One side better than the other!?

[jenibelle]

Hello my friends!
My instructor told me that one of my hands is very pretty and has all the natural movement but my other hand, well, sucks. I watched a couple of tapes and sadly it's true. Is this normal in the stages of salsa development? And how on earth can I fix it?

Jeni

 

[jenibelle]

Wait...make that not just the hand, but entire arm movement/swinging motion.

 

[Sagitta]

Long time no see Jenni!

I have that problem between my right and left. Left sucks, while right is great. kepp on working on my left, is what I'm doing.

 

[borikensalsero]

I'm not sure if it is abnormal or normal... but I suspect that your off-hand is the one with the problems... If so, it is mainly because you really never use it for much... Your strong hand does just about everything hence causing the natural look and feel of the arm.

You should try little things at first. Opening doors with your week hand. Picking up things, even throwing a ball will help. You can also try to mimic your strong arm movements with your left. bascially teach it to do just about everything the strong arm does.

I am a natural righty, but in sports since I was in college I bacame a lefty, and both hands do just about everything equaly well... I used the throwing a ball thing to learn fluid and smooth movement with my left... they I used to use my left to open doors, eat, wave good bye, it didin't even take 2 months to get very good with the left, well, except for writting...

Once your arm "learns" to naturally move, it should carry over to your dancing, for the arm has learned to freely move... At least so it happened with me...

 

[jenibelle]

Hey!
Thanks for the advice...I'll guess I'll keep working on my bad hand and hopefully i won't be lopsided in the future
Jeni

 

[Paou]

Just to share something Edie said on her workshop here in Vienna....

She was referring to spinning, but I guess it applies equally well to this:

Her advice was *not* to concentrate on the hand (or in the case of spinning, leg) that had problems...

The reason she cited was that you'll actually just end up bringing the level of the opposite (and perfectly good) hand/leg down, since the body will be practicing movements that aren't correct and will begin to apply those 'wrong' movements to both sides of your body.

She gave an example that when she started teaching spinning, specifically on how to improve your "bad side", she told students to practice solely with the worse side until you get better... and what ended up happening was that after her class... people ended up unable to spin as well as before on their good leg!! - not exactly a glowing result for a spin class

She suggested that the best way to improve is to practice on both sides equally... and at the same time...

Maybe easier to apply to spinning tho, I know