Breaking Bad Habits

[JANATHOME]

Fustrated!
I have switched from dancing AM/AM to pro-am and have spend the past two and a half months (4 lessons a week) with instructor going over concepts that I was doing incorrectly and not picked up as a partnership student and has been great....

So there are concepts of some steps that we have spent a lot of time breaking down and re taught... If we are dancing just these steps, or a step preceeding and following the step I am fine in using my new skill. I can practice these concepts and steps on my own, still fine.

Yet, whenever we dance the comp routines muscle memory takes over and I revert completly back to way I danced in the AM/AM partnership, and not using what we spent time fixing and that I now know. I am quite fustrated and wonder how long will it be before my new skills take over the bad habits in a routine, and not just isolated pieces.... I have no idea what I can do on my own practice time except to keep doing what I am already doing...... Any thoughts for me?

 

[fascination]

not sure there is any better way than that jan...i came into my new pro's studio with some really bad habbits that I had practiced diligently to ingrain and which were never identified as a problem before...I have found that the only way to get rid of them is an equal to greater number of hours unlearning them

 

[Keen Dancer]

In the words of my teacher "you do it wrong million time, take million one to fix"

- two million is closer to my reality.

 

[j_alexandra]

Common training/martial arts/physical culture accepted belief: to learn something new and ingrain it in muscle memory takes 300-500 repetitions. To *unlearn* takes 3,000-5,000 repetitions. There are also those who think that the original learning never goes away, and it is simply overlaid with the new pattern.

Two thinks I keep in mind: It takes 10,000 "attaboys" to get rid of one "you dumb sh*t." Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.

I've decided that the only thing to do to fix bad habits is just do, frex, the 200,000 releves my teacher demanded of me a few weeks ago, and be completely intellectually and physically engaged in them when I do them, not think about anything else but the releve itself. I wonder if serious concentration on what I'm doing will make up for numbers? I hope so, but I doubt it. The body has its own intelligence and wisdom. There seems to be no way around 3,000-5,000 repetitions to overlay a new pattern over a learned one. Might as well enjoy the journey. Every well-executed releve is one step closer to having it the way I want it, always.

 

[Linda J Schlensker]

This will not eliminate the need for tons of practicing it correctly, but here are a couple of practice tips. Go through it slowly, gradually building speed for a few minutes. Stop before the speed gets to the point you have to scramble. Let the muscles go loose, shake it out, and repeat a couple of times. Practice the technique for 2 or 3 minutes at a time, several times a day. How often you come back to it is more helpful than less frequent long bursts of practice. When your body knows what it should feel like, try closing your eyes while relaxing, (just before you fall asleep) and lets yourself feel your body doing it perfectly. Locking the body often happens when the mind gets overengaged which it does under pressure. Best of luck.

 

[JustAnotherDancer]

I wonder if a method called TAG teaching, marking and "capturing" the correct specific movement or position, would reduce the number of repititions. TAG is "teaching with acoustical guidance"- using a clicker for those of you familiar with animal training, or a tagger (same little noisemaker!) in the human athletic world. It is an interesting concept, and one that I've been considering bringing into our learning, as we are trying to undo (or perhaps better said, replace) those really ingrained and frustrating bad habits!

Use of the tagger/clicker does require someone to watch and "tag", requires good timing to tag the movement, and specificity (choosing one very specific position or movement that needs fixing or learning). The learner knows what is going to be tagged, and hears the tag at the specific moment that the correct (or approaching correctness) movement is performed. Supposedly, this is more specific and faster, and better processed by the learner's brain, than the teacher's human voice- think of how your instructor says, after the fact, "that was better, now do it again". Could we remember the feeling of correctness if it was "tagged" at the specific moment that it happened?

 

[danceronice]

I have good muscle memory and learn physical actions FAST.

Unlearing them? Heaven help me. I made ONE error in our samba routine (somewhere in my head I deleted a figure) and have had a problem remembering it since--nine times out of ten I dance it wrong now. I don't even know WHY I mentally decided it wasn't there on that run-though, but ever since my body's gotten the idea that the step isn't there.

 

[waltzgirl]

One thing that might help speed up the process is doing visualizations of the correct thing as well as practicing. There is research that shows that the same brain circuits are activated when imagining an action as when doing it, so some of those needed repetitions can apparently take place in your mind.

For me, doing things the right way almost always feels better than the wrong way, so I've found that focusing on the pleasure of the new feeling helps it sink in (rather than a focus on right/wrong).

You might also ask your teacher to vary how you do the comp routines in lessons. It sounds like when you're doing the routines, you're dancing the whole routine through at once. If that is so, it might help if you broke it into smaller sections of one or two patterns and ran through them repeatedly. Seems to me it would be easier to focus on the new things in shorter, more concentrated bursts.

Or, if the corrections are things that are pervasive throughout the routine (i.e., changes in posture), you could try doing the routine maintaining your focus on just one of those corrections at a time (and not worrying if the other ones are happening or not).

Good luck!

 

[latingal]

Welcome to DF Keen Dancer!

 

[DL]

Don't break bad habits. Build good ones.

ETA: Also, learn to do specific things on purpose.

 

[latingal]

I am quite fustrated and wonder how long will it be before my new skills take over the bad habits in a routine, and not just isolated pieces.... I have no idea what I can do on my own practice time except to keep doing what I am already doing...... Any thoughts for me?

When I practice corrections I do what has been coined "deliberate practice". It is a goal oriented, focused and mentally engaged practice with lots of repetitions and self analysis.

I also use mental visualization before, during and after practices to help the correction process along.

That said, corrections still take time. It's the nature of the beast for just about all of us...