Mental Toughness

6 Steps for Dealing with Sizable Disappointment

If there’s one thing you can count on in life, it’s that you’ll have to deal with disappointment. As a dancer, there are disappointments around every corner. Not making a team you had your heart set on, losing a competition you felt confident…
sport psychology

How Sport Psychology Can Change a Dancer's Life

When I was dancing 20+ hours a week and basically living at the studio, I was always focused on improving my technique. All my energy went into getting stronger at the ballet barre, working flexibility, and trying to nail that hard across the…
gratitude

20 Gratitude Prompts for Dancers that Will Touch Your Heart

Gratitude has become a bit of a buzz word lately, with people everywhere telling you to start a gratitude journal. What you may not know, is that there is quite a bit of science behind the power of gratitude. It’s not just that it makes you…

How to Perform Under Pressure and Radically Reduce the Chance of a Mistake

Unlike other sports, dance coaches don’t get to coach ‘during the game’. Instead, we have to watch from the side and hope that our team can perform under pressure. We have to simply stand back and hope they don’t make a mistake during…
dance team

How to Clean a Dance Routine and Improve Team Unity in Your Dance Team

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Love it or hate it, dance coaches spend HOURS every season cleaning routines for their dance team. Whether it’s just a surface cleaning for a quick tailgate routine or an in-depth down-to-the-pinkie-finger-placement cleaning of a competition…

What to Say When You Don't Know How to Help

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Sometimes it’s really hard to know what to say. As coaches, we feel like we should always show up and have everything figured out in front of our team. We are supposed to know how to help. But there's a fine line where you don't want…
how to develop self confidence

Discover 7 New Ways to Develop Confidence in Your Dancers

mental toughness

4 Mental Toughness Myths Holding You Back From Your Peak Performance

If you’ve ever set goals for your team at the beginning of the season, or encouraged your team to take the floor with confidence, or used visualization before competition then you understand the importance of mental toughness training.  …
new skill

Teaching a New Skill: How to Build a Dancer's Confidence

When dancers are learning a new skill, they are often overwhelmed, frustrated, and can experience a lot of self-doubts if they keep making mistakes. We understand as coaches that learning a new skill can take time, but our dancers often want…