11/8 - Full Investment = Full Benefit
After completing the warm-up sequence today, Christie had us sit down and gave us a few questions to consider.
1) In our practice, we sometimes think in terms of “workout vs. dance” and “sport vs. art”. How does this apply to our warm-up sequence?
I think for our warm-up sequence, we need to think of each exercise as both a workout and a dance. For each exercise, we are doing a dance as much as we are conditioning our bodies. If we approach each exercise with this mindset, we can get so much more out of what we’re doing. When we approach a warm-up as a “dance”, we focus on artistry and performance, while when we approach a warm-up as a “workout”, we focus more on technique and execution. If we approach a warm-up as both a “dance” and a “workout”, we get the best of both worlds.
2) Who’s succeeding and how can you take away from them?
There is one person in particular that I think has been consistently successful in class, and that’s Ciara. One thing I can take away from her is a method she uses to learn and retain material. Before one of the most recent technical assessments, Ciara sat down, watched all the recordings of the warm-ups, and wrote down the sequences in her own words in her notebook. I have done something similar in the past, and it worked well for me then so it might not be a bad idea for me to return to this practice of recording material for future reference.
3) How do you transfer the confidence you have when you make something into knowing something you haven’t made?
You put as much time and effort into knowing that thing you haven’t made that you put into that thing you did make! If we invested as much time in learning the warm-ups we didn’t make that we did in making our own warm-ups, we would know them all so well! But, as I have stated before, this requires that we take time outside of class to learn and review the material. We cannot possibly acquire the confidence we have in our own warm-ups in the other warm-ups by showing up to class without doing any sort of review or preparation.