"Salsa Bachata Class Accelerator" Lesson 5: Strategic Clubbing & Shameless Repetition

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.

Alright, let's talk about strategic clubbing and shameless repetition. When you go to a nightclub, I want you guys to start going out with a purpose. A purpose that relates to your learning and your progress with your dancing. 

Reviewing Your Moves Before You Hit the Dance Floor

What you're gonna do is right before you go into the club, go ahead and review either your notes or your videos. Whatever it is you want to focus on improving that night and it doesn't have to be a lot of things. Again, it can just be one thing. Two things, three things and it's actually good to bring the phone into the club also, because you're probably going to forget and then need to remember and you can go off to a corner, check your phone and then and then go back to dancing.

Nobody's gonna judge you for it. Nobody's gonna see you do it. I do this all the time. Right. Let's say there's a new concept that I want to play with or a new movement or a new move or something that I want to have some fun with. I'll review it so that I can actually implement it while I'm at the club, in the heat of the dance. I just reviewed it 2 minutes before, so definitely go out with the purpose while you're dancing. Review before you go in and review while you're in the club also. 

Identify and Focus on What You Want to Improve

In terms of what to review, it can be a movement. It can be 1 little element of your body. For example, you might say I'm gonna turn out my feet tonight. I'm gonna spot tonight. I'm gonna keep my elbow down tonight for follows. I'm going to use my Spiderman hands and give my partners really clear turns. For the leaders. I'm going to take tiny steps tonight. I'm going to keep great balance. Tonight, I'm going to work on my hip movement tonight. Depending on your level. 

Whatever that thing is for you, for leaders, a lot of times, as I want to practice this new move tonight, which is great for followers, let's say you you learned a new move in a class and you want to practice that, go out with somebody from your class and communicate that, hey, I would love to practice this in the club. Let's do this again and again and again. Because that's really the only way for followers that you're going to be able to get that live practice in a club environment. For the leaders, of course, you can lead anybody through this, right? You're in charge when you're on the dance floor.

Social Dancing with a Purpose

I want you to repeat the move shamelessly again and again and again. So. You know, probably. Three times in a single dance is probably as much as you ought to, depending on the move, but if you do that in 10 dances, then that's 30 times that.

You've done that in a night in a live environment with the music blasting and all the stimulation of the club and the people around, which makes it harder to do this, there's just a lot of other considerations. We're in an emotional state, we're dodging elbows. There's all sorts of things going on. So you're really getting that in a real live environment.

Developing Muscle Memory through Repetition 

Now when you do the same move, maybe do the entire same routine with one girl, then the next girl, then the next girl, then the next girl or the next follow I should say, they don't know. So it really doesn't matter now if you dance with the same people every week follows do start to feel overtime. They start to know a a guys moves, a leaders moves. But again who cares? Really? Who cares? Right? So just do it. You need to repeat shamelessly until you really get it into your muscle memory.  

So when you're clubbing, be strategic review before you go in review. While you're in the club, focus on one or two movements, or one or two patterns just a little bit. Go with a partner if that's helpful. Helpful for you, especially for follows. And when you're in the club, repeat those things again and again and again.