Introduction
Being our first Dance session of the year, there was a small degree of introduction involved to what our course would entail. Primarily, we were informed that our next session be a Baseline Assessment, consisting of a Warm Up, HIIT Workout, Corner Work and Centre Phrases. More on all of these t follow, but each aspect (minus centre phrases) was studied in this lesson.
Warm Up
Here, we learned about the three main stages that accumulate to create an effective warm-up, as well as putting this into physical practise. The core phases are:
-Cardiovascular
-Rotations
-Stretches
Cardiovascular
Also known as the 'pulse raiser', this facet is the start to any successful warm up. The main objective is to engage in exercises that raise one's heart rate in order to pump a greater amount of oxygenated blood around the body. This all means that your muscles are effectively supple and ready for more intense activity without causing strain or injury.
Our main cardiovascular exercise for this lesson involved bobbing our knees in time to a musical track, four times with our feet together and four times in a wider position, with either foot alternating between stepping out. This was rapidly then repeated with a repetition of two bobs, followed by one. Not only this, the exercise was repeated multiple times in order to ensure an impactful task. This is a very useful activity, and a lot more energetic than one may initially expect: our teacher's resting heart rate was 76; by the end of the exercise it was 124!
Rotations
More commonly referred to in this context as 'mobilisations', this stage draws focus to the joints in various areas of the body, giving them ample time to also feel malleable. This too prevents any potential injury, particularly zooming in on the ball-and-socket joints of the ankles, shoulders and wrists.
Our chosen activities mostly involved rolling these joints in circular motions in time to music, in order to reach the full expanse of their structure suitably for the following tasks. The shoulders most notably, were rolled both forwards and backwards on their own, with the hands touching them and the elbows out, and with the full arm in motion to conclude.
The section of this element that activated the wrists and ankles also used a great degree of mental exercise, in the sense that our brain was challenged on the basis of coordination. We first rolled alternate ankle and wrist joints in the same (and then opposite) directions, but later switched to the same arm and leg at the same time, rotating in opposite directions only. As the left hemisphere of the brain controls all motions on the ride side of the body and vice versa, this proved a challenge due to the conflicting signals n the one side each time. Therefore, a task for me to improve my general coordination in the future would be to strengthen this brain function by repeating the activity.
Stretches
This final piece of the puzzle is rather self-explanatory: you need to stretch out any muscles you may require for a session thoroughly now that they are warm, so that the risk of pulling them or injuring yourself in other ways is minimised. We made use of both types of stretches consecutively for each one that we completed. Static stretches are where you stretch continuously without moving, whilst dynamic stretches involve gentle movement that is maintained throughout the stretch.
In our case, we made use of stretches that incorporated all vital muscles involved in any style of dance, including (but not limited to): triceps, biceps, hamstrings, quadriceps etc.
HIIT
HIIT, or High Intensity Interval Training, is an activity which entails sets of rigorous anaerobic exercises separated by short moments of rest. These exercises are always segmented into 1-minute chunks, so however long you exercise for within the minute, the remainder is used as rest (although there should be no more than 20 seconds of rest used per minute in HIIT). This is a task that uses a variety of exercises chosen by the participant, but each of the (approx.) 5 should focus in on a different part of the body, with one or two being all-rounders. In our case, we used:
-Running on the spot (all rounder)
-Squats (legs)
-Plank (core)
-Burpees (all rounder)
-Crunches (core)
It is advised that you spend at least 10 minutes in any HIIT session, as that is the minimum duration that hold any impact; mostly this involves improving your stamina and endurance, but also strength!
In terms of the rest times we mentioned prior, we repeated the loop f these activities twice so that we achieved the ten minutes, and began steadily: 40 seconds on and 20 resting. In later sessions, to further heighten the benefits from HIIT, I will personally increase my total time participating, as well as my activity period in relation to my rest.
Corner Work
The final stage of this session focussed on corner work: where you (in pairs) move from one corner of the room to the other in time with music. We began with one, but soon developed the task to include all 5 core aspects of Dance:
-Travel
-Jumps
-Turns
-Stillness/Balance
-Gesture
At first, we completed this task as instructed by a teacher, but later on we were instructed to split into groups and create our own phrase encompassing all facets. We then taught this to the class (although another student was mostly directing my group throughout this.)
Plenary
I am generally confident in terms of my timekeeping and rhythm, so this last activity was not a challenge. However, as mentioned in my soon-to-be-published audit, I am not yet the most conventional looking dancer (my movements compared to others always seems strange and unrelaxed.) As such, my following tasks are not only to design my own HIIT as a Homework, but also to study others' movements and emulate their techniques to appear less different in terms of my manner.
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