Stop Dancing Awkward At Parties! (5 Bad Habits to Fix)

Those are the things that I never want to see you do on the dance floor. I'm going to break down all of them. Those are some of the things that by the way I'm teaching clients in my paid program Conference Through Dance. They helped my students go from looking a bit awkward on the dance floor to looking like they know what they're doing and they can comfortably now blend in with others whenever they go out. Let's move on to the first very awkward habit. So what I often see on the dance floor is not great looking moves and what happens a lot of times, you probably notice that as well, we have like stiff upper body, stiff shoulders, arms might be a little bit rigid. If you don't notice that and fix it, it will affect how everything else is looking. For example, if my shoulders are rigid, if I'm like tensing because I'm trying to do the movement perfectly, it affects how the steps are looking, how everything else that I'm doing with the lower body, even if I added the hips, let's say, which, you know, the lower body here moves great. But what happens on tap? This is such an uncomfortable look and maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you can tell that my shoulders are just like crunched up, right? As you're dancing, doesn't matter what movement you're doing, I want you to pay attention to what's going on, especially with and then just like breathe and just even like shake it out, loosen up the arms, loosen up the shoulders, make sure you're not holding any tension there. This will make a huge difference. Not only the shoulders being rigid affect everything else that you're doing, but keep in mind when you're on the crowded dance floor and it's darker, people won't see your feet that much. They won't see the knees or hips. They see everything up top. So this is the first thing I want you to pay attention to relaxing when you're moving, when you're dancing. Bad habit number two is looking up when dancing or looking down. Very easy to fix. Looking up makes us look like we're thinking. We're thinking about what move to do next. We're thinking about rhythm. We're thinking about like, what am I going to do? You know, it shows that we're thinking, it shows that we're so just don't look up. Very easy fix. And then looking down makes us look very like timid, right? Because where your eyes go, the energy goes, right? So it's just like you're having a conversation with someone who's always looking down. They're not looking at you. So you don't know if they're really listening, if they're like into the conversation, they don't appear engaged and the connection is just not there. Same thing with dancing. So the best solution is, of course, when you're dancing, let's say with your friends, you're looking at them. Totally okay to look down from time to time. You know, you can look, for example, at a hip that you're moving. If you're moving the hips and then you're just looking straight ahead. If you're dancing with like a group of friends, you're going to look at them, but just not up all the time, not down all the time. And don't forget when you're dancing, also add a smile. This is like a bonus tip. Always makes everything look better. Bad habit number three is copying other people on the dance floor. You think it's helping you? I can assure you it's not. Unless you already know how to dance, then yeah. But if you're a beginner, you're just starting out, you're uncomfortable dancing, do not try to look for ideas of what other people are doing because those moves are not going to look good on you. If you're uncoordinated, if you're stiff, if you don't have rhythm, you won't be able to do those movements correctly and you will also be all stiff doing them. So then what's the point of even trying? Mind you, the reason we want to copy somebody's moves is because they look so good on them. But those people doing those moves, they've been doing them for the last 10 years, right? I do the same moves at every party I go to because I know what movements are comfortable for me, right? And which movements I feel best doing. So I repeat them. Natural thing to do. Same thing with a person you're watching. They repeat the moves that they are comfortable with. Again, if you don't have the skills, you don't know how to make those movements look good on you, you will look all over the place trying to copy a move that looks good on someone else. Does it make sense? So it's always best to have even a few go-to movements that work for you, that you practiced ahead of time and this would be a start. And I talk about this in my other video, I will link it below and definitely check it out. Rely on your own movements, your own skills. This is so much better than just looking at random people and copying random steps. Bad habit number four, having the arms just hanging there, not moving them at all, having them like stiff and dead looking. We don't want to do that. It doesn't mean that you have to know any fancy dance moves with the arms, not if you're a beginner. When you're dancing, let's say you're doing a simple movement, maybe like a dip or something, right? Basic. It's so much better to keep the arms loosely bent by your sides and let them kind of bounce with the body, so just respond to like the whatever the body is doing, than just doing that. Maybe it's more comfortable, but you don't have to have the skills to freaking bend your arms. It doesn't take that much effort and it makes the movement look so much better. I'll show you a couple more examples. Step forward with the arms loose, bouncing, moving loosely. I'm not doing anything specific. They just stay bent versus right? It looks totally different. I look shy, timid, like I'm not sure of what I'm doing. So this is always better. You can start like that. And bad habit number five is trying to do too much. Too much energy, being all over the place, too much rhythm, too many moves in one song, doing complex moves back to back and kind of forcing it. That doesn't look good. And people can tell when you're trying to do more than you should. So for example, if this is what I see a lot, beginners trying to do moves to kind of impress others, but one, they don't know these moves very well. And two, they kind of pack one song full of those advanced complex moves without parts where they just groove to the music. They look relaxed. They look like they're enjoying themselves. It's just a mess. Okay. So you don't want to be the person who is trying too much because then you will look all over the place and we don't want that. When you're dancing, it's totally okay to maybe do like a fancy move once in a while, but then you go to like basic grooving moves. After all, you're dancing at a party, you're on the dance floor, you're not on stage trying to, you know, like impress people by doing like a robot or something. Yeah, don't do it. This is bad habit number six. Yeah, I've seen that before. I hope these tips were helpful. Let me know in the comments. This is something that I help my clients inside my program every single day. I turn awkward social dancers into pretty decent ones. So I can help you enjoy dancing at any event that you go to, where in my program, we build permanent dance skills. So rhythm coordination, being able to have that body control, to move different body parts, to make it look natural, to make it look seamless, preparing you to be able to freestyle in social settings, because this is the style of dancing that every single person does on the dance floor. Learning choreography, the routines, choreography is not going to prepare you for dancing casually at a party. So we work on the ability of you being able to just spontaneously move to the music. If you want to work with me, if you'd like to find out more information about my program, I will include the link below to a free consult. Book it and let's chat. Let's see if we can get you ready for the parties coming up. And that's it for today. I will see you guys in the next tutorial. Bye.