To Thy Own Self be True

Need to close out the dance week since I was coming off an interesting coaching lesson so we might as well talk about what happened next.

Thursday night, the studio was doing an open house where they open the studio up to all comers. If you’ve had a friend who was always curious about the whole dance thing, this is a way to get an introduction without a commitment. They do a group class and then it becomes a party with some demonstrations and discussions about the Famous Franchise system.

I can’t remember the last one but it seemed like a lot of the current students weren’t sure what to expect. It seems odd but we really didn’t get back to “normal” until early April of this year so I don’t think they had done one of these since the pandemic. Got a big turn out of current students but not a lot of new faces. Probably a combination of Omicron cases and a cold winter night keeping people away.

Anyway, they like to do student demonstrations to show the newbies what is possible. I had already agreed earlier in the week to do a Rumba to show off the Silver level. There was supposed to be someone else there but they didn’t show up so PJ and I got to do a little solo. Never miss a chance to show off.

The party was fun. Before Christmas, we had a relatively even balance of men and women but, for some reason, there were many more women than men at this party. That made it a busy night for me.

Friday was my next lesson and the first opportunity to work on the things that were brought up on the coaching lesson. It could have gone better.

One of the things that really frustrates me is when you understand what to do but you can’t make your body do it. Like it can’t figure out how to move the parts they want you to move and not move the parts that aren’t supposed to move. Plus it isn’t easy if you can’t really feel the difference between the “good” body position and the “bad” body position.

And then, as I was trying to figure it all out, I must have been moving certain parts in ways they weren’t supposed to move. Got this sharp pain in the shoulder trying to do one move. I’ve got some aches in that shoulder anyway – probably have done something to it and this just aggravated the heck out of it.

We did Tango and Waltz and the Waltz seemed easier than the Tango and less of a problem for my shoulder. I’m not sure how this is going to work going forward. I can feel some soreness and tightness right now which is two days post lesson. Of course, I was also shoveling a little snow today so maybe that didn’t help.

Right now, competitions are not in my plan. So why would I start working as if I was a competitor? Good question. It does come back to my overall goal which is to just by the best I can be. Just have to figure out how to move the parts without causing pain.