Tips for Success | Calming Nerves Before Dance Competition
Congratulations, you made the dance competition team! That’s a cool accomplishment in its own right, but now that you’re here you need to perform in the spotlight. That could have you feeling nervous. Today, we are going to go over some tips from a former professional boxer that can help in calming any nerves you might have about performing as the center of attention.
Dance competition or gymnastic routine, these tips help
These tips won’t just help you in a dance competition alone, these will also help with performing a gymnastic routine. DansationsWNY, unlike many other local studios, offers gymnastics and acrobatics in addition to its stellar dance programs. This combination of talents keeps you well-conditioned no matter the time of year and will help you excel in both!
Look at an olympic-class athlete like Simone Biles, one of, if not the best, gymnasts out of America in its history. She has a blend of dance in her gymnastic routine, helping her win gold medals and world competitions.
Be prepared and have the right conditioning
The first and arguably most important thing is to be prepared. When you’re prepared for a competition, you’re going in with a built-in advantage of confidence in yourself and ability. You can’t control the outcome or how you or anyone else is scored, you can only influence it by performing to the best of your ability. What you can control though, is how prepared you are.
Related to that is to have the right conditioning. Pure talent will only carry someone so far. The late Herb Brooks, coach of the Miracle on Ice olympic team, once said “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” Those words rang true yesterday, still do today, and will keep doing so tomorrow. Conditioning and work is key to any competition, and going in with the best conditioning possible by your hard work gives you the best shot of success that you have control over.
Trust the process
Perspective is important. Remember, this competition, while important to you and your team, is not life or death. If you lose, you’ll get better and move on to the next competition. Realizing this is a key step to getting comfortable performing and therefore better at it. If you’re confident and know that not being first isn’t the end of the world, the results start to follow.
Focus on the process. The more focus you place on the outcome, the more you get away from how you got to this spot to begin with. Trust the process, and keep it simple. You don’t want to be thinking of too many things at once, pick a few that you need to do well, and let your subconscious handle everything else.
Have fun!
Finally, have fun with it. The reason you’re even here is to have fun. If winning is all you care about and the fear of losing gets to you, the fun stops with it. So many things go into any dance competition or gymnastic routine that are beyond your control which could result in not placing first. What makes you love dancing or doing gymnastics? Nobody can remove why you do what you do. If you’re not having fun on the floor, then you’re doing yourself a disservice doing it in the first place.
Learn more
Hopefully these tips help you calm any nerves you have heading into the next competition. Dansations is the best dance school in WNY and we even offer gymnastics, acrobatics and tumbling! Reach out to learn more via our contact form. Ready to register? Head to the parent portal now! Stay up to date with our social media!