How to get better at getting better

Sometimes we look at a west coast swing dancer and it's easy to see why they managed to improve rather quickly. Factors like an extensive preexisting dance background, time spent playing a musical instrument, natural athleticism, youth/starting to learn west coast swing at a younger age, learning in an advantageous location (think of trying to learn the dance in the bay area instead of, say, Alaska)… these are obvious. But there are also some less-than-tangible factors we can keep an eye out for. Not only are these extremely valuable, but they can also be consciously developed to help us grow our own dance!

 

1. Non-attachment to ideas or theories. 

Simply put, the people I know who have improved their own dance the fastest are those who can easily ditch what so-and-so said if it doesn’t work for them. “This doesn’t feel like what’s best for me right now” is an extremely powerful thought. Combine this with the next point and you’ll have an immense advantage in terms of making progress!

2. Understanding that there isn’t a magic bullet. 

Lots of people abandon things that could have worked well for them. What’s best for you right now might not always feel perfect or easy right from the get-go, and it will usually take some perseverance to get a new skill working consistently. It’s depressingly common for my friends or students to stop working on things because they kinda sorta tried it and it didn’t fix everything for them right away. If you think an idea or concept has promise, give it a few weeks. See where and when it feels better (or not) and decide from there. 

3. Being able to extrapolate from incomplete data. 

This is a big one. Often, a small adjustment that you discover or are shown can be used in many other places. Where else can this useful tidbit be a valid upgrade? Something as simple as a leader initiating, then following through a turn rather than pulling their follow all the way around; can be used in pretty much every turn, everywhere. I think that I first started developing this skill by not arm leading the crap out of my double outside turns. When that started to make sense I began discovering that, surprise surprise, it was relevant in pretty much all the turns that I led. For a follower, something like pulsing upbeats or doing a better job of completing weight transfers might happen on count 6 of a basic anchor. But from here, you could expand to your other upbeats and many, many other places in your dance as well.

 

Now, let’s look at the opposite of these advantages.

1. Being overly attached to a certain way of doing things. 

This could either be because you learned something one way and have come to believe that it is the One True Way of functioning, or because you really look up to someone else and want to dance exactly the way that they do. We should expect things to change with our understanding of the dance, as we’re exposed to different ideas, or even as we keep dancing with different people who are highly capable! If you are lamenting having to ‘relearn’ something that you ‘learned/understood/mastered’ already… please stop. For the sake of your dance. Being given something new doesn’t necessarily mean that you wasted time. It’s all useful data. Even if it’s simply being familiar with the sensation of doing something very inefficiently, you can use that in the future to pick up skills more quickly. Useful knowledge is always a gift to be thankful for. And if you’ve just come across some currently useless knowledge, go back two sentences.  

2. Switching targets too soon/grass is always greener mentality. 

I think that this is a common pitfall across all levels, from beginner to professional, whether you compete or not. There are a lot of potential ways to do this dance. It’s less so a binary right vs wrong or even a clear progression of worse to better. Think of ways to do anything in west coast swing as a scatterplot. There are methods that will work more often with more people under more different circumstances. It is often a bit nebulous, and you’ll have more than one option in the ‘positive effect’ direction, so choice and intent are powerful tools. I come from a strength training and athletic coaching background. You can do a lot of dumb stuff in the gym and as long as you don’t hurt yourself, you’ll get stronger over time if the effort and consistency are there. Choosing a ‘good enough for now’ target to focus your skill development on and then really working on it is, compared to hopping from one thing to another every other week, essentially magic. Just keep in mind that upgrades, added detail and slight changes of direction don’t mean that you need to throw everything out and start over… refer to #1.

3.  Learning everything one little specific piece at a time/inability to conceptualize

Our brains work by way of relationships, connections, and filling in the blanks. Imagine being a follower and discovering that you flex your wrist and pull yourself forward when you’re led into open whips. Even by itself this is a good thing to be aware of and work on correcting, sure. But do you pull yourself forward on other patterns that involve a lot of travel? Do you flex your wrist in other instances that involve a similar handhold – a pass or whip where it's low rather than going overhead? This could be a light bulb moment that drastically changes your dance… or it could be a little detail that’s quickly forgotten. Now, imagine being a leader. You are told that you lead a basic left side pass out from closed entirely with your left arm. Seems like a small detail concerning a basic you’ll rarely actually use in its most vanilla form, right? Here’s the fork in the road. Realizing that you lead using the hand on body could radically upgrade an immense number of interactions with your follower. By itself, it might seem too small a detail to even count as progress. But, look at where else you could use it and it’s a whole new level of development.

...Love your dance and be good to each other :) 

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Hope you enjoyed the read! 

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