#84: Hey Dancer, Stop Working So Hard (And Start Working Smarter)

You’re working hard. I see you. You’re in class every day, taking extra privates, rehearsing your solo, pushing yourself… and yet you’re still not seeing the results you want.

In this episode, we’re talking about the difference between working hard and working with direction — and why so many dancers burn out, plateau, or lose confidence even though they’re doing “all the right things.”

I break down:

• Why more classes isn’t always the answer
• How vague goals like “better turns” or “better facials” are actually holding you back
• The importance of identifying the real problem before trying to fix everything
• And how to create a targeted strategy that fits your goals — not your teammate’s, not your studio’s, not Instagram’s

If you’ve ever felt frustrated, stuck, or like you’re trying everything with no real progress… this episode is for you.

Because working harder isn’t the solution.
 Working smarter is.

Transcript

Brittany Noltimier (00:00)

You guys, stop working so hard.

there and welcome back to Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm your host, Brittany Noltimier and this is the podcast where we talk about all things dance, colleges, and careers. So let's get started. Friends.

You're working so hard and I'm very proud of you for it, but working hard without a plan?

is drastically holding you back.

You go to, you're at the studio every single day, you take all your technique classes, you're working your booty off, you run your solo extra because you're a star, you are dancing in the evenings when you go home with your friends. It's not that you're not, you don't have the work ethic. You're working hard, you have the discipline, but do you have the direction?

We think it's for competition. We work on our solos. We have our private lessons to work towards competition, doing well at competition.

But if working harder already worked, you'd...

already have the results you want.

I see this all the time, especially in the Dance Mom Facebook groups, and it's always about how can I get my child more classes, more workshops? ⁓ our studio's terrible because we don't have enough hip hop classes and whatnot. But honestly, how much more would you get out of one extra hour of hip hop if your mindset isn't there?

It's not about adding more classes. It's not about going to more conventions or workshops.

It's about creating the right direction for you specifically to get to where you want to be. You don't have the same goals as everybody else on your team or at your studio.

Even if you think you do, you don't.

Some people in your class want to grow up to be performers, dancers. Some people want to be doctors or content creators or influencers. So that's a great example just there as it is. We feel this constant stress of going to more workshops, taking more videos of us, posting more on social media so that we can do what? Sometimes that is necessary, depending on your goals.

So if you are trying to be, get noticed, if you're trying to become a star today, next year, within the next two or three years, then yeah, that is important. Not saying all the time, but that is a job that's becoming an entrepreneur, content creators or entrepreneurs.

Or maybe at competition you want to work on your expressions, but someone else in your class already has good expression, but is not even close to your level of technique. So we're all different. We all have different goals

And you need a roadmap so that you can achieve your goals in a timely fashion and not just spend your whole young, wonderful best years of your lives just dancing for fun, but with no real direction.

That's how we get burnt out, not by taking classes. We want to go to class. We get burnt out by doing the same thing over and over again without a real end game insight.

I love to talk about this when we're assessing our goals, right? We have to create clear goals. If we say, I want better turns, that's too vague, right? There's so many different turns. Do we want to get better Maxi Ford turns in our tap shoes? That's probably not what you're referencing, but it could be. Or do you want to have ⁓ an extra pirouette in your double turn or in your seven turns or are you working on your fuetes? fouettes?

Even then we can be more specific. right? So we have to work on that clarity to be able to know where we want to go.

I love this one. I want better facials.

Okay, good. Try smiling. Try lightening up in class. I think it's so funny because people find it, we're so stressed. I was stressed about it too. We're so stressed about how our facials look. And little did we know that there's actually systems and patterns and tricks we can do that are the same as technique. There is technique to our facial expressions.

So if you want better facials and you're like, but I have no idea what that direction is, guys, that's exactly what I teach. Fame in the fame method, face, F stands for facials, A acting, is for musicality and E stands for the execution, how we actually put it all together.

So if that's something you're struggling with or your child's struggling with, seriously, reach out to me. Send me a message. DM me. Send me an email. Tell me what's going on. I'm happy to help.

So whether we're working towards better technique or showmanship or maybe musicality, hey. ⁓

while you're working hard in class and giving it your best effort and always being the sweatiest, the hardest worker in the class.

It's time to connect it to your mindset with a plan your brilliance can really shine.

so when we have technique difficulties, like if we, if we've always, if we're always falling down in our penche, that can affect our confidence level. We start to get more worried.

So our technique issues affect our confidence. Our confidence issues affect our expression.

performance quality

And none of that gets fixed just by trying harder.

