Why You Are Bad at Sports and Dancing
The Brain-Body Disconnection
The Principal reason is because you don’t know how to make your body obey.
Your body speaks a language of electrical signals. These control your movement. But they don’t always obey or understand the brain’s commands. When that happens, we might think we don’t have the intelligence necessary to be athletes or to move better or faster.
In the summer of 2005, I had to face my biggest fear. It was Saturday afternoon, my body was paralyzed, and I felt like everyone at the party was watching me. No matter how hard I tried to move, my body wouldn’t respond. At 15, I was a good swimmer, at least according to me. I had control of my body in the water. But on the dance floor, my body disconnected from my brain.
I had no idea how to dance. I told my body to at least bend my knees to a rhythm, but it said, I have nothing to do here. And that’s when I discovered that the body doesn’t always do what you ask it to.
My problem at 15 is very similar to that of someone who wants to learn or improve something in a sport but believes they’re a bad athlete because the body doesn’t move at the desired speed or precision.
The Challenge of Learning Movements
We want to know how to avoid the mistakes that we all make when trying to learn new or better movements. It’s very frustrating when your body doesn’t do what you ask.
Most of the time, the body, especially the hands, does exactly what we ask. We are used to having control of our movements, that’s why it’s so frustrating when the body does something different from what we want or at a slower speed than we would like. A very obvious example is when we want to run or throw a ball and the body doesn’t move as fast or accurately as we want.
We even try to find external reasons to explain our lack of coordination, strength, or rhythm. Science has made significant discoveries in the last decade about the connection between the brain and the body.
So, how can we learn to dance, and how can we get our body to obey more easily?
The Brain-Body Connections
As Skills N Talents, we dedicate ourselves to improving people’s body control in the water. We have experience helping hundreds of people around the world. From Thailand to Colombia. From ages 8 to 73.
In all the cases we’ve had, we haven’t found differences between ages or cultures. The body and mind have the same communication system, no matter where you come from. The problem is when that communication system, called the nervous system, fails or struggles to remember the connections.
The nervous system is divided into two parts:
The sympathetic increases blood pressure and heart rate. In other words, the heart sends more blood to the organs to fight or run. It also dilates the pupils to have a more panoramic vision and a quicker reaction to any danger. The parasympathetic is the opposite. It calms and relaxes the organs.
We are always oscillating between these two systems. When we inhale, we activate the alert system, the sympathetic. Exhaling relaxes us.
When the sympathetic nervous system is more active, the primitive part of the brain is activated. The amygdala. You can’t learn much when the amygdala is in charge; movements will be instinctive. The body does what it wants.
After that unfortunate afternoon when I danced like a battery-less robot. I practiced some dance steps in my room. Now, I believed I was ready for the next party. My friends forced me to go back to the dance floor. The result? The same battery-less robot dance.
Preparing the Body Step By Step
For the body to be open to learning new movements, it needs to activate the parasympathetic system.
The first step is to voluntarily accept the challenge. If someone is forcing you to learn a sport, your body will likely disconnect from your brain. (Why?) Gains and Sacrifices. If you accept the challenge, you still have to prepare your body for what’s coming.
Accepting the challenge does not relax the body, it only prepares it to receive new information more easily. That’s good because we don’t want a completely relaxed body. A completely relaxed body receives a lot of information but does not retain it.
In our swimming camps, we usually have two types of children. Some are completely focused and others are completely in play mode. Play mode is equal to relaxed mode. When we tell them how to move in the water, they do it perfectly and the next day they forget.
When I practiced dancing in my room, no one was watching me, and I was relaxed. But I forgot the steps within a few hours. When the body is very relaxed, it does not notice it as something important.
Forgetting is an important part of a healthy life. Your body forgets what it does not consider important for its survival. But it has no way of knowing what is important or what is not, so it is guided by the body’s state of alert.
If the body is alert, there is a greater chance of retaining information.
A Good Balance (And Tips)
¹If you want to know more about why these breathing methods work, I recommend this book. The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown.
The Language of The Body
When you feel that your body is on that perfect line. It’s time to speak the language of the body. That it’s movement. Without any kind of movement, the body has no life. The opposite is also true. We move more the more life we have within us.
There are two types of movements that our body makes. One is voluntary and the other is involuntary.
The heart’s movement is fully involuntary, while the diaphragm, the main breathing muscle, can be both involuntary and voluntary. Other muscles, primarily controlling the torso and limbs, are usually voluntary but can sometimes act involuntarily.
In general, the body learns to move itself when we are growing. It follows a very good learning trajectory until chairs and shoes arrive. The problem is that in modern life, the most important movements for our immediate survival are generally three things. The movement of the fingers, eyes, and tongue.
We become experts in these three types of movement from the moment we enter school. And that’s fine because without these movements we couldn’t read, write, or speak. And that’s why our body focuses on learning them and forgetting what it doesn’t use. The movements it forgets are those of the torso and limbs.
The Superpowers and Limits
Adaptation and communication. We can communicate ways to move better and faster. The connections are still there, they are just forgotten. To speak to a forgotten muscle, you must start with basic words. You must start with simple movements.
There is something important. Limits of your body (Strength, coordination, flexibility, pain).
I’m not telling you this to discourage you, on the contrary. I tell you so you can explore them and know what they are. Then comes the exciting part of discovering that those limits are not permanent.
Most are temporary, regardless of your age. If your body knows or thinks it knows that you are approaching your limit, its job is to protect you.
For example, it can send you pain from an injury that existed but is no longer there. Or it can control the speed of a muscle because it knows that the opposing muscle does not have enough strength to stop the movement.
Swimming, requires strength, flexibility, and speed. But it is useless if there is no balance and coordination in the water. And the path is different for everyone. That’s why we see so many different styles even though the goal is the same.
Motivation: a necessary key
A little motivation knowing the mental state you need, that you have to learn to speak movement, and that you can accept the challenge to surpass your limits, is always worth it.
Tell me in the comments what battles you’re fighting to get your body to obey.
For me (as you saw), It took 10 years of many dance tutorials on YouTube and many hours of dancing in my backyard and in my room, many attempts and laughs on the dance floor. And I am still learning to swim and dance better.
By the way, don’t forget to share this knowledge to others..
Thank you!