"Salsa Bachata Class Accelerator" Lesson 13: Old vs New

The video below is part of a paid program on one of our sister sites. We're giving the program away for free here at Movers and Shakers. 

This "Local Class Learning Accelerator" series is about learning how to learn.  

The series will teach you to squeeze the absolute most benefit from your salsa and bachata classes.

The series is meant to be completed in order, so start from Lesson 1. 

Audio Transcript: Below is the audio transcript of this lesson. Headers have been added.

Rediscovering Old Dance Material

So let's talk about the old versus the new, and I'm talking about this in the context of material that you've learned through your classes. Now if we're going to be totally. Honest for any of us who have danced for any significant amount of time and taking any significant number of classes. We have lots of things in our phones, lots of videos of stuff.

We've learned that we either never really incorporated into our dancing or we've forgotten. Lots of videos taking up space on our phones doing nothing. That's a really interesting thing I'm super guilty of that.

Probably every single person watching this video who danced, as I said, for any significant amount of time while taking classes is also guilty of it. Okay, that's human nature. Fine, it's exciting to go to new classes. We always want to feel like we're moving forward even if we may not really be moving forward and we always want like the next thing, the next cool thing, the next big thing.

Why Learning What You Already Know Can Be a Highly Effective Strategy

If we're going to be brutally honest with ourselves, the reality is, is that strategically it would make more sense to go back and review the old things on our phones, then learn new stuff. OK, well, why is this? Well, it doesn't take more time and more money to go to other classes instead. You can just get the stuff you've already learned and bring that into your repertoire.

If I ask a question, true or false, when you learn something the second time, it's easier than when you learn it the first time. That's true, we all know that's true. So when you go back and look at the material that's on your phone and you've already learned it, or at least kind of learned it once, and you go to learn it again. You're going to go - Oh, yeah that!  and you're going to get it just like that.

So you might get that into your repertoire in 2 minutes or 5 minutes instead of an hour going to a new class trying to learn something new, plus the commute time, going there back, plus paying for the class.

The Benefits of Reviewing Past Materials

Strategically, it just makes more sense to go back and review things, make sure that you have. Partners, community, friends, people that you can practice with and call somebody up or message them and say, hey, do you wanna practice? Let's take some time for this and anybody who is involved in your style of dance and in this journey and learning also pretty much anybody is going to be happy to practice because it's it's a fun thing to do, that's that's why we do it.  

I've been dancing for many, many years now and it's interesting and it's humbling for me to think about how many moves I've learned. Over those years. I've learned in private and group classes all around the world for over a decade. How many things have I learned that I've forgotten? 

 I've probably learned 1000 moves in my life. That's a lot.

How many do I use on the dance floor at any? Given time, maybe. 30 to 50 and that's a lot, you know, in a single dance, maybe 20? I don't know, it's just an estimation. That means that 90-95% of what I learned in my life is not.

It's not being used like it's useful for a moment, and then it kind of went to waste. I wish that I had some master database of all the videos with labels and dates and everything of of what I've learned. And you know, sometimes I keep that information on my phone and and keep it somewhat organized.  

Organize Your Own Dance Library

I actually recommend that for you also, like keep your videos organized so you can easily go back to them because sometimes just the ease of doing it makes all the difference if it feels like - Oh, I got to scroll through all this stuff. I don't want to look at all these old photos. It's just not going to do it right. It just feels difficult.

So make it easier yourself, easy for yourself and be organized and you know, I'll admit that well before the technology wasn't there with the phones, but now that the phones are there, you know, it's easy to let it get cluttered. I'm guilty of it. But only in recent years that I start getting more organized so I recommend that for you also.

What I want you to do is after you watch this video right now, take some time. Take the effort to go into your phone and find those old videos. Alright, I want you to put them in a separate folder, a separate album labelled them in whatever way makes sense for you, maybe by the instructor, the dates, partnering versus shines, the class, or just put them all in one folder like "moves", "dance stuff".

Just do that and make it easier for yourself and then I want you right now to go back and just review just one of the videos right now just to start the habit.

Building Consistent Learning Habits

You know, as I mentioned earlier, it's so much easier to learn something the second time than is the first time. So even though going to class is fun and you should keep going to class forever.

Let's be strategic about our learning and let's go back and learn the things that we already know the second time and that's going to help you accelerate your dancing at a much faster pace. So go ahead, please go into your phone right now and start to do that and this will be a really valuable thing for you. 

Let's be strategic about our learning and let's go back and learn the things that we already know the second time and that's going to help you accelerate your dancing at a much faster pace. So go ahead, please go into your phone right now and start to do that and this will be a really valuable thing for you.