You can't ask your face to be free.

if your body feels awkward and unsafe.

So what we need to do is work out a targeted strategy. If we're working on pirouettes in the classroom and the music plays and we just try and fall, try and fall, try and fall, but never try to fix anything, trying harder is not going to help. What we need to do is identify the problem.

choose something to focus on. So if we're always falling out of our turns forward, there are rules and pirouettes. I'll break these down for you guys in another episode. But if we are always hopping and then falling down, then that means our supporting knee is bent. And so that's the focus we need to work on, drilling that supporting leg into the ground. If we're always falling to...

the left, means we're leaning with our upper body probably to the left, depending on which way we're turning. So we just have to identify the problem.

And now this is what we call self-teaching, self-correcting, where your teachers not always get, cannot spit out this, this much. So where you have to take responsibility is we're always falling to the left. So you have to tell yourself in your brain, lift my left rib cage, lift my left rib cage. We see it in the mirror, sure, but you have to connect physically, not just with our eyes. So that's where we have to start applying it consistently in class. And

If you haven't targeted, you haven't figured out the problem.

there's no way to create a targeted strategy. So first figure out the problem and then you know exactly what you need to do to apply in class. Sometimes sure the teacher says so many things that we're trying to juggle all these balls in the air, trying to figure out how to do this and this and this and this and make all these corrections. But if you're kind of, if you keep doing the same thing without making any personal adjustments with that targeted goal, then working harder is not going to help.

I have to tell you my story about this is because I'm actually very good at taking general notes. I hear a correction and I assume it's meant for me, even though it's, you know, meant for this person over there. So that is good and bad in a way, because when I hear that, I hear one correction, I fix it. I hear the next, I fix that. I hear this, I fix that. So in college, I can remember specifically doing rond de jambes Now I know later the real issue.

was that I needed to do more core work. Simple as that. But I was wiggling too much in my ronde de jambes. And so they would give me feedback. And so I would fix and adjust and fix and heel forward and this and rib cage. as I was doing ronde de jambes,

I was making all these adjustments during one exercise that it was making me look crazy. I'm like, watch me teacher. I'm working hard. I'm fixing it. I'm taking your corrections. But it was too much. And they were like, what's happening here? You're wiggling all over the place. You're trying to thank you for trying to take the corrections, but you need to focus on the real problem. My real problem was stability in my supporting leg.

And I know I couldn't see that in the moment or maybe I saw that afterwards after I got called out for looking like a wiggly limp noodle. So I'm trying to fix and correct everything with rondechamps at the bar. Like I lost so much confidence in my rondechamps because like how silly too, but because I would always get called out for wiggling and honestly, look, it is just my court. Brittany, just do some more abs. Who knew? But it didn't land as easily as I needed that to land. I needed somebody to say, look,

You're wiggling because your core is not stable. Just go do some crunches. Before ballet starts, you need to add an extra 10 minutes of crunches. If you want to be successful here, if they add those words, that would have had me in a heartbeat. So, so we can't try to fix everything at once. You guys, have to have a targeted, a targeted strategy. So in those ronde jambs, my strategy would have been a more stable center.

⁓ So what are you working on and what's your target strategy?

So if you are working on something like this and you're not sure what your target strategy should be, just reach out. You guys, I love talking to you. I love it. So send me an email, send me a DM, send me an audio clip of your problem and I can put you on a podcast and we can talk about it on a deeper level like this, where we can really get to the root of the problem and hopefully we can help. if you are constantly trying so hard,

but not seeing as much progress as you'd like or just simply want to improve a little bit faster.

These are lessons we work on outside of the classroom to train your brain how to focus, to train you on what you specifically need to work on in class. class to reach your specific goals. It's a targeted strategy.

to get you to where you wanna be, not just where the rest of your classmates are, because also as soon as you figure out your targeted strategy and realize it's different than everybody else in that room, then you're gonna start standing out.

So this week, stop trying to fix everything. It's the new year. I know we're stressed. want to fix everything now. We want to reach all of our goals today. It's not going to happen. Don't try to do that. Set a plan, create a targeted strategy. What's one thing you want to work on this week? What's one thing you want to fix?

If you don't know the answer, that's okay. It's not a failure. You can ask your parents, you can ask your teacher, or maybe just sit down with a pencil and write some things out until you get to the root of what you're really feeling.

So what are you gonna be working on this week? What is your new targeted strategy? Write it down, put it on a Post-it note and put it on your bathroom mirror so we can think about it every day and finally start making a change. you so much for being here on Dance Colleges and Careers. I love every second with you. Until next time, be brave, tell your story and own the stage.