HOW DO I GET GOOD?
I was talking to a friend of mine about some of his and other people’s first time experiencing Capoeira. Many people’s first experience with Capoeira comes from a youtube video or maybe a live performance. In both cases, you will likely see people performing moves that seem to defy gravity and you might think to yourself one of these two things. The first is, “Wow, I want to learn this! How can I learn this RIGHT NOW?!”. The other on the opposite side of the spectrum is, “How on Earth can I possibly learn this?”. We all want to know how to do cool moves, so I wanted to touch a bit on the process of how that happens.
It might not seem like it, but everyone who is amazing at Capoeira today, started from zero. What brought them from one level to the next is a method. A method is the most important part of your training and if you have a teacher that can guide you through what it means to go from a beginner, to advanced, and so on, you’ve basically struck gold. Take something like Au de coluna for example. I love this tutorial because it shows the need for a progression. Yes, you can bang your head against the wall and try to copy people doing the move you saw on youtube, or you can follow the method and avoid injury due to poor technique.
I would love to add on to this tutorial how important individual elements are to perform this movement in a way that won’t hurt you. Having healthy mobile shoulders, a supple thoracic spine, study wrists and a strong core are all elements that when put together, allow someone to perform au de coluna. This is to say that as exciting or as intimidating as Capoeira can be, there are steps that everyone passes through. As a student, your task is to go through the steps, one by one until you achieve a level of proficiency and are able to correctly complete the movement you are learning.
Getting back to the original point. How do you get good? Don’t sweat the crazy moves when you start. Master the basics like Ginga, etc. because once you have those elements down, the rest will fall into place. If that’s overly simple it’s because there are no secrets to improvement, just work ethic. Happy training and let me know what kind of things you’re working on to get better!
DENDÊ ARTS UPDATE
Recently I’ve been focusing on flexibility, specifically front splits, side splits, and the pancake. My 3 weakest stretches. The goals is to be very proficient in these stretches by June and I look forward to sharing those methods with everyone.
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