How Are Your Lessons Going? Thread 3

Both hours of my lessons today were with Pro1. Often when we get a double lesson together, I dance as Standard Lead with him, as he can give really useful insights on Lead things. So, we dug into Foxtrot and the them theme was the use of acceleration and deceleration while still letting the body “move down the floor”.

Pro1 has less experience as Follow than as Lead, and as I don’t Lead Pro1 as often as I lead Pro2, Pro1 doesn’t have as much “unconscious compensation” in his body muscle memory to fix things when I lead, so it forces me to really pay attention to technique. Of course, it’s really, really useful to do that to pinpoint places where I mis-time that acceleration/deceleration stuff and the source of the mis-timing.

One interesting thing that came out: a week or so ago, there were times when I was dancing with Pro1 with me as Standard Follow, and I couldn’t get the connection I wanted with my right hand – it was like I had to “chase his hand” and my arm position got all wonky and I couldn’t stay left. Pro1 had mentioned at the time that one of his other students had made a similar comment. But he was mystified as to what we were trying to describe.

Well, today, we were working through a sequence and he was complaining that he was having a hard time following me. As we were dancing through it, I could see his arm getting crooked and he wasn’t staying left. He said that I needed to use a bit of “inward squeeze/pressure” with my left hand, because he said: “If you don’t give me any “inward” pressure, it feels like I’m chasing your hand.” Pause. Pause. Pause. “Ohhhh. THAT’s what you and [other student] were describing. Hmmm.” So, then we briefly switched roles while he tested out his lead, and he admitted that there are some places where he needs to be more mindful about the “inward” pressure thing when he leads.

I gotta say, although Pro1 can be ….self-assured and opinionated… it’s encouraging that he doesn’t have a “big ego”.

All in all, we both left the lesson feeling as though we have a few more “fixes” to work with that will be helpful going forward.
 
Cal said:
Both hours of my lessons today were with Pro1. Often when we get a double lesson together, I dance as Standard Lead with him, as he can give really useful insights on Lead things. So, we dug into Foxtrot and the them theme was the use of acceleration and deceleration while still letting the body “move down the floor”.

Pro1 has less experience as Follow than as Lead, and as I don’t Lead Pro1 as often as I lead Pro2, Pro1 doesn’t have as much “unconscious compensation” in his body muscle memory to fix things when I lead, so it forces me to really pay attention to technique. Of course, it’s really, really useful to do that to pinpoint places where I mis-time that acceleration/deceleration stuff and the source of the mis-timing.
Click to expand...
love this. LOVE IT. So hard to explain.
Cal said:
I gotta say, although Pro1 can be ….self-assured and opinionated… it’s encouraging that he doesn’t have a “big ego”.
Click to expand...
LOVE THIS
 
My Smooth Pro accidentally told me I was getting better.

I realize that the number 1 improvement to my Smooth this past year or so is mainly because of West Coast Swing. I had about 3 regular practice partners for a while. Many days during the week I would have a lesson and then a practice. Things have calmed down a bit on the WCS front currently… good free practice partners come and go. But honestly there is a constant supply of nice competitive leads.

What practice partners gave me was pure reps. Someone to practice on for an hour, to try things on for an hour, for my body to move with another body.

After about a year of this, my turns have gotten better, and I can do “rides” better on WCS (which are basically standing spins but easier). My weight transfer is more sensitive.

And all of that applies to Smooth.

On the Smooth side I’ve also gone to a bunch of dance camps and have taken a bunch of coachings from champions (and some of y’alls Pros ;-)). Obviously all that was helpful too. There were solo drills that were given to me and concepts that are solidifying. Also, dance camps are fun!

However, I would say % of progress that is actually embodied, comes more from WCS and all the reps.

It’s hard to beat practice time with another body. Something that is scarce in the pro/am economy.
 
I had my first post-comp lesson earlier this week (the post-comp part I already discussed in the 2026 Manhattan/Blue Dress thread). We worked on rhythm, for the first time in 8 months. It was sort of a general refresher lesson, doing all 5 dances to music right off the bat, no "let's walk through the patterns and review the basic technique" first.

It was fun! And parts of it were surprisingly good. Turns out my brain doesn't consciously remember very much, but my body sure does. I found myself responding to Pro's lead & correctly following him through almost every pattern we did in rumba & cha cha - while my brain was thinking, "huh? what are you doing? what am I supposed to be doing? shouldn't I know what comes next?" Well, obviously, NO, I don't need to know what comes next. That's what 7 years of learning lead/follow will do for you. And my leg/hip/foot action was still pretty decent, too. There were a few times where he laughed at my way-too-rigid-for-rhythm frame, though, reminding me that I needed to UNlock my arms from my ribcage in these dances (which is the opposite of what I'm supposed to do in smooth, which is one of the reasons why it's so challenging for me to dance two contradictory styles).

