Passion4dancing Podcast - Ballroom Dancing Made Easy

One of the questions I get is “how often/much should I practice?”

Of course the more you practice the better dancer you will become. In this video I reveal one rule of thumb which will give you a good way to know the amount of practice you should be putting in.

Hello and welcome to this Passion4Dancing Podcast. Today I want to answer another question that I get often and that is, “How often should I practice my dancing?” Well, the answer is as much as possible. Well! OK.

But let me give you a rule of thumb. OK? Basically if you have one hour of lessons per week, you should practice an equivalent amount on your own on top of that. So basically one hour of lesson equals one hour of practice.

If you have more than a one-hour lesson, let’s say you’re two lessons a week, you should practice two hours on top of that. So they basically should be equal. Yes? I see so many people out there that only take lessons or classes but they never practice. Yeah. And the people that really get ahead and really improve fast are the ones who also practice because it’s in the practice where you really retain all the information.

Lessons are great for getting information, getting knowledge, right? In getting inspiration. But at some point, you also need to put it into your body, right? Otherwise, you will end up repeating a lot of the information in your lessons again. Yeah? You will get the same thing over and over because you won’t be able to move ahead because the teacher will see you haven’t really quite mastered what you did last time. So I definitely recommend that for every single lesson that you do, whatever or how much time it is, you also practice on top of that an equivalent amount of time at least. Yes?

That will really help you progress much faster than someone who doesn’t do that. So how often do you practice? Leave a comment below.

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What is the difference between the International style and the American style of Ballroom dancing? In this video I explain the differences for the Rumba specifically.

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Setting goals in life is important but do you set goals in dancing too? Most people don’t even think about why they are even dancing – Let alone make a concrete goal to work towards. In this podcast I discuss why you should have a goal and also give examples of the types of goals one can thrive for.

Hello and welcome to today’s Passion4Dancing Podcast. My name is Leon from Passion4Dancing.com where we teach people how to dance online and today, we’re talking all about goals.

Do you have a goal for your dancing? Well, if you don’t, you’re probably missing out. Here’s the thing. In almost every aspect of life, people tell us that if we want to achieve something, it’s better to set a goal.

So for example if you want to lose weight, making it as specific as possible will help. So you could say something like, “I want to lose 30 pounds in the next three months for example,” right? This is very specific. It has got numbers in there, right? Thirty pounds in the next three months and now that you have that goal, you can go ahead and make a plan and break down the steps along the way of how you’re going to get to losing that weight, those 30 pounds in 3 months.

For example you’re going to say, “I want to go to the gym three times a week and I want to take two dance classes with Leon,” or something like that. It doesn’t have to be with Leon. It can be with any dance teacher in your local area.

Anyway, so the point is this applies to all aspects of life. So why not to dance, right? I see so many people just take a dance class and never defining for themselves why they’re doing it and they’re just drifting along and they’re not improving and a lot of them quit very quickly because they kind of find it pointless. They’re not sure why they’re doing it, right?

I think it’s better to set a goal and I’m not saying that the goal has to be something extreme, right? There are people who compete in dancing, right? So their goal is to go and compete in dancing. There are people who just want to have fun. They want to learn dancing for social reasons and that’s a goal as well, right? Then there are people who want to exercise through dancing because they find that running on a treadmill is too boring, which it can be, right? Starting at a blank wall.

So you have all these different goals that you can choose from. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s just important to choose one. Yes? Wedding couples, they have a specific goal normally. They come in to prepare for their first dance. That’s a goal as well, right? There are people who will have showcases of their studios, so they’re preparing with their teacher or show a number of choreography for a certain date. That’s a goal. Just choose a goal and the more specific it is, the better.

Now let’s talk a little bit about why you want to choose a goal. Well, here’s the thing. You’re going to improve 10X if you have a goal versus not having a goal. OK? For example, if your goal is to be able go out into a competition in three months, you better believe you’re going to be in the studio practicing. You better believe you’re going to be disciplined enough to show up to your private lessons consistently and practicing on top of that at home. You know, visualizing your routines in your head because you know you’ve got that date coming up and it’s very specific. You got to be ready, right?

So people who usually compete get better much faster than people who don’t because the people who don’t again normally don’t have a goal, right? Now let’s say you’re a social dancer and let’s say your goal is to be able to master seven moves in three dances and be able to do them flawlessly at the next social dance party. By the way, that’s a great example of a very specific goal. So rather than saying, oh, I just want to be socially – I just want to dance for fun social, you – now you have a specific goal. You want to learn seven moves and three dances and be able to do them in the next party, which is coming up let’s say in two months. You want to be able to do them really well and be able to lead your partner really well through those seven moves in those dances.

Now you have some time until that party. So what are you going to do? You’re going to start making the specific steps in order to get to your goal, right? Now that you have a defined goal, you can actually figure out how many group classes I should take per week. Maybe I need some private lessons. I need to watch some of Passion4Dancing’s videos. Maybe. Maybe you need to find a partner to practice with.

You see, just by having a goal, it’s going to make you think about how you’re going to achieve it. You’re going to treat things a little bit differently. Yes, it’s a little bit more strategic. But doing something well always requires a little bit of a plan and a little bit of a strategy, don’t you think?

