Ingenious Ways To Make Your Athletes Dancing Queens!

Shakeem Soanes is a 28-year-old choreographer, tumbling coach, and college-educated marketing student who runs Dream Choreography and works with teams all over the country of different levels.

Shakeem’s professional network has hundreds of coaches who use choreography services annually.

Many of his network members reach out for advice on having better performing and better learning athletes through posts, with questions such as “How can athletes pick up movements the first try” and “Would you recommend adding more time to choreography sessions?”

Learning and executing choreography quickly is an area you can help your athletes improve. Take 5 minutes to look below and see how!

• DON’T Wait For Someone Else To Do Motions

Athletes after being taught a sequence will often wait until someone else is doing the motions in front of them and synchronize their movements with that person while watching them.

Then once they try without that person they were watching, whether it’s the choreographer or a teammate, they are lost without them.

In order to get your team to save time and become efficient you need to get their muscle memory better! Learn with what you see but remember it with the body.

Encourage your athletes to practice as soon as they can without relying on others as soon as they are instructed. Consider this taking the training wheels off and you’ll see the results quickly!

 

• Fail Forward, Then Forget

The choreographer’s job isn’t only to meet the skill level of the team they are working with. It’s also to push those limits and help the team grow. Sometimes athletes will not be able to keep up.

It may be a concept that’s new or a skill the athletes are messing up. Sometimes choreographer’s move on before everyone gets it to save time, then the athlete is even further behind when the new part is explained.

Coaches and athletes are usually trained to make every little thing perfect but being able to be okay with “almost there” and proceeding is important.

There are month’s after choreo where kids can figure it out.

Use water breaks, or times where that kid isn’t being taught, to clarify, correct, and help, but don’t let it slow down the team from learning the routine.

 

• Stop Moving And Just Watch

Sounds like what you aren’t supposed to do right? Earlier we talked about how the eyes can be bad!?!

The thing is, choreographers aren’t experts in details, they are experts in movement and creativity. There are many visual details that will never be told to your team verbally.

Imagine going to a session and having a choreographer that explained every little detail using words, a power point, brought a book on choreography that they passed around. Sessions would never end.

So, have your kids know to breathe for a second every time something is being taught and take a second to watch. Watch the upper and lower body, look for body language, and how fast or slow they are moving. The more present you are the better!

Tell them these things and watch them grow!

 

• Learn Their Favorite Team’s Dances

Just like making a Tik Tok, or asking parents for what you want, things your team kids know how to do extremely well, learning how to take in choreo quickly takes practice.

Learning dances at home through watching YouTube and picking up the movements is extremely tough and time consuming. Especially since the way those kids are learning can’t explain and break down anything.

They’ll pick up skills that will make the actual sessions easy-peasy!

 

• Use Different Choreographers For Different Teams

Using different choreographers for different teams will help expose your kids to different styles and qualities of movement throughout the years.

This will help them help each other over the years and create more well-rounded athletes. Whether they are learning emphatic stomp movements, or sassy snap-filled motions your athletes will be able to pick up the meaning and move with precision!

It also gives the choreographer more to work with and a freer range of creativity.

 

For tips on what you can do as a coach yourself to help your choreographer check out our first post!