My body's memory for following him was less impressive in swing & bolero, though I picked stuff back up reasonably well by the third time we tried each pattern.

But mambo, which was always my favorite rhythm dance, went downright poorly (according to me, anyway). Not only did I not remember the silver patterns we had started working on before our 8-month hiatus, but also Pro said the way mambo is now being danced has changed somewhat from the way he taught me. In particular, it's more flat-footed throughout. The way I learned it is that "four-one" had two totally distinct parts: on count "four" I place my toe (with my knee bent), and on count "one" I place my heel and straighten my knee. He said now it's more like "four" is the whole step...count "one" is blended into it, so there's barely any pause between "step with your toe" and "place your heel/straighten your knee."

I just stared at him. "No way," I said disbelievingly. "Do you know the number of drills I did for seven years, to make sure I did NOT - not EVER - land on a flat foot? Do you not remember teaching me 'two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four-ONE' to make sure I got the point that 'four-one' has two separate parts??? Making me stop on FOUR and hold it for several extra counts, before finally putting my heel down on ONE? And now you're saying I should change that???"

Let's just say I was not receptive to this change. And even though I trust him and respect him with regard to almost all dance-related topics (other than subjective things like whether hair in a bun is "boring" or "elegant"), I REALLY NEED FOR HIM TO BE WRONG ABOUT THIS. Really, really, really.

I'm kinda surprised at how adamantly my brain rejected this concept. Sure, change is hard, but it's part of the learning process. And it has always been a big part of my dance learning.

Here's a post I wrote in March 2020 about my frustration with learning something one way then having to change it. The context of the post is that back then, I liked to write down each step so I could practice at home "correctly," but Pro didn't want me to write the steps down bcs he had already discovered that I interpret things too literally sometimes, which could lead to problems, and I was explaining to DF why he was right:

  • salsa - for a certain turn, I wrote down that I am to step forward directly towards him. I have faithfully practiced starting that turn by stepping straight forward. But it turns out there’s another similar turn, where my first step should be at a 45 degree angle to my right. Back when I made that note, I didn’t understand that there were multiple similar turns. That one was fairly easy to fix, once I knew the difference.
  • cha cha - on the 3 side steps (chassés? the cha cha ones in the middle: “four-and-one”), I made a specific note that my heels were to touch the floor on all 3 steps. Heels of both feet. But apparently that’s just a beginner’s way, tolerated bcs it teaches the timing of the fast steps. Last night I learned that the middle step (“and” of “four-and-one”) is ball only, then you push off the ball of that foot into the next step. I get it, and also get that it’s more consistent with the other Latin movement I’ve learned and more consistent with the other cha cha steps I’ve learned (where the middle step is also ball only), but bcs I wrote it down that way I’ve been stepping on my whole foot so that my heel hits the floor on all 3 steps. That one is gonna be harder for me to change. But I will.

But darn it, this is different. It's not that I learned a "beginner" way of dancing mambo and now it's time for me to learn the "intermediate" way. It's a HUGE SIGNIFICANT HUGE VERY BIG IMPORTANT HUGE SUBSTANTIVE AND DID I MENTION HUGE alteration of the entire dance.

Or...at least, that's how it feels to me right now.

Is Pro wrong? Crazy? Misguidedmisinformedmisled? Or is this maybe like the horrible appalling unappealing painful different way the WDSF does what it calls "shaping" in smooth/standard, but you don't have to follow the WDSF approach to be competitively successful?

If not, I need to reconsider whether I really want to add rhythm back to our lesson repertoire.
 
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ProgressNotPerfection said:
Pro said the way mambo is now being danced has changed somewhat from the way he taught me. In particular, it's more flat-footed throughout. The way I learned it is that "four-one" had two totally distinct parts: on count "four" I place my toe (with my knee bent), and on count "one" I place my heel and straighten my knee. He said now it's more like "four" is the whole step...count "one" is blended into it, so there's barely any pause between "step with your toe" and "place your heel/straighten your knee."
Click to expand...
It sounds a lot sloppier. My Salsa is pretty sloppy, but I'm a social dancer who isn't that interested in Salsa. Teacher counts it as 123_567_, but my 3_ is more like a slow than a step hold.

Is Pro basing the change on what he observed at the comp, or did he receive informal coaching that the judges were looking for different footwork? If it was just observation it could mean the winners had "bad footwork" but everything else better than the rest who also had "bad footwork"?

If the judges changed their expectations (and don't like the old way) you should change or drop rhythm. But if they are just accepting this footwork, then keep doing what you learned and really SHINE!
 
ProgressNotPerfection said:
I had my first post-comp lesson earlier this week (the post-comp part I already discussed in the 2026 Manhattan/Blue Dress thread). We worked on rhythm, for the first time in 8 months. It was sort of a general refresher lesson, doing all 5 dances to music right off the bat, no "let's walk through the patterns and review the basic technique" first.

