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Topic 4: How dance translated to football

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Topic 4: How dance translated to football

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I unfortunately grew out of dancing as I got older and began shifting my attention towards sports like football. And while it may seem like football doesn't have anything to do with dancing, I can assure you that I wouldn’t be the athlete I am today without my dancing history. Identical Elements Theory is defined as the level of training from one skill that is transferable to another skill depending on the similarity of skill and context components. While it may not seem like football and dancing have many transferable characteristics to them, I truly believe that there are similarities in their skill and context components. Dancing taught me how to control my body movements efficiently and effectively. Dancing taught me how to make quick, explosive movements from one position to the next. Dancing taught me balance and coordination. Dancing taught me flexibility. All of which is crucial for being a wide receiver in football. As a wide receiver, you need to be able to control your body movements in order to run efficient routes. A wide receiver needs to be able to make quick, explosive movements from one position to the next, such as getting off the line of scrimmage or making a cut to get open. A wide receiver needs to have good balance and coordination in order to make tough catches. All of these are some examples of how learning dance was able to transfer over to my football career. This is all similar to the Generalized Motor Program Theory, which is thought to develop in practice and provides the basis for generating movement sequences within a class of movements that share the same invariant features, such as sequence order, relative timing, and relative force. Like mentioned before, dancing requires quick, forceful movements to be produced in order to make fluid movements throughout dance routines, such as quickly doing a backflip. Similarly, football requires quick, forceful movements to be produced in order to make fluid movements throughout a game, such as quickly making a juke move to create space from your defender. An example of this can be seen above, where a wide receiver has to make a quick spin move in order to create separation from their defender, a similar looking spin to those done in dances.

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Now that I had mastered the Sharkboy dance, as well as completed a year's worth of gymnastics and diving training, I finally began to feel a little more confident in my dancing abilities. However, I still was not good enough to create good fluid random dance moves on the spot. I was good at things I had practiced before, like my Sharkboy dance moves, my handstands, cartwheels, etc. I was not good at listening to any random song that might be cued up at the family function and being able to create a comprehensive and well-executed dance routine that would shock my family members. I knew I had to get away from my comfort zone of Sharkboy and Lavagirl and begin exploring a wide array of music genres that would help me be prepared for any song that came my way. I started by listening to some of my dads old classics, such as Hip Hop Hooray by Naughty by Nature. This was one of my favorites and a staple to my dance routines. I also began dancing to some of my mom’s Brazilian country music called sertanejo, which was always a fan favorite when played at some Brazilian barbecues.

Introducing myself to many different music genres allowed me to become a better dancer through variable practice. Practice variability is defined as the variety of movements and context characteristics a person experiences while practicing a skill. The biggest effect of practice variety is that, while you do end up having a higher level of performance mistakes during your practice sessions, you are still able to retain more information and advance your target skill when you practice it with variability. While my dance routines in the beginning were filled with mistakes, off beat dances, and shyness to perform when I didn’t know the songs being played, I quickly became more confident with my movements since I began dancing to any and every song. Every song I listened to caused a new dance routine to be created, and with a plethora of dance moves now learned and songs to listen to, I began having more trust and faith in my movements. I could now dance one way for hip hop songs, while also dancing a different way when sertanejo came on, or when jazz came on, or electronic music, etc. Anything and everything I listened to made me feel like I could come up with a dance routine for, which definitely came in handy for the family events that my dad would DJ for.

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Topic 2: Gymnastics and Diving additions

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Topic 2: Gymnastics and Diving additions

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Although I was able to fully master the Sharkboy dance, I quickly realized that was all I really had at the time. My only true dance moves were from the Sharkboy movie, and I knew that people would quickly get tired of seeing the same dance done over and over. I knew a change needed to be made, and I needed to learn some new moves quickly if I wanted to keep my audiences engaged. But I had only ever been self-taught on my dance moves (not to mention the countless hours spent studying Sharkboy), so I knew I had to branch out into different areas of dance to learn more skills. I was a very athletic kid growing up and loved sports, so I decided to join a local gymnastics team and diving team. I used gymnastics to build up my strength and learn how to do moves like handstands, cartwheels, aerials, and many more moves that could be used to wow the crowds during my dances. I also did diving simply because I wanted to learn how to do a flip so that I could REALLY show my crowds something special.

I think playing these sports quickly boosted my dancing capabilities, as I was able to transfer the moves I learned to my dances. Transfer of learning is defined as the gain or loss in proficiency of one skill as a result of practicing another skill. I was in no shape or form a good gymnastics or diving athlete, and I ended up quitting them both after a year. But during the year that I did it, I practiced a lot on my techniques so that I could incorporate them into my dances. I often made many mistakes at gymnastics and diving practices, especially since I was only 8 years old at the time. However, I was able to retain all that knowledge I had gained from both sports and incorporated them into my dance routines. This shows positive transfer, as my experience in gymnastics and diving caused a beneficial effect on the performance of my dance moves. Once I had combined my Sharkboy dance moves I had memorized with my new handstand, cartwheel, and backflip skills, I knew I could wow any crowd of family members and friends at any given social event.

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Topic 1: The origin of "Lucas's Mad Moves"

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Topic 1: The origin of "Lucas's Mad Moves"

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I always knew I loved dancing. Growing up as a Brazilian child with parents who often loved to throw large gatherings, dancing was a large part of my life and culture. I often found myself in the center of any group of people who were willing to watch me dance, regardless of if they actually wanted to or not. My dad ended up calling them my “mad moves,” which ended up sticking. My "mad moves" were never anything too special, as I had a hard time figuring out how to move my body in the right ways in the beginning. So I often just let the music take over and let my body flow in the ways the music made me feel. There were always a few moves that stood out to the crowd more than others, and I took note of these and began using them more often in my dance routines to really get the crowd going. However, my dancing journey, at least in my 6 year old mind, took off and improved drastically once I began studying the beautiful movie of “Sharkboy and Lavagirl.” I probably watched that movie at least 30 times in my lifetime, and I tried mimicking Sharkboy's infamous dances during the movie to hopefully be repeated at later family functions. By probably the 12th time watching Sharkboy’s dance, I knew it like the back of my hand and had it completely memorized. So much so that we began playing the movie at events, and I would turn away from the TV and do the same dances Sharkboy would do at the same time as him. This one really got the crowd going.

I believe that the beginning stages of my dancing career are very similar to Fitts and Posner's 3 stage model of motor learning. The first stage is the cognitive stage in which movements are often inconsistent and inefficient and mostly consist of motor learning through cognitive and verbal processes. This first stage is exactly like how in the beginning I was just letting the music take me and my movements were very inconsistent and inefficient. I was able to process and learn the moves that attracted more attention from my audiences based on their visual appearances of being interested in the dances and their verbal emotions of cheering me on, and therefore focused on performing these moves more fluidly. The second stage is the associative stage, where movements are more fluid and efficient since some of the movements are controlled consciously and some automatically. This second stage is like when I began watching and studying the Sharkboy and Lavagirl dance scenes. My practice sessions of dancing to this song linked my performance and results, which allowed my movements to begin becoming more fluid and reliable, with less cognitive activity being required of me to come up with movements on the spot like how I was previously doing with letting the music take me. The third stage is the autonomous stage, where movements are now accurate, consistent, and efficient since movements are largely controlled automatically. This last stage is exactly what happened to me by the 12th movie where I had completely memorized the dance on my own. Little to no cognitive activity was required anymore, because I had already memorized the exact motions that Sharkboy would perform, and was able to do these movements smoothly and efficiently.