CAT | Team Troubles
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How to make practices run quickly, yet effectively
No comments · Posted by Drill Obsession in All Articles, Instructing, Practicing, Scheduling/Planning, Team Troubles, Uncategorized
This is a follow up to my previous post: how to increase productivity at practice.
The first step towards making practices run by quickly and effectively is to eliminate all wasted time. Try these things:
1. Start early. Get practice over with. No one wants to practice on a Saturday afternoon! People generally prefer getting practice over on a Saturday morning so that they have time to do other things. If you practice after school, get straight to practice. Allow 15 minutes for everyone to change and get ready. Once fifteen minutes is up, start warming up immediately.
2. When you start practice, start for real! Don’t say that practice is starting at 2:00 when you don’t actually do anything until 2:30. When you say that it is time to practice, start moving and get going.
3. Plan practice. Have an agenda ready. Know exactly what needs to be worked on. You know how teachers sometimes have “lazy days” where they have no plan for their students so they show a video? Don’t be one of them. Be prepared with an agenda, and once practice starts, work on that agenda immediately.
4. No down time. I emphasized this in my previous post. Team members do get close and talkative, but that can happen outside of practice. Do not tolerate chatter, and make it stop before it gets too loud.
5. When you need to talk, everyone needs to listen. So, the team just finished doing the routine and you just saw some mistakes that need to be worked on. Immediately tell everyone what you saw, and how they can improve. Make sure that everyone is listening and not talking to each other. If you allow people to get up and get water and talk to one another, they stop listening and you lose the team’s focus. Tell them about their mistakes and get straight to fixing it.
6. Make a team decision on breaks. It is your choice whether or not you will permit breaks (usually these are about 5 minutes). For some teams, it seems to restore focus and after the break, people are ready to work again. For other teams, it just puts everyone in a talkative move and takes away the focus. Experiment with this, and see how it works out. Ask the team for a vote. Remember, though, that adding in a break is basically adding in a few extra minutes into practice. Naturally, with a break, you will leave practice a few minutes later than without one.
7. Do not tolerate tardiness. If everyone knows what time practice starts, then everyone should be there at that time and ready to warm up. Of course, every once in awhile, we forget or wake up late or other circumstances come up. If a team member is constantly showing up late to practice, have a talk with her. If the behavior continues, then she is not committed enough to be a part of the team.
8. Take notes on performances. Rather than having the team perform and stopping them whenever you see a mistake, just take notes on the things you see. If a certain angle needs work, jot it down and discuss it later. It is usually a better idea to take several notes and tell everyone about their mistakes when the time permits. When members keep stopping in the middle of the routine to listen to your comments, they don’t build endurance.
9. Find a way to get to formations quickly. If you don’t have a planned way to get into formation, it can take a long time. Getting into formation usually takes a few minutes when you are unsure about what to do. If possible, place tape on the floor so you know exactly where to go and don’t have to space yourselves out manually each time. Make sure everyone knows exactly where to go when you say get into “so and so” formation. If someone is confused or doesn’t know where to go, she is wasting precious time. By getting to formations quickly, you can save plenty of time each practice.
Implement these and see how much time you can save!
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How to increase productivity at practice
3 Comments · Posted by Drill Obsession in All Articles, Instructing, Practicing, Scheduling/Planning, Team Troubles, Uncategorized
Here’s some tips about how to get the best out of practice in the least time.
Tip 1: Make sure that you’re not overpracticing. If you practice 24/7, you’ll just be tired, not motivated, and you may actually retrogress because of this. In general, practice for three days a week and two hours each session sounds about right. Don’t go crazy about practice. When I was on the drill team, one of our rivals at competition used to practice in the morning before competitions, and eight hours on Saturdays. That’s just overworking it. It’s unnecessary to do that to your team–and to yourself!
Tip 2: Don’t do any unnecessary practicing. Read about this in my article about endurance.
Tip 3: Come to practice prepared. If you are a leader and forgot to bring the music, or do not have clothing to practice in, then you have let the team down and already decreased the rate of productivity at practice. Bring everything and have it ready to go by the time practice starts. In the case that you don’t come to practice unprepared (which should rarely happen), don’t use it as an excuse to waste practice time. If you don’t have music, for instance, just count out the routine.
