Tag: solo practice guide

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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More Than a Guide to Practicing Ballroom

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If you follow me on social media, then you probably noticed I was on a lot more than usual this past week. I went live on Facebook almost every day to tell the story behind the Solo Practice Guide. The funny thing was, as I was sharing the story so others could learn more about the Guide, I was realizing that my solo practice strategies have had a much greater impact than just improving how I practiced.

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How to Practice Ballroom Dance as a Beginner

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If you’ve been dancing ballroom for awhile and especially if you’re a competitor, then you have a decent-sized library of routines and drills that you can use in your solo practice. Your content is plentiful; you just have to decide what your focus will be based on your next event or longer term goals.

But what if you’re just getting started in ballroom? You’re on your first or second lesson package at your studio, you’re still breaking in your first pair of real dance shoes, and not in a million years can you imagine yourself wearing a costume covered with rhinestones. You don’t have any choreographed routines. Heck, you’re still trying to remember the difference between “cross body lead” and “crossover break.”

Have no fear, young grasshoppers! You too can reap the benefits of solo practice. You just need a slightly different approach while you build up your ballroom dance knowledge base. And don’t worry, I mixed up the names of the “cross” steps too.

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Journey to the Center

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So ironically, after writing my last blog post about recovering from a bad day, this weekend, I find myself having a tough time. If you caught my social media on Friday evening, then you know we experienced the very-rare-for-Orange-County thunderstorm! I love a good summer thunderstorm (we’ll ignore the fact that it’s October because it’s still in the 70s/80s here). But unfortunately, I also live with seasonal affective disorder, so gloomy weather makes me gloomy. It was gray and rainy all day on Saturday, and by Sunday morning, even though the sun started to come out, I was also feeling quite gray.

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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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Patience and Persistence

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I don’t know what to write this week, so we’re just going to start writing and see what comes out. Usually I have an idea by midweek, but this week – nada. My brain’s been a bit scattered and preoccupied, and with three months left in the year, I have this weird sense of “I’ve still got plenty of time” and “I’m running out of time.”

How about some dance-related stuff?

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