When I began dancing salsa I had this delusional idea that 12 years of ballet with much of that at an elite level meant that I could skip all the beginner levels and go right to intermediate. In one sense that is true. I was able to skip a lot of things that people new to dance had to learn from square one, like musicality and body awareness. But much of what I learned as a ballet dancer prepared me very poorly for salsa.
I use this example to show that sometimes we think we can rush things and get ahead of ourselves and this is the shortcut to whatever we are wanting to achieve. To be an intermediate dancer, to compete at a higher level, to get that personal best in our sport, to make it to whatever team or earn that [insert colour] belt in a martial art. But I’ve seen with myself and with others time and time again that slowing down and getting the fundamentals right is the fastest way to move ahead towards those goals.
I’ve seen a number of dancers fast track their way into the intermediate level classes against our recommendation and fail to acquire intermediate level skills because they never learned their foundations. I’ve done this myself. Starting in intermediate instead of going back to level two and mastering the fundamentals. I’ve seen this in sports where people push ahead to personal bests without the mechanics to be able to do the move and overuse certain muscle groups, whether it be a sport based in throwing, running or swinging. As my coach, Patrick Moriarity likes to say ‘basics are everything and everything is basics’.
I teach a lot of private lessons to salsa dancers and I see a lot of athletes in various stages of rehab from injuries or chronic movement imbalances. The smartest of these dancers and athletes realizes that if they can’t access the range of motion they need to do the basics of their dance style or sport, then they have no hope of progressing past where they’re at. They gladly take a step back, refine their basic movements and come back able to gain new abilities as a result of this time focused on the fundamentals.
If I was to change anything about my progress in my salsa journey, it would be to heed the advice of my coaches in my second year and take the level 2 class to hone my basics. Take a few private lessons to improve my body motion. Don’t be in a rush to do crazy new moves but be in a hurry to refine the basics.
If there’s one thing I’ve heard the most often from my private students it’s ‘I wish I’d taken a private to fix this years ago! Then I wouldn’t be in this technical predicament I’m in now!’ So take the time. Take a break from the level you’re in. Go back to basics. You’ll thank me later.