When dancers are thinking about how to train, I think it’s pretty obvious what the standard methods are. Take lessons, practice on your own, participate in outside coaching, do some group lessons, workshops, social dancing, and perform or compete regularly. Not a mystery.
What I want to talk about today are ways you can train that you might not have thought of. These are ways that you can use your regular life experiences to help change you as a person from the inside out. They can make you stronger, more resilient, and give you an edge over the dancers around you.
1) Get in great shape–there are lots of ways to do this. Listen in for the ways in which I think apply to dancing specifically.
2) Get under pressure–find ways in which you can be put under pressure and have eyes on you while you do it. It might surprise you to hear that I don’t want you to do this and succeed all the time. One key to this is to have eyes on you while you mess up and make mistakes. Why would you want to do that?! Listen in to find out.
3) Be bad, a lot–in connection with point #2, finding ways to be bad and make lots of errors will make your progress exponentially faster. You won’t be bad all the time. In fact, you will be fantastic a lot of the time. But fear of making mistakes is holding you back. To overcome it, you have to normalize it. I teach you how.
4) Do your inner work–you must learn to disconnect your value from your results. Not just in dancing, but in life. Your value has nothing to do with your job, how productive you are, your accomplishments, how your family and friends view you…none of it. You can sit on the couch eating donuts and you are not less valuable. Do the work of knowing your worth and your value so that you don’t have to use dancing to prove it. You have nothing to prove. Listen in to hear how this work affects your dancing in positive ways.
There are many areas of your life that you can use to give you huge gains in your dancing that seem to have nothing to do with dancing at all. Perhaps you have more ideas and experiences you could share? Share them in our Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE.
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