Why not support your training with mental actions on the sofa!

Many artists, sportspersons mix their physical training with mental activities - so WHY NOT in tango? To systematically and regularly review the class summaries and repeat, rehearse the movements in your mind will support your development! I describe below how I do today and you can pick what you think could develop your dance.

All stuff at one place keeps me organized

As I mentioned earlier I am in the process of collecting all my workshop content and youtube favorites to a google sheet that I call for Figure Library. I am halfway now with a few hundred entries. Having all this stuff in one place gives me better control on my coming learning. In the Library I have given every figure a name or a short description that identifies it. We are used to it - we started with ochos and americanas, didn't we! For me just reading the list of the figures activates the memory and reveals parts I have forgotten but it's easy to click the url and see the video again. When the library got larger it has been easier to use google mail to organize the review process!

Fast rehearsing with Gmail!

I choose the entries I want to work with and copy the two Library columns - figure name and url - and paste it to a gmail and send it to myself. When I open the mail I can read the names and recall the sequences. There are also corresponding video thumpnails at the bottom of the mail and this offers the fastest way to run a video review. You click the first one, it opens and starts to play at the timestamp by a click on the space bar. After one or two seconds I move to the next video by clicking on the arrow at the right side. 

If you want to repeat click the letter J which takes you a few seconds backward. You can also check possibilities with  H L > < for easier navigation. Sorry to say but sometimes they don't respond - I don't know why - but a click on the video seems to activate the controls again.

This works really well for videos when you have only one figure on it. Sometimes I have several, but gmail offers just the first one on the list. On my lucky day I saved the earliest occurrence first and then I could continue to watch until the last timestamp was shown.

If you want to maintain 100 figures, maybe your content for one year,  you create just four emails for rehearsing. These emails have an individual URL address that you can paste in your calendar or you can save them in a folder at the Bookmarks bar. Just choose the day when you want to work on them! . . . . and this is scalable! In four years you have maybe 400 interesting figures to keep alive for the practica. What do you think?

All above is for youtube videos but I have saved facebook videos as well. However for them I don't have the time stamp function. I have read somewhere that this option exists but I have not managed to activate it. So today I save the figure with information about the moment it starts. Primitive but keeps me going!

Tango gym or repertoire training?

This training of figures is not for bringing all these patterns to a pista. It is based on a different way of thinking. It has lot of similarities with the gym or pilates workouts where I build my muscles and keep my flexibility by repeating a variety of movements. During those workouts I can do moves which I never use in my everyday life but the time I spend on mats and machines has had a positive general impact on my life. In the same way figure training has had a positive impact on my dance, increased the variety of different movements, mobility as well as my readiness for some new combinations in my dance.

My goal

When I start to work on a group of figures I have given them a starting skill value 0. To complete this level I have to know and be able to take the leader steps AND in my mind match them to the followers corresponding movements. This is the only limit I have clear now so the following levels will be defined later. There will be training to fix the figure to different music and to be able to keep the figure going on with distraction. After that I think I am ready to introduce them to a follower at a practica. This is the goal and I don't force these figures to turn up on a milonga flor. My experience so far is that they sometimes show up as fragments on a milonga and some easy ones can turn up as they are during a tanda.

My Solo training heading to the PRACTICA

After said that my practice is build up like this! I update weekly the material I want to review and train. There are technique videos, music training, groups of old figures and sometimes totally new figure groups. I also decide how much time I have for this training.

During the week I watch the videos once a day and review the figures in my mind. Even this means 10 repetitions a week. There are a few fundamental movements I physically do every morning and I keep them going for weeks before a change. A figure group which I know well can be run once or twice a week solo at home. With other words there are a lot of visual and mental activities on the sofa and some footwork on the floor!