Ep 42: Why Your Best Dancers Are Still Plateauing

Even your strongest dancers can hit a wall. They move well, perform hard, and seem advanced on stage, yet something is keeping them from reaching the next level.

In this episode of It's All Relative, Cara breaks down why talented dancers plateau, how choreography can sometimes hide technical gaps, and what teachers can do to create real progress without extreme training methods.

This episode is especially valuable for dance teachers working with competitive dancers, teens, seniors, or any student who looks advanced but is no longer improving.

In This Episode, Cara Covers:

• Why strong dancers still plateau
• The illusion of looking advanced on stage
• Why harder choreography does not always equal better technique
• How style can hide technical weaknesses
• Why older dancers resist rebuilding foundations
• How alignment helps the body move better naturally
• The difference between correcting symptoms vs root causes
• How teachers can create faster and healthier progress

Cara’s Tips to Apply This Week

1. Identify patterns, not one-off mistakes
   Notice the corrections you repeat most often in class. Those repeated issues usually reveal the real technical gap.
2. Shift corrections to the root cause
   Instead of only correcting what you see, ask why it is happening. Solve the source, not just the symptom.
3. Audit one combo this week
   Look at one across-the-floor or technique combo and ask what it is truly training. Make sure the exercise matches the goal.
4. Slow it down so dancers can feel it
   When dancers understand correct placement in their body, progress happens faster and sticks longer.
5. Choose clarity over intensity
   More tricks, harder choreography, and pushing harder are not always the answer. Clear training creates real breakthroughs.

Want hands-on support implementing these concepts in your studio?

Cara invites dance teachers to join RM Live 2026, happening July 17 to 19 in Orlando. This intimate teacher training event is designed to give personalized coaching, practical tools, and in-room guidance to help your dancers progress safely and effectively.

