"Hell yes, hell yes." That's my answer every time someone in the group asks whether teachers hit plateaus too, and I teach Brazilian Zouk for a living.
Ours just hides better. I can teach all week, feel completely fulfilled, and then meet Christina after three months apart and find that the things we could do together suddenly need thinking about again.
Gui said it cleaner than I did. He'd been dancing mostly with his beginner students, having the time of his life, and then he went to do something explosive: "there was a wall. I couldn't do the thing."
What we get into:
→ A student feels stuck and knows it. We feel great, right up until someone challenges us socially, and that's when I go "hang on, I have not been training that division of my dancing."
→ Gui's pizza chart. Almost every hour you teach goes into basics and everything vertical, so the sharp explosive layer gets a sliver of the pie and quietly rots.
→ Why I can't train with my own students. It's never their level, it's the hierarchy, and you hear it in the disclaimer: "I don't know, I'm probably wrong, but I feel like this."
→ What we actually do about it: the student seat at somebody else's weekender, a private lesson where you tell the teacher to hold nothing back, and cross-training in styles that have nothing to do with Zouk.
The big takeaway: The plateau exists because we have a certain expectation, and the moment we remove that expectation, the plateau is not there anymore.
When did you last catch yourself plateaued without noticing? Tell us in the comments.
Chapters:
00:00 Opening highlights
01:32 Do dance teachers plateau too?
05:00 Why a teacher's plateau looks different
07:22 Festival anxiety and the inner saboteur
09:13 Making time to train when you teach all week
13:12 Why you can't train with your own students
15:26 Finding a body that moves like yours
18:51 Why students hold back their feedback
21:07 Five years of choreography, no social growth
22:43 The pizza chart of what teachers actually train
25:04 Which layer of Brazilian Zouk do you own?
27:38 Private lessons and cross-training that wake you up
31:44 Consistency, and how fast the flow comes back
33:28 Jack and Jill as a fitness test
36:26 When the DJ and the room take over
38:34 The vault of knowledge in a dancer's body
40:34 Learn from every class, even the ones you dislike
44:18 The happy plateau and the comparison trap
Co-hosts: Alisson Sandi and Gui Prada
ZoukNerds: https://www.zouknerds.com/
Alisson Sandi: https://www.alissonsandi.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zouk.nerds/
Episode: S06 Ep19 | ZoukNerds Podcast
