Balboa guy, fitness guy, massage guy, nutrition guy...or about being labeled.

Over the last couple of years, I received several labels. Truth is, labels are often there for a reason, but just part of the portrait. 

Because I have never seriously competed into Lindy Hop, I still known mainly as a Balboa dancer even if I practice just as much in Lindy Hop, Ballrooming and other minor specialities such as Collegiate Shag, Break Away and Charleston 20'.

Because I started to develop an more athletic vision of the path of the Swing, people starting calling me fitness guy. I admit that I know a lot now about athletic development and how a dancer should train for peak performance, but fitness as never been my final goal.

Fitness lead me on the nutrition topic, fat loss and peak athletic performance, and I got deep into it as usual. Shortly after that, I became nutrition guy!

Pain releasing techniques, anatomy, fitness, nutrition, those are all tools any athlete should be aware of, including Swing dancers. I only decided to school and educate myself and keep doing it everyday.

+Frédéric Barbe 

What have I been doing last fall?

I know I have been more busy than ever. Here's a recap video of last September. Other clips should come up eventually! 

Understanding the system part 1: follow the money

Why does capitalism works so well? Because it is based on self preservation and fulfilling self interest. I will do as I usually do and use my sledgehammer which seems to be the only tool I know how to use properly.

I will start with a neutral example. If you go and consult a massage therapist to help you with a pain in your lower back, what do you think would be in his best interest? Businesswise, a returning customer brings you a lot more money than having to find new costumers all the time. Of course, the treatment has somehow to seem effective, or else you will find someone else to heal you. If the therapist wants to make as much money as possible, he should then offer the best  temporary release and help you to rationalize why you need to come back later for another treatment.

Of course, this the coldest hypothetical situation, but the truth remains, this is a system relying on good faith. I like to think that most people would consciously rather step on their self interest for the greater good, but what is going on unconsciously, that we will never know.

This is in fact a typical scenario in the martial arts world. The master will only show his secrets to his most advanced students to keep them as long as possible. What do you think happens when a student is as good as the master? Not only will he stop taking classes with his former master, but he might also become a new competitor in the same area.

Is the system very different in swing dancing? The short answer is no!  Why do people keep on doing swing dancing? Because it satisfies certain needs. A short list would look like this:

• Feeling like part of a group and position yourself within that group.
• Having a good time
• Easier to socialize and meet people.
• Impression of exercising.
• Getting better at something or being on the impression of.

I don’t think most locals classes, weekend workshops or even private classes are design to help people reaching the top, but rather to give them the impression they are on the right track. Don’t get me wrong, those settings are great from what I observed for pre-advanced dancers. Also, I believed everybody is well intended and nobody really has an evil agenda of any sort.

Follow the money! It is in everybody’s interest, both instructors and promoters, to keep students at that level where they fulfill all their needs and they have the impression the product/service they’re buying is what will help them getting better. There are two ways to drop retention: people who quit and people who get so good they don’t need the products/services anymore. The level system also contribute to that illusion. Of course one feels like he progressed since last year, for he used to be in Intermediate and he is now in Intermediate/Advance.

We can easily notice how few new superstars, full time instructors, there are in the swing dancing world in the past 5 years or so even with that many more very good dancers around. Beside few dancers who got their game above everybody else, most of them are now obviously interchangeable. Do the new guys really have a shot in the current settings, maybe if they play their cards right, but they will most likely try really hard to make a name for themselves until they fail and quit. The system however will keep making them believe that all they need is another year of competing, just another year…

+Frédéric Barbe 

Personal Website
Swing Dance Montreal
Follow me on Facebook
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Personal videos from Montreal Dance Fest 2012

Balboa Strickly Challenge



Balboa Jack & Jill Challenge



Lindy Hop Stricly and Jack & Jill challenge

Fred Barbe

Personal Website
Swing Dance Montreal
Rock’n Swing
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on twitter @FredBarbe
Follow me on Google+

Arnold Schwarzenegger - Blueprint to Succes (English)

Boudoir Lounge on September 29th 2012

Fred Barbe swing dancing in Montreal

Methods & findings in swing dancing

In an Era, where certification is all that matters, it is so hard for self taught like myself to get any credibility in fields like fitness and nutrition. It’s alright for the moment though, for I have no intention to turn that knowledge into a business anytime soon, and if I do one day, I know I will need some monkey paper to prove I’m good. Well, that’s life in the 21st century.

