When it comes to dancing, the adage “practice makes perfect” holds true every time. How much time you should dedicate to your dance practice, however, will depend on what you’re hoping to achieve. If you are aiming to get as good as Pablo and Raquel are in this video, you will likely need to dedicate many hours a week to practice. But if dance is a fun outlet for you, you can easily get away with much less.

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Why do I need to practice dance?

If you have an hour a week with a dance instructor, this is enough time for them to demonstrate and take you through the things that you need to know. But it isn’t enough time for you to fully absorb the information and be able to replicate it perfectly. It just isn’t possible. It’s the same with all new skills. Learning to drive, for example, is a far quicker process if you’re able to go out in a car with a parent or another qualified driver between lessons.

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How many hours should I practice a week?

The golden rule for dance practice is three hours for every 1 hour of dance lessons. So if you have one dance lesson a week, then you should practice for three more hours outside of that. A three-hour dance practice sounds daunting but those hours definitely don’t need to be completed in a single sitting. You can spread them over the course of the week.

Three hours of dancing is equal to 180 minutes. When you divide that by seven, that’s somewhere between 25 and 26 minutes a day. But it doesn’t have to be every single day. If you have the time, you could do one hour one day, nothing the next, and then spread the other two hours over the rest of the week.

In a nutshell, three hours is surprisingly easy to fit in when you split it up into chunks.

But you don’t absolutely have to do three hours of practice. If you’re going to dance class for fun, you don’t have to practice outside of it at all if you don’t want to. And even five minutes snatched here and there is enough to help you perfect some of your dance moves.

A professional dancer, on the other hand, will need to practice between 15 and 25 hours a week.

The bottom line

How much you need to practice your dancing depends entirely on what you are hoping to get out of attending a dance class. Social dancers and those who are dancing for fun/fitness won’t need to practice anything like as much as a professional dancer, and they don’t even have to practice at all if they don’t want to. If you are looking to improve your dancing and go from beginner to intermediate, then following the golden rule of three hours of practice for one hour of lessons is a great place to start.

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