Connect with us

Fitness & Sports

How to Practice Ballroom Dancing Like a Professional!

I remember the days of being an amateur dancing wondering if I had tapped out of my potential, or if I wasn’t cut out for dancing. I was an engineer who worked in manufacturing wore steel toed boots and walked like a man. That would be okay except I am a woman. Here are the tips that allowed me to transform into a professional American Rhythm Dancer. This practice method works well for both guys and girls.

The most important thing to remember is that you can’t practice everything at once. I divided my practice into 3 segments.

1. Drills – Begin you practice time with drills to warm up and to reinforce your movement. This is a time to concentrate on proper hip action, foot pressure, posture, body isolations and more. Try to only focus on one or 2 items at a time so you don’t feel overwhelmed. Make it fun, ask a friend to do drills with you.

2. Basics – Implement these drill actions into your dance basics. Go slow! Make sure you feel and can see each action. Example: Do an American style rumba basic call each action as you dance it. The actions are step on a bent knee, straighten the leg, settle the hip repeat, then call it as forward bend, straighten, settle, side straighten, settle, together straighten settle and so on.

3. Practice small portions of your routines with the focus on your movement. By this point you are in the zone the body is use to the repetitive actions and should be able to dance with movement with ease. Take as few as 16 counts and make them the best 16 counts practice them repeatedly until the movement feels natural, then try to dance to slow music and work your way up to full speed. Ladies if you are saying to yourself, but I don’t know my routines. Now is the time to learn them, how can you dance your routines and compete with confidence if you don’t know each step. Winners do so take 16 counts at a time and get to work. You will feel and look at ease on the floor if you do this I promise.

Remember practice does not have to last for hours if you are doing it properly. Thirty minutes of concentrated practice is better than hours of spinning your wheels. If you only have 15 minutes practice your drills. Don’t get frustrated get focused and work on 1 or 2 things at a time. Work efficiently and unleash your potential.

Rachel Champion Jones

Trending