Learn more and register at therelativemotionexperience.com/rm-live-2026

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to It's All Relative, the podcast where dance technique meets purpose, progress becomes visible, and passion fuels the path forward. I'm Kara Dixon, co-founder of Relative Motion, and our team is made up of professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers here to make high-level training feel doable, measurable, and exciting again. Whether you're a teacher searching for fresh cues, a dancer craving more clarity, or a studio owner chasing a bigger vision, this space is for you. Each week, we'll break down complex technique, dive into real studio strategy, and share tools that spark transformation from the inside out. Because in this community, we train with intention, we lead with love, and we know that better dancers start with better teachers. So let's grow, let's move, and let's rise together. Because at the end of the day, it's all relative. Hi, friends, and welcome back to another episode of It's All Relative. I am so excited to be here with you today. Our topic today is going to be really great, especially if you are teaching advanced dancers and you're looking at them and wondering, okay, why are my best dancers still plateauing? Right. And we all get to this point. This is not an isolated feeling for teachers. We have our newer dancers that we expect are going to have these challenges. We expect that they're going to have the struggles that we see in newer dancers. They're just learning concepts, all the things. But we get caught wondering why are our best dancers plateauing? Why does it feel like they're just zooming up to a certain point? And then at that point, they plateau. And honestly, sometimes that won't be our best dancers. Sometimes we might see these plateaus when our babies are trying to move into that competitive level. We're looking at those nine to 11s and we're wondering, hey, why can't our babies push up? But then it's also, yes, our seniors, right? Our senior company, when we're looking at them and we're like, they were really excelling to a certain point. And now that I need them to really take this to the next level to reach their potential, obviously not for us, but we're looking at them, we see their potential, and we're like, we really want them to take this to their next level. They're plateauing. And what is that? And why is that? And what can we do as teachers to nurture our dancers? I think a lot of times this is where teachers get to the point and they just start looking for other things, right? Maybe they jump into more extreme training methods. Maybe they add 45 props to a class. Maybe they look at teachers that are kind of pushing the limit a little bit and go in that direction. And that's where we start to veer off from protecting our dancers, nurturing our dancers, getting our dancers to this point safely into this extreme training method, right? Just trying to get them the potential that we see in them that they're not yet reaching. We try to get them there faster. And I think that there's a lot of value in coming at that from a different angle. We see our dancers, we see that they can get to another level. How do we get them there? So today we're going to talk about a few things that I want us to dissect this together, really jump into this together and get some really good ways to get our dancers to the next level without that, right? To get our dancers to that next level in a healthy way. So the first thing is we need to look at the illusion of advanced. What is the illusion around a dancer being advanced? And I think a lot of times this boils down to teachers feeling like if we have harder choreography, it feels like that's making more advanced dancers. And there's been so many times as an adjudicator when I'm watching these dancers on stage and their style is so good and they're just attacking the performance quality and it's riveting. It pulls you in, and you're like, wow, these dancers are so advanced. I can't believe that they're doing work at this level. And then the interesting thing is, as an adjudicator, you get to see these dancers throughout the course of the weekend bringing just all of their best work. And so sometimes those studios that are really stylized, the attack that first time just blows you away. You're like, this is stage ready for the professional stage. But then you see those dancers coming on for the next piece and the next piece and the next piece, and they all have the same style. And you start to notice this style is also being a crutch for their technique. They're stylizing stuff in a way where we're not really noticing the technique issues. But once we see over and over again, some parts of the style are actually building the technique that way. Like, oh, the style is that their pelvis is tilted back. So now they get to do this moment where they're doing a pirouette, the pelvis is tilted. Well, in the first piece, you're like, oh, it's just a style choice. But by the fourth or fifth piece, we're looking at it and we're like, okay, harder choreography does not equal better technique. We're actually almost building the choreography to allow this technique to happen that's holding them back in the long run. And you start to, by the end of the weekend, the second they do the first movement, you kind of know which studio it is, and you're like, okay, I know what to expect here. And sometimes we see those same dancers in the solos, and they cannot pull together the technique, but in the bigger pieces with the energy and all of this, you almost overlook that they're building the style to compensate for this technique. Or maybe the style is the crutch, making the technique what it is and training the dancers to do certain techniques a certain way. But then we take away the style, we get them into a technique class, and the dancers really struggle. And so what's interesting was when I was on convention and I was adjudicating all weekend, and then I had relative motion tech classes on Sunday. What I did was I looked across the board at all the studios. Now, the interesting thing was one studio would come out and they'd have this specific style and they'd have these compensations. Another studio would come out and it would be a different style to what the dancers were doing. The corrections would be also very different. And so you wouldn't just have these same corrections going across the board from one studio to the other studio to the other studio. You would see brand new things that were either built around the style or the style was built around these things to make the dancers look really good, even when there were these technical issues. But the cool thing was building these RM Tech classes after watching a whole weekend, I would start to tell myself, okay, what are the patterns I'm seeing across the board throughout all of these studios? What am I really noticing? And then I would build my class to really target that, my team class would be like, what did I see the most in the teen performances? Seniors, what did I see the most in the senior performances? And try to find an underlying thread of one thing that I would really pick up on over the course of the weekend. Now, I wouldn't try to correct a hundred things in that one technique class, right? I would just focus on one thing. Across the board, I noticed that this city is struggling with groundedness. Let's build our whole class around that. Let's build our whole class around the fact that we were tilting our pelvis and pirouette. Let's, you know, let's build our whole class around that and make sure that we can understand it. And the interesting part of that was some of the dancers that had the hardest choreography, that had the most interesting style and were really advanced on stage. When we got them