A Correction Is a Symptom, Not a Cause

Your voice has been going for three days.

It cracks on the phone to the doctor’s. It croaks when you give your name at the desk. Every swallow feels like sandpaper.

Then you're sat in the doctor's room, and she doesn't reach for anything to spray on your throat.

She asks questions instead.

How long has it been like this? Is it worse in the morning? Any temperature? Has anyone at home had the same?

She has a look. She listens to your chest.

Only then does she tell you what it is, and only then does she tell you what to do about it.

The sore throat isn't the problem, it's the sign of the problem. Treat the throat and you're back in a fortnight with the same croak. Treat the cause and it goes.

I told this story at MWM Fest in the summer, because it's the clearest way I know to explain Irish dance corrections.

Why your dancer keeps getting the same correction

Straighten your knees. Turnout. Cross more.

If your dancer has heard the same one all season, it isn't because they're not listening. It isn't because they're not working hard.

It's because a correction is a symptom, not a cause.

Every correction has three parts.

The What is the correction itself. What the teacher sees on the dance floor. The bent knees, the turnout, the crossover.

The Why is the root of it, in this dancer's body. The reason their body can't do it yet.

The How is the plan that comes from the Why. The exercises and the classes that work on the actual cause.

Teachers give the What, and nobody sees it better. But without the Why and the How, the correction has no chance.

Two dancers, same correction, different root

Picture two dancers in the same class. Both are told their crossover needs work. Same words, same week.

The first one is lovely at the start of the dance. By the last few bars, the legs have drifted apart. It's worse when they're tired. That can point to strength, the inner thighs running out before the music does.

The second one struggles from the very first step, and only on one side. The left crosses beautifully. The right won't go. That points somewhere else entirely, like the mobility in that hip.

Same What. Two completely different Whys.

Give them both the same fix and at least one of them is practising the wrong thing.

That's why "just practise it more" so often doesn't work. More repetitions of the symptom don't reach the cause.

It's also why I ask questions before I prescribe anything, exactly like that doctor. Is it worse when they're tired? Is one side worse than the other? Does it fall apart as the dance goes on? The answers point to the Why.

I was told to lock my knees for years

Lock your knees. I heard it all the way through my dancing career.

It was never my knees. It was my lower back and my glutes.

I kick higher now, at 34, than I did at 15.

Where the click happens

Finding the Why is the bit I built MWM for. It happens in three places.

The Correction Clinic. Once a month inside the Gold Club, dancers bring the correction they keep hearing and we work out what's underneath it together.

Our challenges. A few focused weeks on one thing, long enough for a dancer to feel it start to shift in their own body.

1-1 coaching. I ask the questions, look at the whole picture, and build the How around that one dancer.

And when it clicks, you feel it in the room. The shoulders drop. The face changes. Often a couple of other corrections move with it, because they were sharing the same root all along.

That moment is my favourite part of this job. Their effort was never the problem. Nobody had shown them the Why.

Find your dancer's one focus

The easiest place to start is the free Unlock Your Focus quiz. It gives you your dancer's number one focus, so you know where to look for the Why first.

Take the free Unlock Your Focus quiz