At a time when making excuses feels more tempting than ever, Colleen Falco looks at how to combat these thoughts.
This transition from our weekly scheduled practices to hoping our self-discipline doesn’t fail us hasn’t been seamless. The lack of structure has left so many of us feeling unmotivated, uninspired, and has left some of us feeling like victims of our own shortcomings. Needing structure to stick to routine is common, and without an allotted practice time, it doesn’t happen. It’s easy to let your day get away from you without even realizing it’s happened. On the other side, Irish dancers tend to be incredibly ambitious, and they know they need to put in their everything, or they won’t be satisfied. This has left us together in self-isolation with a little bit of self-loathing and desperate for guidance.
We’ve been in search of finding a way to hold ourselves more accountable. Trying so many different methods of creating structure, and after many failures to stick to whatever the internet suggests we do, we have to get creative and try something that works for us, and hopefully this will help at least some fellow Irish Dancers. These tips are to ensure you’re practicing Irish dancing at home.
We can all be very talented when it comes to coming up with excuses. So, we need to eliminate the opportunity to make these excuses in order to be productive. It’s easy to find yourself saying things like “I don’t have the time”, “I hate putting my shoes on”, “I don’t have enough space,” or “I can just practice tomorrow”. It’s important to recognize what this does to yourself and your mentality. This will form a terrible habit that will only get harder to break.
First excuse to eliminate: I don’t have the time.
This is a false statement. What the statement should be is “I’m not making the time”. When it’s worded like this, you realize it’s actually your fault. You choose how to spend your time. Yes, we have obligations, but it’s really about what you’re making a priority. So, make a deal with yourself, and remember that even if you just practiced for 10 minutes, that’s 10 minutes more than if you did nothing. You can also try and make little changes to your daily tasks. For example, when you brush my teeth, go up on your toes. When walking around the house, turn out your feet. When going to bed, lay in a frog stretch. Yes, we want to do more than that, but it’s something.
“I just don’t have the motivation.”
Find it. It’s easy to get lost into binge watching a new show, and then you’ll look up and somehow, it’s 9:00 pm and you have no idea where the time went. So, do not put on the TV, at least not until after you’ve done everything you need to do. Those statements like “I’m just gonna watch one episode of New Girl, then I’ll practice”. That’s nonsense, if you have this problem, you’re openly lying to yourself. We all know the moment that show is on, there is no chance of getting off the couch. And if you’re finding it difficult to rely on your own self-discipline, there are tools to help you. You can try the App called UpNow to help with your mental state, which effects your performance across the rest of your life. Learn more about UpNow creating an audio specifically for competitive dancers.
“I hate putting on my shoes.”
This may seem trivial, but we all know the dancers that needs a roll of electrical tape to keep their heavies on, and the whole taping and untaping process is extensive and annoying, thus making it incredibly irritating to put on their shoes, leaving them severely discouraged to even consider putting them on. So, if that is you, instead of giving yourself to opportunity to make the excuse, buy practice sneakers that you can just slide on, and on days that you don’t even want to do that, dance light shoe in your socks, just drilling foot work.
“I don’t have enough space”
This problem is probably relatable to some of you and the others… we’re jealous of you and go ahead and skip to number five. For those that think you have no space, make it. It’s as simple as buying a piece of plywood to lay outside, and if you don’t have a large car, Home Depot will cut the wood for you, so there’s another excuse eliminated. If you have an issue of tile floors you or your parents don’t want you to damage, get children’s play mats and place them underneath a piece of vinyl flooring you can buy for $50 at Lowe’s or Home Depot. Now you’ll have a designated dance space, add a mirror, and it’s like a little studio. You don’t need a whole studio space to practice, yes it’s preferable, but drills are so effective and Irish dance is basically all about the footwork. So, again there is no excuse.
“I don’t even know what to work on”
Don’t ever admit that to your teacher or even yourself, it’s so limiting. You know turnout, arches, jumps, knees, crosses, the Irish dancing essentials, but if you do find that you’re bored with what you’re doing, or you just really need instruction and direction with what to practice or ideas for exercises and stretches. There are countless resources for this. You can go on YouTube and find thousands of cross training videos that work for Irish dancers in Pilates and Yoga. Conditioning should be part of your dancing practice. There is a list here of resources for dancers. There are also those Irish dance instruction videos like Jean Butler’s Master Class all accessible on YouTube.
So, as you “just wish you practiced more”, or “had the time” or “found the motivation”, just remind yourself…