into this class and we were breaking down a basic thing that we had seen across the board throughout the course of the weekend, they really struggled. And so this hard choreography didn't necessarily mean that they had the strongest technique. Sometimes they were the ones that struggled the most to take the style out of it and really focus on the technical element. And so we want to take away the illusion of advanced based solely on how hard the choreography is. We want to make sure that the technique is not being pushed to the side, or that we're not building certain technical elements a certain way to accommodate the style, or let the style be a crutch for not actually understanding those techniques. And so that's the first thing. I want us to really like look at our dancers, our advanced dancers, and is our style helping them compensate for not fixing these technical elements or the technical elements being developed a certain way because the style and the choreography is building it a certain way and they're just moving their bodies around that. And is there anything we can do in our technique classes to help? We don't want to wash the style. We want our dancers to be stylistic, but we also want it not to take away from how strong their technique is. The next thing is this hidden breakdown. Where are our strong dancers actually compensating? And so we look at our dancers, and when they're little, they're almost just mimicking the shapes of the older dancers. So moment after moment after moment, they're building muscle memory around what they're doing. So a lot of times what happens is say they've always just whacked their leg up for bot on and the leg gets high, but you realize when they're older that they were lifting with the quad. Now, obviously, for hip flexion, you're lifting with the quad, but lifting with the quad without using their external rotators. And so now they get to this age where that's becoming hard. They can't get past a certain level because it's starting to really close off in the hip. Now, when they were little, their legs can do way more. But as they get older, it becomes this moment where it's a sticking point. And if they're not using their external rotators, they're not able to get the leg up anymore. So not only is that frustrating, but we start to notice they've built their muscles a certain way and now they're compensating here. And now that's what's making them stop. That's what's making them have trouble. And so we want to look at that. And actually, it's easier for the little dancers, right? It's easier for the littles to fix that because they haven't had years and years and years of muscle memory. They haven't built up so much muscle memory around that correction. But it's much harder for our older dancers. And we hear a lot of studios and we see a lot of older dancers giving pushback. They don't want to know really. They want to know, but they don't really want to know it if it means that their leg goes from 180 degrees down below 90, right? They want to wear the panels, they want to wear the apparel if they're getting the corrections fast, but they don't want to wear the apparel if they need to show the blue panel and now they can't hold that line. And now their line is so much lower than it was before. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you have to hit those corrections. You have to have your body in the proper alignment to make the technique happen. And so it's easier for the teens to be like, I don't want to do this. I don't understand why we have to do this, because for them, it's a step back. And there's a lot of resistance in that. And it makes me think of one story where I was working a professional job and I was away for like eight months or so. And I came back and I was in one of our technique classes at the studio. And I was doing this devilope at the bar, and my leg was up where my leg always is. And my teacher came over and she was like, actually, you're not using your turnout. Let's see where your leg should actually be. And it was literally below 90. I mean, my leg would be probably what you would consider a degree, right? And I remember leaving class that day just crying. And in my mind, and I can still remember this clearly, I thought to myself, well, I don't think I'm gonna do that. You know, I don't want to start there. That's too frustrating. And I had been performing professionally, right? And dancing basically all the time. But the thing was, I was not doing class. I was just doing the same shows over and over and over again. So my body could, the muscle memory just do these shows like in my sleep, but I was building bad muscle memory, just whacking your leg up there, just making these things happen. But when it came to actually breaking down the technique and doing something outside of that choreography, my technique wasn't there. And that's what we're talking about with harder choreography, does not always mean better technique. I came back in the studio and my leg externally rotated was below 90 degrees for my devotee, where before I had left for the contract, my leg was wherever I wanted my leg to be. And so we have to see where my dancers are actually compensating. In this moment, I was like, okay, I actually do need to train this correctly. I can't just go on faking these shapes. Well, how much longer can I dance if I'm not actually doing it correctly? But the cool thing is when I made that choice for myself, and there was resistance, I'm not gonna say there wasn't. So we can expect that with our teens. If I, as a full-grown adult, was giving the resistance to my teacher. But here's the thing: when we get our dancers in the proper alignment, the body wants to move within its design. It does not want to move with resistance, digging into itself and being forced. The body wants to move in its design. So the second that we get our dancers to actually understand the body's design, the body wants to do it. It will not take as long as we think to rework that muscle memory because the body is now working with itself. It's not working against itself, it's not forcing itself, it's now working with itself in the way it was designed to move, the way the muscles were designed to activate, the way the body was intended. And so it's not gonna take, even if you have six years of bad muscle memory, it won't take six years to fix it. It'll probably take a couple of months to fix it. I was just at a studio teaching and I was working with teens, and we were working on straddle tilts. And every time they wanted to grab the foot from the back, and instantly it started turning the leg in. The purple panel of the quad was facing the front, but they hiked that leg up there with a little force. And I was like, no, you don't feel it now, but you're wearing away at your hips. What we want to do is we want to see the blue panel every single time. I don't want you to grab the foot from behind because it instantly rotates your leg in. And also, this isn't an arm class. This is a lower body class. I want you to use the muscles of your lower body, not the muscles of your arms, to get your leg there. So no more grabbing your leg unless you're just trying to feel the placement center floor. Otherwise, I want it to be just your muscles working. And at first, they were frustrated. They just kept wanting to do it the way they've always done it. They wanted their leg to be where it's always been. But once I showed them, like, hey, this is where your leg normally is and helped them in the alignment and they'll watch, show your blue panels. This is where your leg could be. And they saw that their potential was way farther than what they thought was good before. Now they're like, oh, wait, my leg can do that. Okay, let me try that. And it was hard at first, right? They just wanted to whack the leg up there. And I'm like, no, we