Speed issues

I know everyone including me has jobs/school but any help would be appreciated. I've started practicing with a metrenome and I seemed to be doing well, and got to 120 bpm, then tried dancing to a song. The only issue is, I seem to rush when I shuffle, and it looks rushed and not smooth at all. I know I can't be good without practice, but I don't know what to do and its bugging me >.<. Anyone know how my running man can look like all the people in the videos on youtube?

years and years of practice thats all i can tell u

It's self control, the same method of teaching your feet to move in a certain way to dance, you teach your body to regulate speed.

For a speed control exercise, move in ultraslow motion when you do things, normal things too like walking across the room. Instead of crossing the room in 3 seconds, try the exact same moves with your legs and arms turning or moving your head etc, but space it out so it takes 10 times longer - 30 seconds. Then stretch it even longer to say 1 minute.

It's actually very very hard, but as you move any rough spots will be 10 times more obvious and much slower, so you can work on those areas to smooth them out.

So for instance it might be the way your foot turns from flat to point down or something, or most likely it's your weight distribution and your centre of gravity in your body. Your muscles will be trying to do something other than what you want in relation to the moves.

Your centre of gravity, the point between being stable and falling over, shifts as you do, so the extension of your leg or arm or how bent over you are looking at your feet when shuffling etc will alter your centre of gravity.

So you need to keep the centre of gravity low in your body, lower than half way, around your stomach and hips area. You can lower the centre of gravity by bending your legs a bit so you're lower to the ground or by keeping more upright so the weight is straight down, pull your arms in a bit closer to your body, or mirror an arm or leg to balance out the weight so you don't fall over etc. Like riding a bike when you turn a corner and lean over to the side as you go around, the inertia of your body weight lowers your centre of gravity so you don't tip over, like you would normally do if just standing still.

When you over reach your centre of gravity, your body will automatically try to compensate, so you need to teach your body that in a particular sequence of moves, which is all dance is in raw physiological terms, sometimes it's okay not to compensate because it's just a transition from one move to the other.

Once your brain understands this, by deliberatly repeating the moves ie Practice, then it will know that the shift in the centre of gravity is momentary and you will correct it to a stable position BEFORE you hit the ground, like going around a corner on a bike.

Your muscles will learn to relax a bit earlier and instead of stiffening to compensate will flow in muscle groups, knowing everythings gonna be just fine - as long as you don't loose grip and slip.

If you fall, the brain just says, that's it, experiment over, back to the default homo erectus program and will try to stop the fall. That's when you can tear muscles, but the overide program is designed to stop you bashing your skull on anything, which is always going to be worse than a pulled muscle or broken hand.

The balance mechanism is your inner ear, if you've got a head cold or sore glands from the flu etc it will affect your balance, and perception of centre of gravity. But if you've practiced the moves the brain will okay the balance data input from your inner ear and give permission for the over ride, but perhaps not to the full extent 100%, it might allow say 75% then you'll start feeling dizzy and a bit nauseous, which is the brain warning you somethings not going well and you've pushed things far enough for the time being.

You're fighting millions of years of evolutionary movement control, it will take a bit of time for your body to learn you're in control - sort of

oh yeah and practice

Woah, thats pretty interesting, I didn't know that stuff I'm gonna practice whenever I have time.

Another tip is when you practice shuffling, record yourself so you can examine how fast you're going or any mistakes you make. I do this often and it actually helps me find out if I'm going too fast/slow or if I made a mistake somewhere.

yeah that's a good idea with recording yourself. It's something most pro dancers do, usually do it privately not for youtube etc,