Practice Makes Perfect

 

Practice Makes Perfect

That is a great old motivational statement don’t you think? For me it goes way back into my early childhood memories. My first dancing classes with Miss Wendy at Glendale School of Dancing taught me so much and not just that practice really does make perfect but also that imitation is not just a form of flattery but more importantly that you can learn so much but watching, copying and repetition.

My first tap class involved listening too. Of course ‘listening’ works better if you want to know how things are done. The class is the place to start and not private lessons. In a group you are with other people who want to learn to do the same things as you.

The class started with a short set four heels and four toes; one heel at a time starting with the right foot, tapped on the floor in front of you and then the other and repeated, then there were four toes when the right foot tapped the toe on the floor behind the other foot, again left, right, left, right. Later, came the arms, where for the heel steps, the opposite arm came forward with each tap while the other are when out to the side. Then with the toe taps, the arms go from side to side but with one arm higher and the other coming half across the body.

Good Toes Naughty Toes

There you have it the first basic step of tap dancing. This is for four or five year olds. Kids pick it up in no time. At the first ballet class the thing I remember learning was sitting on the floor with legs stretched out in front and when the music started we learned about good toes and naughty toes. The good toes were pointed and bad ones were flexed. Anybody reading this would at the very least, wonder where I was going with this, or else think that I had lost the thread of life and slipped into la-la or ga-ga land. No, I haven’t lost the plot after sixteen weeks of seeing nobody except my husband and cat inside the house. 

This was women only run in Richmond Park that my daughter and I did together 

 It was more that during our indoor ballet class that Steve and I have been doing regularly two or three times a week following instruction from the New York City Ballet work-out, that the voice over of ballet master often says to keep watching and trying to do what the dancers on the screen are doing but not to try too hard, not to stretch too far. The gentle voice simply say that with repetition week after week that it will get easier and once you know what the movements are and do not get left behind, that you can then emulate the form. It is a slow process. The message is little and often piece by piece you will gradually get the idea or see something you didn’t get before.

It is the same with anything, you can’t run before you can walk and you can’t run fast or long, without running slowly to start. You can’t run a marathon without gradually getting the miles under the belt. When people ask me for triathlon advice from the absolute beginner point of view, I tell them to join a club. That it is because it is so much easier to learn anything when you have other people around with the same idea.

The Human Race Eton Dorney Lake is excellent for lady beginners, closed road and lake swim.

Years ago I used to give a Ladies Beginners Running group weekly once a week in the park or on the promenade in summer time. We started with a walk together, chatting as we went so that everybody was comfortable. Then we stopped and did just a little stretching, nothing hard, just a gentle stretch. Then we would try a run of just thirty seconds and a one minute walk and repeat that. The ones in front would walk back to the slower ones before jogging on again. We didn’t go far, it was light hearted and fun. We did another little stretch at the end. We built that up to a one minute jog and a one minute walk, re-grouping each time on the turn back walk. Gradually the walk section got less and less and then the run got further. We kept that going being very careful not to scare the women away and by the end of eight weeks they were already getting together to have a midweek practice set in small groups on their own.

 

With triathlon, the hardest thing to learn from scratch is the swimming and that does need the person to keep on keeping on. Changing from breast stroke to front crawl is not easy and I am speaking for myself there. It took me four month to confidently swim a mile in the pool. The breathing is hardest to get to grips with and until the swimmer can relax and start to breathe in a normal pattern, as they do walking through the town or standing chopping vegetables they don’t get very far. Learning to completely exhale is the secret. You cannot get your lungs full of air if you have not blown all air out. Slowly does it.

Swimming is the most technical to learn from the beginning too. Beginners who try to teach themselves front crawl tend to look around to pool and try to copy somebody else but they are only seeing the recovery and not the more important catch-pull-push phase that goes on under the water and that so important exhalation. As well as in the water, swimming in front of a mirror is most helpful to get the arms and breathing working better. In our ballet class the voice often says, “And don’t forget to breathe”.

In lockdown, that Steve and I are still in for a while yet, we are doing two to three hours per day training. Still highly motivated. Still got our eyes glued on the future.