This, FYI, is the face and body of a broken woman!
I signed up for my teacher's tribal fusion course this summer, as our cabaret and ITS classes stop over the school holidays. I expected a certain degree of pain from a two hour workshop, but this practically had me weeping on the floor.
Dawn began by asking each of us what we wanted to get out of the course, and making notes. The committed fusionistas had a long list of specifics, magpies like myself were more general. I knew I wanted to hone my technique, expand my range of movement and gain tighter control over muscles.
Having got all that down, she then took us through a gruelling warmup, culminating in about 20 years of arm rotations (this is only a slight exaggeration) and a further six months of Planking (yoga, not internet meme).
We worked the upper body, and we drilled it on the most basic level, opening out the muscles and sticking to the simplest of moves, but trying to perfect them. For added impetus, Dawn filmed us, so we could watch ourselves later and spot any mistakes. I'm not a fan of seeing myself on film, but it worked- I can see just how much I'm holding back on moves (eg rib slides) when I should be pushing them to their full extent.
We finished up with belly rolls and today it hurts to laugh. I drilled that forward roll (my bugbear) solid for ten minutes, and I'm feeling the effects, but i also have a nice smooth roll, and an intimate knowledge of every (screaming, agonised) muscle involved. We also did a little work on isolating the muscles on either side of the belly button, which is awesome because sideways belly rolls are freaky things, and I'm all about the weird.
We all got personalised homework at the end after the cooldown, so this week i will mostly be rib sliding and circling in front of a mirror, trying to break through that invisible barrier and get some range!
This is exactly the reason I tend to loathe workshops while I'm doing them and up to three days afterward. Then I finally recover enough to try out the moves I learned and it's all good. :)
ReplyDeleteI've heard of sideways bellyrolls, but I've never seen them or learned the mechanics behind them. Did you ever get one to work?
No sideways roll for me, but I am beginning to feel a difference in either side of my top abs. The sensation kind of reminds me of learning to raise one eyebrow!
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