"Salsa Bachata Class Accelerator" Lesson 12: Visualization

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.

Let's talk about visualization, this is something that we touched on briefly when we talked about dancing with ghosts, but we're going to take it to a deeper level right now.

Utilizing "No Extra Time" for Visualizing Movements 

So what I want you to start doing is visualizing the moves or the movements that you're working on from class, or if you're a performer this certainly applies to learning a whole choreography, and when we talked about dancing with the ghost partner that was actually physically doing with the movements with a ghost partner but what I'm talking about right now is not moving, but just visualizing it in your head and this can be done potentially during class.

So we talked about net time, no extra time time when the instructor is answering a question or walking to change the music or during a break, you know those are possible times. You know those times you're there with other students so maybe you want to do with a ghost partner or with another student just because you have those resources right there and you're already in that element of moving.

A lot of times we don't have a partner, so we talked about dancing with a ghost partner, but also just visualizing without even moving and this can be done anytime this can be done while you're in an Uber or a Lyft or a ride share, it can be done while you're eating dinner. It can be done while you're riding your bicycle for example, running through the routine.

Incorporating Visualization into Daily Practices 

Now, if you have a daily meditation habit, then tons of respect for you. I mean that's a, that's a whole other topic, and you start to incorporate this into your daily meditation habit. That's fantastic. Really fantastic. You're way ahead of the curve. Meditation is something that I struggled with my entire life.

I was always interested in it and I just was not able to figure out how to sit down and hold still for more than 60 seconds. It was really tough for me to quiet my mind and it wasn't until literally this year that I finally was able to get into a daily meditation habit and be able to calm myself and and quiet the mind every day and this has tremendous. The benefits the effects are really amazing, so that's something I highly recommend in general, but that's a totally different topic.

Benefits of Visualization in Dance Classes

The beautiful thing about visualization is you don't need to have a meditation habit. So even though I struggle with meditation my entire life I was visualizing dancing for my entire dance path and journey specific for me specifically in my journey. It was in the context of choreographies and performance, so just looking at this as an example, even though this also applies to social dancing and your classes for for dancing with a choreography. What you can do is start to visualize yourself doing it and when you do that, you're going to notice that there's little hiccups.

Smoothing Out Hiccups Through Visualization

So you're visualizing - Oh, I do this, this, this and and then what's next?  This will happen with your patterns from dance classes also, or what's that thing I need to remember? and there's going to be these little hiccups so by visualizing you're identifying already what you need to smooth out and you visualize it again and again until you actually get it, or when you go physically practice, you can smooth out those little pieces and then eventually.

Let's say going back to the example of a choreography, let's say you have a two-minute choreography when you visualize it, you should eventually be able to complete that whole thing in your head in 20 to 30 seconds.

So that means you're processing it at a speed two to four times as fast as is happening in real life in reality and when you can do that, when you step out to go rehearse your choreography, it's there no problem, right and again, this applies to social dancing and any other dance classes that you're taking also.

It's pretty cool stuff so visualization is extremely powerful, and again, it's a really efficient use of your time because you can do it during net time - "No Extra Time" time during your day. There's a lot of science behind it, really, really powerful.

Visualize Before You Step into the Dance Floor

So what I want you to do and you should definitely be doing it before you walk into the the clubs for dancing also. So what I want you to do is start to visualize the things that you're learning in class, and that's also going to help you retain the information.

You know how common it is for people to go to class forget what they learned, but then keep going to class the next week and the next week, and I'm guilty of this too. I've done this countless times in my life. I get it because it feels good to keep going to class, and it feels like we're achieving something. Even though we're being brutally honest with ourselves, sometimes we're achieving nothing or very little. At least because we're forgetting what we learned every time. That's just the reality.

So between classes, this is really crucial. I want you to start visualizing what you did from the previous week, which is going to help you apply it and actually get it in your repertoire and part of your muscle memory.