Last semester, I switched back and forth on my blog between talking about fitness at the gym and the exercise I receive from Irish Dance. For those of you who do not know, I am a competitive Irish Dancer and have been competing since I was five years old. Since I am away at school, it is extremely difficult to keep up with practice, considering I don’t have the resources, space, and intensity of the practices at home. On the bright side, I only live about four hours away from Penn State, so each month (or every other month depending on what’s going on) I go home for the monthly dance workshops that we have. Leading up to a major competition, we just drill our routines over and over again, receiving sometimes harsh criticism, but we need it. When we are in between periods of “majors”, we learn new steps, revise old ones, and if nothing needs to be changed, still continue to drill routines. This past weekend I went home for workshops and, let me tell you, I got my ass beat.
Since there is really no designated area at school as to where I can practice, I have mostly just been cross training in the gym every week. Although this does help with my strength and stamina, it does not help if I am not running through routines. To my surprise, my dance instructors were pleasantly surprised with the shape that I was still in. With dance, it is extremely hard to keep up with strength. If you take even as little as a week off, you lose about 70% of your technique and need to work extremely hard to get it back. I’m truly not sure how I did not lose all of my ability, but I am so thankful that I hadn’t (mostly because if I did, my teachers would have killed me).
This summer, I am competing in the North American National Irish Dance Championships, or NAIDC for short. It’s location changes every year, but this coming summer it is being held in New Orleans, which I am way too excited about. Although I keep telling myself not to get my hopes up because of the limited amount of practicing I can do leading up to it, I remember that my entire age group is in the exact same position. This past November was the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships (MARO), and seeing just how much of an impact college had on other girls in my age group was drastic. Girls who were usually top 5, did not even make it to top 15. This is a good and bad thing; good because it gives everyone an even chance of doing well, but bad because it may hurt ones self esteem if they drop drastically in placements.
However, I am not worried about the competition, only worried about myself. I have high goals for this year’s nationals, and hope more than anything that I can accomplish these goals. My teachers believe in me, it is all a matter of my mentality. I can’t wait to see how this Nationals turns out, but more excited to see just how much I can push myself.
It must be incredibly frustrating to be so passionate about dancing and wanting to practice but not being able to. It’s crazy to think that you lose 70% of your technique in one week. I used to play soccer competitively and it took at least two weeks off to see a significant change in your technical ability and fitness.
Good luck at this summer’s competition! New Orleans sounds like an awesome city to compete in and explore.