It was fun! And parts of it were surprisingly good. Turns out my brain doesn't consciously remember very much, but my body sure does. I found myself responding to Pro's lead & correctly following him through almost every pattern we did in rumba & cha cha - while my brain was thinking, "huh? what are you doing? what am I supposed to be doing? shouldn't I know what comes next?" Well, obviously, NO, I don't need to know what comes next. That's what 7 years of learning lead/follow will do for you. And my leg/hip/foot action was still pretty decent, too. There were a few times where he laughed at my way-too-rigid-for-rhythm frame, though, reminding me that I needed to UNlock my arms from my ribcage in these dances (which is the opposite of what I'm supposed to do in smooth, which is one of the reasons why it's so challenging for me to dance two contradictory styles).

My body's memory for following him was less impressive in swing & bolero, though I picked stuff back up reasonably well by the third time we tried each pattern.

But mambo, which was always my favorite rhythm dance, went downright poorly (according to me, anyway). Not only did I not remember the silver patterns we had started working on before our 8-month hiatus, but also Pro said the way mambo is now being danced has changed somewhat from the way he taught me. In particular, it's more flat-footed throughout. The way I learned it is that "four-one" had two totally distinct parts: on count "four" I place my toe (with my knee bent), and on count "one" I place my heel and straighten my knee. He said now it's more like "four" is the whole step...count "one" is blended into it, so there's barely any pause between "step with your toe" and "place your heel/straighten your knee."

I just stared at him. "No way," I said disbelievingly. "Do you know the number of drills I did for seven years, to make sure I did NOT - not EVER - land on a flat foot? Do you not remember teaching me 'two-three-four-ONE-two-three-four-ONE' to make sure I got the point that 'four-one' has two separate parts??? Making me stop on FOUR and hold it for several extra counts, before finally putting my heel down on ONE? And now you're saying I should change that???"

Let's just say I was not receptive to this change. And even though I trust him and respect him with regard to almost all dance-related topics (other than subjective things like whether hair in a bun is "boring" or "elegant"), I REALLY NEED FOR HIM TO BE WRONG ABOUT THIS. Really, really, really.

I'm kinda surprised at how adamantly my brain rejected this concept. Sure, change is hard, but it's part of the learning process. And it has always been a big part of my dance learning.

Here's a post I wrote in March 2020 about my frustration with learning something one way then having to change it. The context of the post is that back then, I liked to write down each step so I could practice at home "correctly," but Pro didn't want me to write the steps down bcs he had already discovered that I interpret things too literally sometimes, which could lead to problems, and I was explaining to DF why he was right:

  • salsa - for a certain turn, I wrote down that I am to step forward directly towards him. I have faithfully practiced starting that turn by stepping straight forward. But it turns out there’s another similar turn, where my first step should be at a 45 degree angle to my right. Back when I made that note, I didn’t understand that there were multiple similar turns. That one was fairly easy to fix, once I knew the difference.
  • cha cha - on the 3 side steps (chassés? the cha cha ones in the middle: “four-and-one”), I made a specific note that my heels were to touch the floor on all 3 steps. Heels of both feet. But apparently that’s just a beginner’s way, tolerated bcs it teaches the timing of the fast steps. Last night I learned that the middle step (“and” of “four-and-one”) is ball only, then you push off the ball of that foot into the next step. I get it, and also get that it’s more consistent with the other Latin movement I’ve learned and more consistent with the other cha cha steps I’ve learned (where the middle step is also ball only), but bcs I wrote it down that way I’ve been stepping on my whole foot so that my heel hits the floor on all 3 steps. That one is gonna be harder for me to change. But I will.

But darn it, this is different. It's not that I learned a "beginner" way of dancing mambo and now it's time for me to learn the "intermediate" way. It's a HUGE SIGNIFICANT HUGE VERY BIG IMPORTANT HUGE SUBSTANTIVE AND DID I MENTION HUGE alteration of the entire dance.

Or...at least, that's how it feels to me right now.

Is Pro wrong? Crazy? Misguidedmisinformedmisled? Or is this maybe like the horrible appalling unappealing painful different way the WDSF does what it calls "shaping" in smooth/standard, but you don't have to follow the WDSF approach to be competitively successful?

If not, I need to reconsider whether I really want to add rhythm back to our lesson repertoire.
Click to expand...
Eh, tough one.
If it helps, I guess I wouldn’t say it’s a wholly different technique. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but it sounds as though your Pro isn’t asking you to land on a “flat foot”; you still use the toe and he’s just asking you to get to the heel quicker, and get to the straight leg quicker. Yes?

(I’m not at all trying to put words into your Pro’s mouth; I’m sure he has a much better way of working with you on this concept.)
 