have to use the muscles. It has to be slow and controlled. But the first time each of those dancers felt it, they were like, whoa, not only can my leg get there, but I can get there this quickly. I saw my blue panel. They're celebrating, they're cheering each other on. It's like a party, you know, like they're excited for each other. They're excited for themselves. They couldn't believe they can do it. We only had an hour and a half together. And yet, here is this unlearning and relearning process that happens so fast when they can see it. Now, again, I got resistance from them. I got pushback. They wanted to do it their old way. They didn't want to feel it a new way and start lower. But in a very quick period of time, they got it to happen off the bar, which I thought was impressive for anybody within an hour and a half. And it was just really mind-blowing for them to witness their body do this and for their body to want to do it that way. And so I want to encourage us to really figure out where our strong dancers are actually compensating. And can we rewrite the script? Can we rework the muscles? Can we really encourage them that it won't take that long? And if we can do that, we're gonna see those results skyrocket. The third thing is we need to figure out why most corrections don't stick. And most corrections don't stick because we're correcting something that's aesthetic. We're not correcting a root cause. So we might look at the body and we see certain aesthetic things and they feel like the real correction: straighten the knees, press onto higher releve, shoulders down. But most of the time, those are just an aesthetic correction. The knees aren't bent because they can't straighten the knees. The knees are bent because something else is happening in the body. Maybe it's with the hamstrings, maybe it's with the quads. There's so many other things that are gonna play with that, not just that the joint itself is not fully extending. And so we need to figure out are we looking at the symptom of this correction or are we looking at the root cause of this correction? It's almost like taking Tylenol, right? We feel sick and we're like, I have this cough, I ache, I have a fever, I'm gonna take Tylenol and all those things go away. Well, we didn't actually connect into why are we sick? Why do we have all those symptoms? We just washed the symptoms away. And this is similar to that, where it's like, are we just adding the Tylenol to what we're seeing our dancers do? Or are we looking at the root cause? If I have the flu, Tylenol is not healing me from the flu. It's just helping me like deal with the symptoms, right? I'm not actually getting healthy off of Tylenol. So, what is our root cause? If the dancers aren't pressing to high enough releve, are we focusing on the feet? Are we saying press to releve, press to releve, and the dancers are just trying to get the heels higher? Or are we like, wow, our dancers aren't pressing to a high releve because we have an anterior tilt in the pelvis and it's pressing the weight back. And so now the heels have to lower to compensate for the pelvis. But we're talking feet, feet, feet, feet, feet, releve, releve, releve. And our dancer's focus is down there. And so we're never actually getting to the root cause. And we're going day after day, month and year focusing on the releve and not making the strides to actually get their releve better. So I want to make sure that that's our last thing is that are we looking at aesthetically a symptom, or are we looking at the root cause of why that's happening? And the second we know that, we can actually fix things at a much faster pace. So, what I want us to do before we get off, and we're kind of wrapping this up, is I want to give you three takeaways. I want to give you three points to take instantly back to your class so we can get results, right? Because that's the point of our podcast. So the first thing is start identifying patterns, not one-off corrections. So, what are we saying all the time? What are patterns we're seeing across the board? What are we hearing from our judges' tapes? What are all the teachers at the studio saying to the same group of dancers? Identify the patterns. Is it a turnout issue? Is it a plie issue? Is it a pelvis issue? What are we really seeing? What are the patterns? And I want you to shift from the correction itself. We're having a pattern of corrections. What are we saying all the time? What are we seeing all the time? What are we doing all the time? To shifting the correction to the cause. Are we trying to train a correction? Are we trying to train the root cause? Right. So shifting our mind from giving them corrections, giving them corrections, giving them corrections to looking at the cause and then dissecting that, taking it slow, figuring out why that's happening, helping to train the root cause of this problem. And then I want us to audit one combo this week. What is the main combo we're doing, our technique combo or our progression across the floor? And what is this actually training? If our progression across the floor is a million different technical elements put together and we just want them to move across the floor, are we actually getting them to understand the root cause? Maybe it's pelvic alignment. Are we actually getting them to understand pelvic alignment or are we just having them do a ton of technique across the floor and hoping something sticks? No, let's move slow. Audit one combo. If we're trying to train something very specific, one specific root cause, let's focus on that during this progression. Every time you do this prep, I want you to make sure your pelvis is neutral. Every time you press into the turn, recheck is our pelvis neutral? So pick the root cause. And during that progression, are we actually training it? And if not, let's reshift our focus. Let's let our dancers hear it. Let's let them see it. Let's let them feel it. Let's let them understand it. This is gonna be the fastest way to get those advanced dancers from plateauing there, from just stopping and going into like autopilot with their technique classes. So this is what we break down. This is a lot of what we do at relative motion. And I know this is very general because we're on a podcast together. We're not in the room together. So what I want to do is invite you, try all this this week, try all this over the course of the month. And then I want to invite you into the room with us. We will be together, teacher training at RM Live. It's gonna be July 17th through 19th in Orlando. First of all, it's an awesome place to visit. But secondly, get in the room. We are going to be working together. We're gonna be personalizing everything we do. We keep this event intimate because we wanna make sure that we're one on one with each of the teachers there, with each of the studios there, just sitting and making sure that everything is personalized to you. So start here. Start with the stuff that you're hearing in this podcast and then register for our event and let's get in the room together. Check us out at the relative motion experience.com slash RM Live 2026. Get all the information there, register, and be there with us. We're so excited, and I can't wait to talk to you next week. That's a wrap on today's episode of It's All Relative. Thank you for spending your time with us. We believe what you bring to the dance world matters, and we're honored to support the way you teach, lead, and inspire. If this episode moved you, made you think, or gave you something new to try, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's next. You can connect with us anytime at Relative Motion Dance on Instagram or visit relativemotiondance.com for more tools and trainings. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep dancing with purpose. Because remember, it's all relative.