“Bad Habits” Holding you Back

Look, technique, is something all of us from benefit from. Unfortunately technique is often framed as something that removes fun. We believe that strong basic and developing technique help us have more fun. In this week’s post we give our opinion on what we think is holding your dancing back.

Arm swinging

What we mean here, during guapea. Social dancing is impromtu, and while we all hopefully some base to reference, we don’t always know what’s coming next. When arms are swinging, there is likely some lack of tension between the couple dancing. This leads to ambiguity in what’s coming next if you’re swinging your arms in Guapea. Guapea is all about tension with your partner which gives you information for when you travel. We tend to see arm swinging the most during Rueda. In Rueda, arm swinging is preventing you from connecting with your partner to stay in time for the moves. Plus, we find arm swinging to be painful.

Doing too many combos

We believe social dancing is all about dancing with the music, whether that is with your partner or yourself. This point is aimed more at partner work. Combinations of moves tend to be helpful things for leaders, because you are trying to keep the follows interested. An important realization about these combos, is that a lot of them are just variations of fundamentals. So, use them to help you out, but remember that you can take the dance any way you want. Take the dance where the music takes you. Listen to the arrangement and decide if a combo is really even suitable for the moment. But, also pay attention to what your partner is enjoying. A lot of timesless is more.

Your thumb is your enemy

Using your thumb to connect with your partner creates too firm of a connection. When you’re trying to moves back to back which require grip changes, your thumb restrict that ease of movement. If you’re gripping and turning at the same time, it could be quite dangerous. Beyond just dangerous, it may limit what moves you can execute. Our recommendation is to try staying fingertip to fingertip as much as you can.

“Too Big” of Steps

Big is relative. We all have different size bodies. So, we say this is relation to your body size and probably your partner’s. When you’re stepping too big, you’re likely losing control over your steps and probably connection with your partner. You have to figure out your range of balance, so that when you dance with someone else, you all figure out what needs to happen so you all keep connection.

Open Breaks

This concept of an open break, is something very common in linear salsa. We see it as something that pushes your intention behind you. With that intention behind you, well it may make it more difficult to travel forward. Take an enchufa, lets say you use an open break as a way to get you to move forward, and step. If both dancers aren’t on the same page, well it could be dangerous and harmful to your arms based on the extension you’ve created in your arms.

The Back Rock

Not to be confused with it’s infamous cousin, the back step, back rocking is all about putting your entire body weight behind you. When you back rock, all of your body weight goes into that step. So when you need to travel in a different direction, you have taken away you and your partner’s momentum to do so. Most of the times while we social dance, we need to travel forward in the direction we’re led into, putting your weight in the opposite direction prevents you from doing that. For us keeping your intention forward is the most important thing.

---

These are our opinions on things that may help you while dancing. In our opinion, it is important to take a step back and look at how you dance in order to improve. Part of that is looking at ourselves and analyzing our movement. Ultimately what each of each of us needs is different. How you dance is up to you. What we hope to provide here are specific items that you can consider when analyzing your movement.

Tell us in the comments your thoughts on any of the specific things mentioned or what you believe to be a “bad habit”.

Ya tu sabes…