I only did a little mambo, but the teachers I had would practically yell the TWO and then softly count the three and four, and sort of pretend the one didn't exist. So,

TWO-three-four- ... TWO-three-four- ...
or
TWO-three-four- ... FIVE-six-seven- ...

I can't say I recall the exact timing of the corresponding foot actions, though. I only mention it because maybe this change is part of an effort to emphasize that two instead of the one by blending the actions on the four and one with different timing (and/or emphasis) than what you've previously worked on.
 
First, let me say I haven't had a lesson in ballroom mambo, so take this with a grain of salt. I'm not sure what is taught. (Only 1 ballroom instructor has worked on mambo with me. They've all assumed that because I can salsa, I can mambo.)

But, I'm in agreement with Cal. I can't imagine Mambo being taught as flat-footed in the ballroom world. So, perhaps the heel lands faster like on an "and" rather than waiting for the 1?

As a social dancer who dances by what feels good in body to music, I'm more likely to dance it as a slow until I want to emphasize the hold for musicality purposes. I tend to prefer moving fluidly in my social dancing over sharp, defined actions, and reserve that for playing with the music.
 
And of course it’s entirely possible I misunderstood what he was telling me. It was toward the end of my double lesson so my brain was probably a bit fried by then. I might have heard the first part, overreacted, catastrophized unnecessarily, etc. I’ll get some clarification next lesson.


Greybeard said:
Is Pro basing the change on what he observed at the comp
Click to expand...
I don’t think so. It sounded to me like it had been a gradual change over the last several months, & I was only now hearing about it since we hadn’t worked on rhythm in so long. But idk any details about whether he was told it or observed it or what.
 
Greybeard said:
It sounds a lot sloppier. My Salsa is pretty sloppy, but I'm a social dancer who isn't that interested in Salsa. Teacher counts it as 123_567_, but my 3_ is more like a slow than a step hold.

Is Pro basing the change on what he observed at the comp, or did he receive informal coaching that the judges were looking for different footwork? If it was just observation it could mean the winners had "bad footwork" but everything else better than the rest who also had "bad footwork"?

If the judges changed their expectations (and don't like the old way) you should change or drop rhythm. But if they are just accepting this footwork, then keep doing what you learned and really SHINE!
Click to expand...
To me this sounds like revenge of the “on 1” salsa of which I’ve heard other rumblings recently. I’ve gotten used to Latin/Rhythm technique going through regular variations and fads over the years so I just figured that’s something they had to deal with.
 
@ProgressNotPerfection
Just a thought: The nerd in me is wondering if you have a Rhythm technique/syllabus book that you could study for additional information on the footwork of Mambo? Or, if you already have a Rhythm book, maybe buy one from a different organization to see if there is a competing perspective? To be used as a “learning tool”, not as a “bible” - a book might use a written explanation/description that clicks with you in a way that a verbal explanation doesn't quite hit.

(So, I DO NOT mean that you then use the book as some kind of “gotcha” with your Pro or Coach.)
 
OK, reading back over the way I described the way I learned mambo, I realized it sounds totally messed up (and totally incorrect), so let me back up and try to explain better. This is mambo. That means OF COURSE the emphasis is on count two. The first step is on count two. The basic count/beat is “TWO-three-four-[pause]-TWO-three-four-[pause].” (Or instead of a pause, you could say “one” on that beat, as I do.)

But in order to teach me to articulate my feet while dancing mambo such that my toes and heels have distinct separate movements, Pro would count out loud and sometimes vocally emphasize the “one” - NOT changing the rhythm or emphasis of the step itself - just reminding me that “four” is toe and “one” is heel, and that I should keep them separate.

Also, if any of you are thinking my Pro is an idiot and I’m a bigger one for believing he knows what he’s talking about, lemme remind you that we placed first in the closed bronze 4-dance rhythm scholarship at OSB one year (from a quarterfinal); placed third in the open bronze 5-dance rhythm scholarship at OSB the next year (from a semifinal); and placed first in the open bronze 5-dance rhythm scholarship at OSB two years after that. (The closed bronze scholarship didn’t include mambo, but we did five sets of singles that year that DID include mambo, and got recalled from the semis to the finals in all of them.) In other words, while you may have legitimate doubts about my ability to describe things accurately, you should not have any doubts about whether my teacher knows what he’s doing. He does.

I hope my questioning whether he is wrong on this one point about the way mambo is (possibly) now being danced will not lead any of you to question his skills as a teacher.
 
Suggesting the use of an additional source of information for potential clarification about Mambo is not an implication that your Pro's teaching skills are in question.

But, I hear your message loud and clear. It’s rather arrogant for a non-winner like me to weigh in on a technique-related topic at all. Rest assured, I’ll go back to the cheap seats where I belong.
 
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