like two sides of the same coin. But is one side more important than the other? If you’re struggling in your dancing, do you need more lessons or more practice on your own?

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You’re Making More Progress Than You Think

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Do you ever feel like you’re going nowhere fast? Like you’re stuck in a hamster wheel or walking the wrong way on one of those moving walkways in the airport?

That’s how I feel on the tougher days. Those days when I feel like it doesn’t matter how hard I work, I just can’t seem to make any progress. My to-do pile at the day job is growing faster than my done pile. I practiced over and over, but I still can’t seem to get that move right in my dance lesson. I’m doing “all the things” to grow my business, but the return still feels small.

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Recovering from a Bad Day

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We all have bad days. Sometimes it feels like one thing after another goes wrong. Or we just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and can’t seem to ever get going.

It’s kind of like lemon juice on a paper cut when that bad day affects our dance lesson or practice. For whatever reason, we keep dancing left when our teacher wants us to dance right. Everything we thought we had in our muscle memory is coming up “file not found.”

It sucks, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

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