Tip 4: Don’t waste practice time. Start when you intend to, and not five minutes afterwards. Of course, part of having a team is bonding with one another, which results in sometimes talkative practices. Try to eliminate this by not having any “down-time”. By this, I mean keep working and don’t stop for a team talk. If team members are dancing, they are unable to talk to each other because they’re focused on dancing, so keep the focus, and don’t let it stray (and as a leader, don’t lose your focus, either!). If you are a captain or other team leader, remember that you are a model. If you initiate side conversations, then everyone else will. Be a role model, not a hypocrite. After reading this tip, you might think: “well, how will the members improve if I don’t stop them from dancing and tell them their mistakes?”. Well, here’s the answer: stop only when you absolutely have to, and don’t allow anything else to happen. Most practices work in a similar fashion–you do the routine, and when you’re done, you listen to what the coach has to say about your performance. But, usually the case is more like this: you do the routine, get a drink of water, talk to a friend . . . then go listen. Change that habit–eliminate the “down-time”. One drink of water per 1.5 hours is enough to keep you hydrated, unless some special circumstance calls for more. Practice should be like this: perform the routine, walk directly to the coach and her his/her opinion–no down-time. Of course, each team has a different practice method and might not run this way, but in general, your goal is to keep the water breaks and talking to a minimum.
Tip 5: Be happy, and in a good mood. This always makes things go faster because people are happy to get things done. Come to practice refreshed. If you had a bad day, pretend to start anew. Do not let any unimportant aspects of your personal life distract from your performance. Naturally, when everyone is happy, everyone tries harder. So keep up the good mood at practice!
This is just a start of my list. I will be updating this post later with more tips; I hope that these help your team!
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20
How to Mix Music
1 Comment · Posted by Drill Obsession in All Articles, Choreography, Team Troubles
I know this is a huge issue in drill. Who will mix the music if I can’t do it? If it needs to be done professionally, how will we raise the money? Well, don’t be discouraged to mix music. Really, it’s very simple.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Get a music cutting program
I’d recommend Adobe Audition, as this is very simple and the only one that I’ve used. It has more than enough functions to mix any dance routine.
2. Play with it
Really! Just press the buttons and see what your program is capable of. To edit a music file, import that file from your computer or CD (remember where you saved it!) and view in under the single track view. It’s pretty self explanatory, in Adobe at least. When you play the music, it starts from the yellow line and goes till the end. The white line will indicate which part of the music it is currently playing. Listen to it, and cut off the parts you don’t want by highlighting and deleting (ctrl+X). You can zoom in and out to be more accurate. When you’re ready for the next song, go into the multitrack view. Drag the first song into one of the rectangles starting from time 0. This will be the start of your mix. Once you’re done cutting the second song, add the right next to the first or even overlap it and create fade effects. I’m not going to go in-depth, because I’m sure you can figure it out. It’s very simple. If you want to slow the music down, just find that option in the menu. It’s all written there for you! If you can’t figure something out, comment and I’d be happy to help.
3. Find a tutorial
There are many people who have websites dedicated to teaching you something. Some examples might be how to edit pictures in photoshop and how to create 3-D pictures in Rhino. Whatever it is, I’m sure that someone has written about it. Search for one in google (or yahoo, msn, etc.)
See, it’s not so hard. Now you can go mix your own music 
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Consistent Schedules
No comments · Posted by Drill Obsession in All Articles, Instructing, Scheduling/Planning, Team Troubles
I know I write about consistent schedules a lot, and I can’t stress how important it is!
Lots of dancers never have time for anything, and this is a somewhat true statement. Mostly the problem with scheduling is in high school, where it can sometimes be hard to find places to practice all the time (though this is only an excuse to not have practice–read Finding Places to Practice). With a consistent schedule, this won’t be the case. The reason that dancers don’t have the time for anything is because of inconsistency in their schedules. Dancers have problems finding jobs when they don’t know when they’re busy with dance! You can’t tell your manager that you are sometimes busy Mondays-Saturdays. Dancers also have hard times joining organizations as there is never a clear indication of when exactly they are busy. If you have an inconsistent schedule, you can never know if you’ll be able to make the club meetings after school on Monday. Why not keep your schedules consistent? Jobs and school are mostly consistent, right? Imagine your school starting at different times everyday, and your job also starting at different times everyday. It just doesn’t work out that way. When a dance schedule is inconsistent, there is almost no time for other activities besides school. I strongly encourage your team to keep a consistent schedule! It makes life so much easier.
If you do change to a consistent schedule (which I hope you do!), tell me about it! Leave a comment! Trust me, it will change your life, and you and your team will be much less stressed.
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