Why You're Forgetting Moves (And It's Not Your Fault)

I asked him to show me something from the night before.

Same guy I'd seen at Wednesday's shine class. Now here at Thursday's session. We'd been talking, the class, the moves we'd covered, how the night went.

And then I said it. Can you show me one of the patterns from last night?

The pause was maybe two seconds long.

"I... actually don't remember."

That moment stuck with me. Not because it was surprising. Because it wasn't.

Did you know? Within 24 hours of learning something new, you forget about 70% of it. Hermann Ebbinghaus documented it in 1885 and human brains haven't changed since. If you learned five moves on Wednesday night, three or four of them are already gone by Thursday morning.

You didn't do anything wrong. That's just how memory works by default.

The problem is what most of us do in response.

We collect more.

You know the pattern. Maybe it's YouTube videos you're going to come back to. Maybe it's Instagram reels. If you're anything like me, you've got a folder full of recipes you are absolutely going to cook one day. Every week you add something new. This one looks incredible. I'll make that one this weekend.

Nothing's getting cooked.

That's what's happening in class too. Every week adds another recipe to the pile. More moves, more patterns. All of it saved for later. The library gets bigger. Nothing in it is actually getting used.

The Strategy:

Before you leave class, pick one thing. One moment. One weight transfer. One feeling you want to hold onto. Not three things. One.

Then repeat it until it's boring.

Until you can hold a full conversation while doing it. Until your brain has handed it off completely and your body is just doing it without you having to think about it.

That's the moment most people assume they've hit a ceiling. They've done this step a hundred times and it feels flat. But flat is the signal something has clicked. You've freed up attention. Now put it somewhere new.

Take the basic Susy Q.

You start with just the feet. Are they crossing in the right direction? That's week one. Then the timing. Counts three and seven. Then the body mechanic. Upper body still while the hips twist through. Then once that's running without you thinking about it, you start adding lean. Attitude. Your own flavour.

You don't get to that last part if you rushed through the footwork. There's no shortcut around the repetition. The repetition is the point.

The pacing issue

Group classes are one of the best things about learning to dance. The energy in a room. Different partners every song. The variety of ideas. The community that builds when you keep showing up in the same space with the same people, week after week.

But a group class moves at the room's pace. Not yours. Everyone's on the same pattern, the same count. Sometimes that lines up exactly with where you are. Sometimes you needed five more minutes on that one thing, and the class had already moved on.

Feeling stuck?

The retention improves when you practice deliberately. Not more. Deliberately.

One thing at a time, repeated until it stops needing your attention. Then move to the next layer.

And the quality of that practice matters. Repeating something incorrectly just builds a very confident wrong habit. The closer your practice is to correct from the start, the faster it actually sticks.

If you want help working out what to focus on and making sure what you're repeating is right, I've got a few private lesson spots open. Worth a conversation if you've been feeling stuck.

What's the one move that keeps disappearing on you, no matter how many times you think you've got it?