"Salsa Bachata Class Accelerator" Lesson 6: Net Time

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.

What is NET Time?

Let's talk about net time during class. Net is an acronym. It stands for No Extra Time. I cannot take credit for this. This is a  Tony Robbins term, something that, as far as I know, he created it. So net time is basically time in our lives where it's like the transition time between activities, so examples of this would be waiting for an Uber or a taxi or a bus waiting in line for a restroom or to be seated at a restaurant.

Those are two examples, right? So there are there are times in our lives that are transitional that we kind of have to go through and these are times that we can use for our own education or learning or or whatever we're focused on.

How to Make the Most Out of Your Net Time

So for example, if you were like when I was in school, I would have a a 30 minute walk. One particular year of my education, I had a 30 minute walk to my class from the dorms. During that, that's net time, right? So I can either be chatting with a friend, but what I did instead is during that time I would review my notes from class.

So I got 30 extra minutes of study time that other people didn't get. Without taking 30 extra minutes out of my day, right? and the most valuable thing for all of us, especially these days, is time. Right? We're all really pressed for time, and and that's just modern culture, right? and that's fine.

So what we need to do is, we need to be really strategic in how we use our time and actually this totally applies outside of class. Also actually hope you will embrace that and and actually use your net time with other things for for something valuable, something helpful for you as well.

Podcasts are great, reviewing your dance notes, your dance videos. That's great. Whatever is valuable to you. So that's the concept of net time. No extra time. Time things like transitional periods that don't take extra time out. Of your day.

Applying Net Time in Dance Classes

Now what we want to do is apply this to our dance classes also. when you start looking for this now you're going to realize there's sometimes, there's kind of a lot of downtime during class. When the instructor walks over to turn the music on. Sometimes that's 30 seconds or more of downtime or net time is. When somebody asks a question, that can be 30 seconds to several minutes of net time. If there is a break in the middle of the class, A 5 minute break, that's net time. If the instructor comes 5 minutes late, that's net time. Those are the examples I can think of off the top of my mind.

 So whenever you find this net time what I want you guys to start doing is get in the habit of practicing during that time. You ever notice that during these times some student most students, probably 90%, are just standing there? and then maybe like one out of 10, sometimes more, it depends on the class are practicing the moves that they just learned that practice time actually is exponentially more valuable than the rest of the time because. 

Using Net Time with Purpose for Detailed Improvement

During the class, the rest of the time, usually we're just watching the instructor and doing their same movements and repeating and a lot of times it's mindless and we focus. We talk a lot about in the other lessons in this course. Refining our focus or focus on the things that are valuable, but still, there can be a lot of times where we're just kind of watching mindlessly. We can get caught in that pattern.

The teacher goes away, and then there's nothing to look at and it's all you, and that is the moment, and you probably start noticing this. If you actually use the net time, that's the moment when you really start having to having to focus on the details because it's all you.

You can't just watch what you're doing and that's when you start to workout the kinks in what's going on in your dancing. Maybe there's a part of the pattern, one particular part that was hard. So focus on that. Oh, I need to repeat that five times.

Make Your Practice Count and Get Better with Net Time

So now you just got practice into that five more times than everybody else in the class, and that's going to help you actually get it into your muscle memory and it was entirely on you because you weren't just mindlessly watching. You took full responsibility for all of it, for remembering all the details of what it was and actually applying it.

So net time in class is tremendously valuable. You know, sometimes you might be exhausted during class and you don't feel like doing it. Maybe just need to be more engaged during the class and I would actually keep your energy up. Also, that can actually help a lot. So please start paying attention to the net time in your class and I want you to start using that for practicing and that's really going to help you get more of what you learn in class into your muscle memory.