The most useful certification I ever got was my degree in Ancient Studies. It sounds farfetched doesn’t it? Well, that degree was so difficult, du to a bunch of enthusiast over qualified teachers that it forced me to develop a learning method that works for me.

I have started martial arts and then swing dancing pretty much in the same period. It struck me right away, coming from a hardcore academic program, how unstructured and amateurish those fields were. Most of the talented dancers or martial artists I looked for to teach me had a hard time passing away their knowledge.

I eventually found decent teachers, but having developed a method in my earlier years is what served me the best. It become obvious to me what the basics were and that I had to work on them neglecting everything accessory. Fortunately, I never had a hard time managing my ego, so while people who started dancing about the same time I have were working on fancy stuff, I kept on working on the basics. Then when I’ve mastered them enough I moved to the fancy stuff and it became obvious to everyone that I have become an advanced dancer at that point.

This is about the time I started wondering about how they train in similar professional disciplines such as gymnastic, other form of dancing, circus, partner skating and so on. I was coaching a team with the Swinging Air Force back in those days, but the way they trained, mostly treadmill and machines, didn’t seem like something that will truly help me out.

My first clue was Pilates. If this is a well kept secret of the ballet dancers, it’s probably worth checking out. So, I taught my Pilates with books and videos. This is about the time P90X became very popular among star dancers.  I decided to give it a shot after a couple of months starting with the videos that develop abilities Vs. those that develop muscles. It worked great! This is why I will never spit on that program. It gave me a bunch of clues about athleticism and what I should work on. So, I focused mostly on core workouts, a lot of yoga, Pilates and mixed with Insanity workouts. This is also when I started noticing that Pilates seemed only to improve when mixed with other workouts which rang a big bell to me!

The drawback with such a regimen is that if you dance and workout 6 days a week, it becomes very taxing for the body. Studying anatomy, reading a lot of books, watching a lot of videos and surfing the web finally put my on the trail of strength training.

I finally discover that beside some cultural differences, this is how most of professional athletes are doing. They treat strength as any other skills they have to master to improve in their respective field. And the great news was, there is no such thing as a specific program depending of the sport you practice. Despite the different strength programs, theories and schools, the basic ideas are always there: low reps, heavy weights, lot of rest between sets and you should feel energized after your workout and ready to practice your sport. Forget about ‘’cardio’’, crunches, machines and other non sense. 2 or 3 big bang exercises such as deadlifts, squat, bench press, overhead press, pull ups or any of their variations is all that you need.

It sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  Well the major obstacle to success, especially in a world without anyone to guide you is yourself. Our fitness background tells every one of us that we should sweat, work hard and be sore after a workout and if we did a good job, we should even feel it for a couple of days. Even for someone as open minded as myself, it took me months to finally accept that I should do less and keep my workout very short and very efficient.

Guess what? It works! And the results were almost immediate. 8-10 weeks were all I need to note a real change in my athleticism, even while doing too much. I would move faster, jump higher and could throw my girls like never before for an incredible amount of repetition. How about my cardio? I got better as well! That is the beauty of it. What being stronger really means is that everything physical that used to be hard becomes tolerable and everything tolerable becomes easy. The stronger you get, the easier it becomes to do what you could not or barely could do before. Strength is a skill and should be treated as such. Plus, working out 3 days a week for 30-40 minutes or so and focusing most of your time on your dancing skills put all the pieces together.

Despite some adjustments I am still doing on my method, it seems to be surely what a professional swing dancer needs to differentiate himself from the others. As we often hear in the world of strength: ‘’at equal skills, the strongest opponent wins’’. It does sound better when talking about UFC fighters, however facts remain. The objective is not to be as strong as a power lifter, but simply stronger to maximize your other skills!

Fred Barbe

Personal Website
Swing Dance Montreal
Rock’n Swing
Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on twitter @FredBarbe
Follow me on Google+