Practice Time vs. Lessons Time

B

BasicsFirst

New Member
A line in one of my favorite ballroom movies, suggested that one should practice 5 hours for every hour of lessons taken. At the time I thought, that seems a bit high. Now I'm not here to debate what ratio is right or wrong (I don't even know what my own ratio is, partly why I'm gonna do this). Rather since we're at the beginning of a new year, who wants to keep track with me...? and we'll report back after say a quarter (and/or the year). Granted Pro-Am numbers will differ I would imagine from Am-Am numbers, but you're all welcome on this one. Only 11 days in I've been able to go back and count from Jan. 1. We'll call it... "Ratio - The Results"!
 
Wentink has the best quote about this. I can't remember it exactly but here is his point. He said that he and Beata practiced every day, with no set schedule. Sometimes 2 hrs and sometimes 15 hours. He said that they would work until they could make a clear improvement and things would work, if things seemed to be working after 20 mins there was no need to belabor it. I think this is a very healthy way to do things.
 
I once had a teacher tell me to practice 3 hours for every one hour of instruction.

My current partner and I typically practice about 4.5+ hrs for every 45 minutes of instruction. I have in the past practiced up to 15 hrs for every 45 minutes of instruction, and I NEVER ran out of things to practice.
 
We do 6.5 hours of practice for 1 hour of instruction currently and we always have things to work on.
 
a) one can never run out of things to practice
b) I really don't think there is any one ideal equation
c) bottom line: pratice alot...take as many lessons as you can...and more coachings...
 
I agree there is no perfect equation. I think the issue is making sure not to have the ratio of instruction to practice be too high. I think if you have a ton of instruction and no time to practice it, you can get overwhelmed and the progress is actually slower. So there is such a thing as too much coaching if you don't have time to practice it. The trick is to find a ratio that works for you to make sure you have enough time to absorb what you are learning and incorporate it into your dancing, but still have enough instruction and guidance to keep moving forward.
 
well then it is a fairly unstructured survey...skwiggy, btw, I agree with you...one has to own one's own dancing and that isn't done without time alone, IMO...

however if this is a survey...um...I will decline to answer as i am certain that I fall so far outside the norm as to be irrelevant
 
fascination said:
well then it is a fairly unstructured survey...skwiggy, btw, I agree with you...one has to own one's own dancing and that isn't done without time alone, IMO...

however if this is a survey...um...I will decline to answer as i am certain that I fall so far outside the norm as to be irrelevant
Click to expand...
I think you're perfectly normal!!:D

The greater variance lies in the structure of Amateurs couples approach vs Pro/Am students.
  • There's 'alone' practice time for both Amateur and Pro/Am, which means an individual practicing by oneself, without any partner
  • Its the 'unsupervised' partner practice time which accounts for a significant difference in approach - typically consisting of a significant amount of time spent with their partner, yet not their instructor - this part of the Amateur experience is a significant differentiator between these two groups
 
Then there are issues of where you get excess instruction, but end up having to spend a significan portion of time that should be (and is paid for) instruction time just practicing stuff they've already taught you, that you ahven't practiced 3enough on your own to own. :) Or alternatively, practicing bad habits/pradcticing something incorrectly so you ahve to repeat the sasme instruction to fix what you were practicing wrong.
 
For my one style, I do about 1 hour of private instruction every two weeks, and two hours of group classes weekly. I tend to practice about 4 hours a week.
 
One very important thing in my mind is to have lessons frequently enough that you rarely have two frustrating practices in a row with no outside help. It's very beneficial for the health of the partnership to be able to surrender the concerns to a third party and just do your best in the moment.

On the other hand, it is also possible to take too many lessons, and not get enough practice time - if you get the feeling of 'I wish he/she would just let us work on this until we get it' then you know you've scheduled too many lessons for the intervening practice.
 
I've found that as you get better you practice more - we've discussed this a bit on the 'practice makes perfect' thread. But IMO the meaning of 'practice' changes also. When you start you simply try to repeat the elements learned in the lesson. However, as you improve you can incorporate the information from one lesson into many aspects of your dancing and 'practicing' morphs into self-instruction. The next stage is to use videos to learn step sequences and style - eventually you can go quite a while between lessons before you need a coach to straighten out errors that have crept in.

So practice time varies not only according to type of dancing (pro/am vs am/am) but also stage. Currently we practice about 10 hrs between lessons.
 
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