Let’s talk about the number one killer of good dancing, rhythm, and natural body movement. It is called Excess Tension. ET ( excess tension, not the funky looking alien who rides a bike) it is like a disease or an infection that can spread throughout the body and dramatically affect your ability to move, react, adjust and dance. In other words, swing like a badass!

As you may know, I like ‘golden rules’ and today I am going to share with you my golden rule for body tension.

BODY TENSION: Use it, or loose it!

Sounds simple, but what exactly does this mean. Well, for example, if you were to hold something heavy in your arms, you would feel a lot of tension build in you body to hold the object. Try picking up your friend or a chair and holding it for a few seconds. When you set it down, you should feel all the tension leave your body and hopefully would return to your previous state of being chilled out. This flow is very natural, especially if you give the body a second to adjust to its new situation. The fact is your body reacts to the things you are doing, picking up a chair, just standing there, running, walking, etc. These reactions are most natural when it is trying to achieve some sort of goal and all the necessary adjustments will take place without much thought.

As a spectator you would probably not question why a person holding a chair looks more tense then the person not holding a chair and visa versa. Just like we never don’t look at the front page of the sports section of a news paper and comment that the players look awkward in the photo showing raw action. You probably wouldn’t even think about tension at all as an observer, because everyone is at their own optimal point of relaxation for what is is they are doing, especially if they are pros at doing what they are doing.

On the other hand, if you were observing two people standing there, one tense as if they were holding a chair but not, and the other just standing there naturally, you would probably wonder what was wrong with the dude who was carrying excess and unused tension in their body. So this is where we can apply the rule, the guy with excess tension has two things he could do in order to fix his little problem. 1) Pick up a chair to justify having all the tension, or 2) let go of the unused tension and just chill out. Sounds simple, but while dancing why do we have so much trouble doing this?

Releasing excess tension is the number one physical difference between professionals and amateurs doing the same action. Try to visualize 5 people all repeating the same action you can understand what I am talking about.

For example, lets take 5 rhythm guitar players with different levels of experience; 30 years, 5 years, 1 year, 1 month, 1 week. We line them up and have them play the same tempo and chord. As you move down the line of experience, the main physical difference that you would see is the level of unnecessary tension in their body and arm to play the chord at the given tempo. It is this excess tension that will dramatically affect the way the guitar sounds, how long and consistently the player can sustain the rhythm for, and how cool he looks while doing it. Does this make sense?

Line up a pro lindy couple and 10 student trying to copy their swing out. Assume everyone knows the same footwork, directions and mental information necessary to do the swing out. The physical factor that will separate them all is the ET problem. We would see the same problem as with the guitarists, the pro couple with no unnecessary tension in their body would be dancing the best and probably look the most natural while the students would contain different levels of excess tension causing them to appear unnatural and be unable to execute the movement as well. When I am teaching, excess tension is the main problem I see. When I see ET, I don’t need to be dancing with the person to know that it probably doesn’t feel right either. Feel and style are so directly connected that is is honestly hard to have one for real, without the other.

Why does ET mess up body movement? What is physically going on that causes the movement quality to go down?

Simply it works like this. The body is made of muscles. You move when you contract the muscles and release the tension to allow for the body to change shape. The process repeats making movement the constant building and releasing of muscle tension. When you hold tension in you body, or “don’t release”, you can no longer do two things. 1) Change shape for movement and 2) Re-contract to create the power for the next movement. It just prevents the whole workflow. If you want a full breath of fresh air, you need to empty your lungs first to completely fill them. If you want full movement, you need to release after contraction. If you want effortless power, you need a full contraction. Does this make sense?

What causes excess tension and how to get rid of it is a whole other article, but the problem still remains, that ET messes up your swing. So if you can find ways to release excess tension at all times, you will dance better. It is a good goal to have while dancing, cause when you move in that direction, things get better, feel better and look better. It is amazing on how many other things people will focus on in order to get better when they are so unrelated to the big problem. Focus on releasing tension and keeping on target, it is a simple focus, but one that will produce good results when well executed.