Dancing with the Stars, and my Fitbit, provide insight into the physical and mental demands of learning to dance.

Tom Kagy (00:00.526)
Hello, this is Tom Kagy with Unconventional Wisdom.

One of my favorite shows is Dancing with the Stars. Its spectacular production values are a treat, of course, and probably accounts for its status as the top show on US TV. But what makes it interesting to me is that at its core are real people trying to learn to dance under a time constraint.

As each couple finishes up, you can’t help seeing how utterly exhausted they are, the pro as well as the star. And that’s after one dance, typically only about two to three minutes long. To me, that fatigue is completely understandable. The pro has to lead a relative novice through a pattern with varying degrees of physicality in a way that hides the star’s weaknesses and

Slow footedness and errors. The job is even harder for the female pros. They must not only back lead the male star, but also provide much of their own momentum while making it look like it was imparted by the male star. And of course the stars are just as exhausted, even more so if they aren’t in excellent physical condition, which of course some are, being in sports or entertainment.

But they’re still exhausted because their pros try to take full advantage of their conditioning to deliver a high scoring performance.

That exhaustion you see is from just a couple of minutes of going through a pattern that these pairs practiced probably a couple hundred times, going at it several hours a day for six straight days. In other words, that one choreographed performance was their day job for well over the average work week.

Tom Kagy (02:06.079)
They put in their performance with the constant support and cueing from the pros, and they’re totally exhausted after one little dance. Now imagine doing that twelve or fifteen times a night while providing the support, momentum, and cues to partners who can’t know that move that you’re going to lead because you didn’t spend the full week memorizing a pattern together.

For an amateur dancer in the wild like me, practice time is limited to maybe an hour group lesson and possibly several bits of five or ten minute shadow dancing at random moments during the week, all of which add up to at best maybe one twentieth of the time spent by a dancing with a stars pair for each session.

I know there are guys who think they’re dancing when they groove and style in place while taking their partner through a turn and maybe a few walk walks or sachets in place. To me, dancing is a physical activity that involves constant footwork and exchange of momentum. Otherwise it’d be less interesting and useful than going for a walk.

Being a physical dancer, I quickly learned that leading a formal ballroom or Latin dance takes as much exertion as running a series of half mile intervals. To put it another way, when I run three and a half miles at a good steady pace, I might score sixty or seventy zone minutes on my Fitbit, which is now Google Watch, a reasonable measure of cardiovascular exertion.

When I lead a dozen or fifteen free dances over the course of an hour and a half or two hours, with only a maybe half that time actually spent on the dance floor, my watch logs hundred and thirty to one hundred and sixty zone minutes, over twice as many as on a three and a half mile run over the hills.

Tom Kagy (04:23.058)
To me the running feels more intense physically than the dancing, but I sweat more when I’m dancing, despite the fact that I’m in an air conditioned club instead of a sunny hill, and the dancing is interrupted by playlists and available partners. On a typical night of dancing, my shirt is literally drenched, and the first thing I do upon getting home is to take it off.

Why does dancing take so much exertion? Because it requires me to move my body and mind in ways that aren’t necessary when I’m running. Instead of a repetitive, rhythmic running motion that lets my mind go into a serene zone. Dancing requires me to be an intelligent locomotive that pushes and pulls my partner through a series of intricate motions like

While contorting my body in ways that force me to constantly adjust my balance. That combination puts more demand on my heart than simply running. I manage to work up a sweat within 20 to 30 minutes of dancing, if there’s an abundance of active partners. Of course, this wouldn’t be the case if I were one of those stylists or what I call a dance pimp who just provides the frame and

Let’s the women quote play. The dance term for letting the partner essentially do what they’re do their own thing while using you as a kind of a dance pole or maybe a monkey bar. Actually, my pee with West Coast Swing was that many of the more seasoned female westies want to spend too much time showing off their quote playing stylings.

I don’t mind being a pole or a monkey bar for a measure or two, but more than that and I get bored and start wishing for a partner who actually wants to be physical and dynamic rather than showy and static. That’s why after a year or so of learning West Coast Swing, I added Thursday country two-stepping to my weekly routine, also at the borderline back in those days. Of course, none of that is around now, hasn’t been for

Tom Kagy (06:47.106)
Wow, it’s been six years, almost seven years now. Anyways, by its nature the Texas two step doesn’t let anyone stand in place marking time, because it’s a vigorous progressive dance in which all couples must promenade counterclockwise around the entire dance floor to the beat of quick quick slow slow in four four time, quite a bit faster than most West Coast swing songs.

That progression is accompanied by a variety of turns, swivels, pivots, dips, and flips. The two step crowd was also bigger in number and younger in age on average, which made it possible to get in more vigorous dances per evening, limited mainly by the borderline’s then practice of interspersing four or five consecutive two steps with equal numbers of line dances.

Line dancing I found to be sterile, like like an aerobics class. But from time to time I did jump in to a line dance or two just to keep from getting too bored and stiff between two stepsets.

And of course, two stepping added to my evening exer exertions, together with West Coast Swing, dancing was providing as much of a cardio workout as my morning runs in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. The intense and sustained physical demand on my body is really half the reason I stuck with dancing for those sixteen, seventeen years.

But over time I came to see that my dance habit was actually bringing about other important changes, which I’ll get into next time.