How Do I Practice Salsa Alone?

Practicing my Salsa alone is one of the most important things that I have done. It gave me a chance to master the elements of Salsa that I could not focus on when practicing with a partner.

How do I practice Salsa alone? Practicing Salsa alone is one of the most crucial things you need to do to become a good Salsa dancer. This is the time to focus on Salsa technique and other elements that you never seem to get time to do when dancing with a partner. The following Salsa elements are key elements to focus on when practicing alone.

Foot Placement And Footwork
Timing Of The Salsa Dance
Leg Action And Hip Action
Arm Styling
Body Action

Learning salsa can be a difficult journey, but if you focus on the right elements of the dance, you can make it a much easier and faster process. Practicing salsa at home and alone was key in the success of my dance. I would just pick one of these important elements and obsess over it until I mastered it, and then I moved on to the next element. I am going to go over each element in detail in the hopes that this will streamline your practicing.

Why Practice Salsa Alone?

Practicing your salsa dance and key elements when you are alone will allow you to focus in on your own dance. That is one thing that a lot of dancers forget to do, is to work on their OWN dance.

You have to remember that you are two individual people dancing two individual dance roles next to each other. When each partner masters their own dance role and styling, the partnership improves dramatically.

The fact is, it is impossible to get better at YOUR dance if you do not take the time to work on YOUR dance. Don’t get me wrong, you can dance a great dance without taking the time to practice alone. But just imagine how much better you could be if you both took the time to work on your individual dances and practiced alone.

To me, practicing alone is not an option, it is a requirement to get really good at salsa.

What Elements Of Salsa Should I Practice Alone?

I am going to go over each element of salsa that I practiced alone. I would literally take one or two elements of the dance and practice them relentlessly until I mastered them and then I would move onto the next element.

This is what you have to do. You need to obsess on one thing. When you do this, you will be surprised on how quickly you can master something. Once you master it alone, you need to incorporate it in your dance while dancing with your partner.

Its one thing to master an element and be able to do it slowly and on your own, its entirely a different challenge to be able to incorporate into your dance while dancing full speed and with a partner.

Salsa Foot Placement And Footwork

Firstly, when practicing your foot work, it is important to take one pattern of salsa and incorporate your footwork into it. For example, the cross body lead would be a great pattern to focus on with your foot work since this is something that you do constantly in the dance.

So lets take a look at the elements of footwork. When placing your feet to each step its important that you do it in a deliberate way as opposed to just falling to each step.

You don’t want your feet to look as though they are just pieces of meat flopping around from your ankles. The best way to solve this issue is to reach with your foot and place it exactly where it needs to be before transferring your weight.

Once your weight begins to transfer you will no longer have an option to place your foot. What I used to do to practice this, is to tap the ball of my foot on the spot that i was stepping to and then i would move my weight.

I would repeat this action for each step that I took. At first it will be very slow going, but eventually you will speed up your foot placements followed by your weight transfers.

Next thing to focus on is the delaying of your foot from moving to the next spot. This way your foot quickly moves from one position to the next.

This will give you the look of not only fast foot work, but exact foot work as well. One thing to remember as well, is that your weight should always be more to the inside edges of your feet and more specifically to the inside edges of the balls of your feet.

This will give you more balance and also gives you a cleaner leg line that brings your knees in rather than angled out like a cowboy.

One last thing, you should focus on making small steps. Small steps are very important and it allows you to transfer your weight easily from one foot to the other. Its much easier to go bigger with your footwork rather than going smaller.

Master these footwork elements and watch your dance improve dramatically.

Timing Of The Salsa Dance

Timing of Salsa is everything. You must master the timing of the dance. Step on beat one, step on two, step on three, hold on four and then you will repeat by stepping on beat five, step on six, step on seven, hold for eight. Or you can use “quick, quick, slow”.

The important thing is that you maintain this timing throughout the whole song that you are dancing to. The hardest thing to recover from in Salsa dancing is getting off the timing of the music.

That is when things tend to come to a halt and can make your dance look very awkward very quickly. The best way to practice this timing is to throw on some music and step to the timing.

You need to do this until you don’t have to think about it. If you still need to think about the timing or you tend to get off timing now and then, that is a sign that you need to continue practicing.

Timing is everything! If you cant keep the timing to the music you are already done before you even started.

The timing needs to be something automatic that happens in your body without you even think about it. If that is not the case, then you need to keep practicing.

Salsa Leg Action And Hip Action

Leg action is exactly that, Leg action! The nice thing is that if you get your leg action down, the hip action will automatically present itself. If you want hip action, then you need to practice your leg action.

The best way to get leg action is to move your weight onto a bent leg while straightening the leg you are leaving behind. The best thing that illustrates this is the leg action we use when we are climbing stairs.

When we take a step to that first stair step, it is onto a bent leg and the leg left behind is completely straight. Our weight is over the leg that is placed on the step. If it wasn’t we would fall backwards as we pushed our leg straight to go to the next step.

This is exactly what is done in Salsa and other Latin dances. We move our weight on top of a bent leg when we place our step. The leg left behind will go completely straight.

This action of our legs bending and straightening will create our hip action. It is automatic. The other thing that will exaggerate the hip motion is by keeping our weight to the inside ball or edge of our feet with our toes turned out.

This is called Latin feet. It is the same action that you will see tight ropers use on the tight rope. This Latin action with our feet combined with the bending and straightening of our legs will give you all the hip action that you need.

Later on when you master this action, there are ways to improve your hip action, but it needs to be built on this foundation.

Salsa Arm Styling

Ok, now its time for a little arm styling. This arm styling is the basic arm styling that is used in salsa and reflects the body action used in the dance.

When your arm styling is a direct result of your body action it will not only look natural but will also add an element of balance to the dance.

Allow your arms to hang down by your sides in a natural and relaxed way. Raise your forearms up directly in front of you leaving your elbows right where they are.

When you transfer your weight to your right leg, allow your body and elbows to shift to the right as well. Remember, you are shifting your weight to a bent leg. When you shift your weight to the left leg, your body and elbows will shift slightly to the left as well.

This action with the body and arms shifting to the left and to the right along with the leg action, will remain consistent throughout the dance.

Salsa Body Action

This body action is something that remains constant throughout the salsa dance. It is nice because it compliments our leg action, hip action, arm styling, and initiates each step you take.

When i was talking about foot work and placing your step before transferring weight, the thing i purposely left out was body action.

The fact is, before anything moves , it is our body action that shifts slightly to the left or slightly to the right. Our body initiates the movement first, and then our foot is placed immediately followed by our complete weight transfer.

This is very important that things happen in this order. Our body is constantly shifting from side to side from bent leg to bent leg as we transfer our weight immediately following foot placement.

This is tricky to get, but with lots of practice by yourself, it will eventually become automatic. The nice thing is that things eventually fall into place faster and faster the more you learn.

I’ve Mastered A Salsa Element On My Own, Now What?

Its one thing to master something on your own slowly, and without doing it with your partner to the speed of the music, but its entirely a whole different ball game incorporating what you have mastered with your partner and to the full speed of music.

This is crucial that you do this. You both need to allow yourself this time to incorporate these newly mastered elements into your dance.

Once you have done this and accomplished this Salsa element on your own and performed it with your partner, then its time to start working on the next element.