What percentage of your practice do you do in actual ballroom/latin shoes?

[jjs914]

I always wear my heels in lessons and have started wearing them for about 2/3 of practices. I have a pair of practice shoes with a heel that's about 1 inch shorter that I wear for some practices. The exception would be when I occasionally have 3 or 4 lessons in a row to do new choreography...then I might wear the practice shoes for that.

I can switch between the different heights pretty easily in smooth. If we're specifically working on standard it does change the feel a bit.

 

[skwiggy]

I usually practice in practice shoes. I wear my heels for a full week before a competition to readjust.

There is definitely benefit to always practicing in heels, but the cost to my back and my feet outweighs the benefit.

 

[singndance]

90% of the time I wear my latin or smooth shoes to practice, but every now and then I will practice in this great pair of ballroom sneakers I have. Particularly when I am practicing a lot of swing kicks, or if I need to keep the pedicure intact.

 

[tanya_the_dancer]

depends on the style of dance, in latin I practice 95% of the time in the same brand/model shoe I will compete in. in the other styles I wear practice shoes until a couple months before a comp...

Interesting. I am not much of a latin dancer, but I feel like latin/rhythm would be the styles where I would be OK with wearing lower heel for practice and lessons. Smooth and standard - not so much - maybe for solo practice (although I haven't tried this), but not for the lessons, because lower heel changes my height, and I am only 5'4" without heels and my teacher is 6'2".

Well, technically speaking I do all my practicing in practice shoes, BUT they are same brand and have same heel hight as my competition shoes. The only difference is that they are made of leather instead of satin and last longer.

 

[Piggles]

I use ballroom/latin shoes during my lessons and when I'm when I'm practicing (unless knee pain flares up). But I wear practice shoes when doing new choreography or in situations where I feel it's more social dancing than true practice time.

 

[TinyDancer109]

I always practice/take lessons with my comp shoes.. and never understood why anyone would use a different shoe to practice than the one they compete in... but after recently taking a workshop on samba and jive with Yulia, i can now appreciate why so many people use practice shoes! ouch! pain for days...

 

[Amanda Coyle]

I always practice/take lessons with my comp shoes.. and never understood why anyone would use a different shoe to practice than the one they compete in... but after recently taking a workshop on samba and jive with Yulia, i can now appreciate why so many people use practice shoes! ouch! pain for days...

Yes, the PAIN on our feet! Yikes! Part of the 'joy' of being a gurl dancer.

 

[Jananananana]

I practice in whatever I throw into my bag in the morning. One day it's ballet slippers, one day it's latin shoes - every day is a surprise!

 

[wyllo]

When I first started dancing I noticed a huge difference between practice shoes and heels. But now its not such a big deal. It does change my height a little (I dance standard) but that doesn't seem to bother my partner. So, I spend most of my time in practice shoes since they are more durable and easier on my feet.

 

[ash_sk8s]

that's pretty much my answer to most of their complaints!!!

Love it. That's like how I respond to my ice skating students who tell me "but I might fall..." I shrug and say "so?"

 

[wonderwoman]

that's pretty much my answer to most of their complaints!!!

Its the same attitude as the teacher I had in DE.. Yeah, that's hard but you're gonna do it anyway. Loved him!

 

[Yana]

I can't practice in anything but my Latin shoes. I've tried and it was very ugly

 

[tanya_the_dancer]

Love it. That's like how I respond to my ice skating students who tell me "but I might fall..." I shrug and say "so?"

LOL! This was the reason why I quit ice skating, though <nearly 30 years ago>. They started simple jumps and my self-preservation instinct was already too well-developed. But I was a bit too old when I started. Most kids in the group were 5-6 and I was almost 9.

 

[soshedances]

I'm about 50/50. A bunch of the spaces I used to use for practice had tile floors over concrete, which were 1) much more slippery than hardwood and 2) not well "padded" or whatever underneath, so the balls of my feet would really hurt after just a little bit.

So I wore dance sneakers (LOVE!) or a pair of jazz character shoes that had a shorter heel. My character shoes still had a suede sole, so on some floors, I couldn't wear them either. But they were my choice for socials because they were super comfy, and we were usually dancing on wood floors.

It was maybe 1/2 the time that I was on a good wood floor. When this happened, I always wore my comp shoes.

 

[soshedances]

Oh, about the height thing. Former DP was about the same size as I am, when I wore flats. When I wore heels, I was taller. Switching shoes definitely bugged him a lot! Always used to hear complaining, and had to keep adjusting how much I was into my knees.

Note to Self: Next partner should be taller!