Think about anything you’ve ever achieved in your life. You probably did plan out or have some thought into how you’re going to get whatever it is that you’ve got. It’s the same thing with dancing. Yes? Even if you just want to be able to master beautiful hip action, that can be a goal as well. You still need to maybe schedule some practices in order to get that. Maybe take some lessons to figure out what is the correct hip action for me to even practice.

All those are good goals and again I want to say that it doesn’t matter what your goal is. It’s just important to choose one.

All right. Well, thank you guys for joining me today. I hope this made sense for you. I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear your thoughts. Let me know what you think and let me know what is your goal. Yes? Do you have one? If so, leave a comment below. Let us know what is your goal with dancing. I would love for us to all read each other’s comments and figure out what people’s goals are.

All right. Thank you very much for joining me today and we will see you guys next time.

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Do you have a correct posture for dancing? If you don’t watch this video where we give 3 practical tips to make your posture better. A good posture not only makes you look good but it also helps you with balance and speed of movements.

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How do you learn new moves?

Do you learn each move individually or do you memorize an entire routine? There are pros and cons to both methods. In the video I explain my preference and perspective on this matter. Please leave your thoughts below.

[Transcript]

Hello and welcome to today’s Passion 4 Dancing video podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about, “Should you be memorizing full routines or should you be learning one step at a time?”

So here’s the thing. Some people, they learn a whole bunch of steps in a combination one after the other and that’s all they do. They memorize a whole routine and every time they dance with anybody, they go through that whole entire routine. Then another method is to learn how to do each move individually from the basic step. Yeah?

So which one is better? Well, in my opinion, for sure learning the individual step, how to do it from the basic step. Of course if you can do both, that’s ideal. Yes? But let me explain a little bit more why I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to learn a full set of routine.

Here’s the thing. When people are learning let’s say 10 steps in a combination, one after the other, if your partner knows that routine, so if it’s your wife or your consistent dance partner, usually you won’t have any problem because they will remember the routine. So that’s OK.

But what if you’re dancing with somebody else? Yeah? And what if your lead wasn’t particularly good that day and you did maybe two of the moves but then you didn’t – you couldn’t quite remember what comes next or the follower felt a little bit different. So you couldn’t continue into your routine and then after that, usually people just get all screwed up and they don’t know what to do because they don’t have a second plan. Yeah?

Their only plan is to go through the entire single full routine and if that falls through, they have no idea how to go into another step. Yeah? So I think it is better that you know how to do each step individually so that you can dance the basic and then you can lead and follow into another move and then do a basic again and go into another move and that way you will be able to dance with anybody you want and you’re not going to be depending on a certain routine form.

So yeah, of course you want to be able to know how to combine certain figures and it is obviously more interesting to dance if you can go through one move into another move and to another move. But I think that should happen more organically and you should be learning how to combine steps in different ways. If you only have one set of combination and something goes wrong, well, what are you going to do then, right?

So mix it up. Yeah? Make sure you know how to do each move individually from the basic and then also try to see if you can combine short combinations in different ways so you can see how you combine different steps in different ways, so that you’re not depending on just one way and one way only.

What do you think of this? What do you do yourself? Do you memorize full routines or do you usually go for the individual steps? Leave a comment below.

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So you put in the time to take lessons and practice but how do you really know if you are getting better? We’ve all experienced that time when we think we did something right, only to hear from our teacher that it’s still not quite there. See it’s really hard to know how something REALLY looks… So in today’s podcast I reveal one way you can finally get instant feedback!

[Transcript]

Hello. My name is Leon from Passion4Dancing.com and today I have another video podcast for you.

So today I wanted to talk to you about how you can get instant feedback on your dancing. I mean how do you know if you’re actually improving? Well, there is a simple way. You just videotape yourself.

That’s right. All you need to do is videotape your practice. Yes. So just put a video somewhere on the side. You can tape your lesson or tape yourself practicing solo. You can tape your lesson if your teacher is OK with it. I think most teachers are. They want you to improve. So why wouldn’t they let you tape their lesson?

That way you’re going to get instant feedback as to how you look on the outside, because we all know that sometimes something feels one way but it looks completely different. So you want things to look the right way and in order to see if it is, you need to kind of have some feedback. So that’s going to give you instant way to know how you look on the outside and to know if you’re doing it correctly or not.

So two ways you can use it is to see if your technique is improving. So for example, let’s say you’ve been working on brushing the feet in the cha-cha and you want to see if you’re actually doing it or not. You can put the video recorder or your phone, whatever records video, and dance your piece in cha-cha and then have a look. Are your legs actually brushing together or not? That way you will be able to improve.

Same thing for posture. Posture is something that a lot of people struggle with because they think they’re standing up straight. But as soon as they start dancing, they start collapsing their neck and shoulders. So this is another one of those things that you want to see on the outside how it looks and that’s going to improve you much faster if you go that route.

Now that’s improving the technique. On the other side, it can also help you with seeing how your choreography looks on the outside. I use this a lot for myself. Let’s say I do achoreography either for a student or for myself or a showpiece and it can feel great. But sometimes I don’t really know what it really looks like until I see it from the outside.

So, I videotape myself and I see if I really do like it or not. So it really does help when you’re coming up with new choreography or you want to see what your choreography looks like from the outside. Yes?

So I hope this is useful to you. Let me know if you already videotape yourself. Please let us know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you. What kind of feedback does it give you? Did it improve your dancing?

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Leave a comment below and let us know if you ever video taped yourself? Did it help?

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