Positively variable…
Some changes coming your way…
What I love about continued study is the way it challenges me to continually evolve my thinking and to keep making improvements for my clients.
One way I am starting to make changes is starting to take a more playful approach to the way I build movement practices.
This is primarily inspired by my recent studies with Samantha Emanuel and Luke Davies on the Back To Roots internship.
Having trained with Sam on-and-off for many years, I’ve always loved how her sense of play in her classes pushes me out of my comfort zone and challenges me to find new ways of moving.
It’s all very well moving in straight lines and maintaining a “braced core” throughout an exercise like a squat or Deadbug, but do we actually move like that in life? Or in dance?
Yes, sometimes, but imagine how amazing it would be to have access to infinite movement variability?
This opens up so many more options to express ourselves in dance whilst enabling our bodies to adapt to whatever movement life demands of them - which can sometimes be sudden in surprising directions! It reminds me of a quote I love from another amazing movement & fitness badass Venus Lau, whose philosophy is “strong at every angle.”
It doesn’t mean I’ll be throwing my current movement vocabulary out of the window, however I’ll be looking for ways to adjust for movement variability in the exercises I give to my clients (and myself!)
Try this - take the Deadbug exercise linked above. Grab a small object or two - pens or spoons will do the trick. In the Deadbug position, place one object on the floor under your feet and hold the other in your hand.
The game is - place the object in your hand somewhere around your body. Then with a foot, push the object on the floor somewhere. Then with your other hand, retrieve the object by your upper body and put it somewhere else for the other hand to have to find it. And switching feet, push the lower body object somewhere else for the other foot to find. And continue!
Find as many places and as many challenges as you can. Check out the video below for my first attempt at this. And comment below to let me know you have done it and how you found it!