One thing that keeps bothering me is that I seem to be one of the very few in partner dancing circles who warms up before dancing. When I go dancing, let it be a dance class, practice or dance party, I want to prepare my body for the dance floor. Even though I don't regard dancing as doing sports, there is a possibility for something bad to happen if my body is not warmed up. Especially Zouk can be pretty challenging for the body, and there have been couple of occasions I have actually hurt my lower back or neck when I've just hit the dance floor without warming up.
I think here in Brisbane I have never seen a dancer stretching or warming up if there wasn't a dance class which contains that. People seem to give me really weird looks if I start stretching before dancing. I have got comments like "what, are you stretching?" or "wow, someone is actually warming up!". Yes I am, and I think many others should do that also! Why am I feeling ridiculous doing something I should do to keep my body healthy and protected?
I feel the most horrible in dance parties; it is almost embarrassing. What am I supposed to do, go outside behind a corner and do my warm up there?! What I then usually end up doing is that I dance the couple of first dances really carefully. But you know, sometimes dancing, the music and good partner just makes me forget everything.
The last thing I want to do is to hurt myself in any way. I want to take good care of my body or else I won't be able to dance at all! When I was sitting in a bus today I started to think what would be the worst thing to happen while in Australia. Getting injured in a way it would limit or prevent me from dancing would most likely to be it. Almost all of my friends here are dancers and I meet them in dancing related events. I also spend almost all of my free time to dancing. If I wasn't able to dance, where would I meet my friends or how would I spend all my evenings? What a horrible thing to think about.
Why then is warming up is so uncommon? Why is it not socially acceptable? Or do everyone else just warm up on the way to dancing? Beats me.
Nowadays I always stretch at least my legs properly before dancing, and for zouk my upper body too. I've found it improves my dancing by relaxing stiff muscles and joints, and if I don't do at least minimal stretching, my legs start to hurt in perhaps 15 minutes and I can't dance properly anymore.
ReplyDeleteStrange looks be damned, it's your body AND your dancing ability that's most important!
Ps. When are you coming back? We miss you!
Today I got a bad reminder: I didn't warm up my knees properly and one of them started to hurt a lot! Outch! I hope it will be fine for the weekend....Yeah, I shouldn't care about the weird looks.
DeleteI have only three months to go here. Nice to hear that people are still thinking of me (at least occasionaly) back home
We sure do miss you, Riikka.
ReplyDeleteTo me most of the time a couple if first dances feel like a good enough warmup even though proper stretching would have been better. But then again for a leader it's easier to control how active you want to be and my style doesn't include particularly active movements so far (e.g. No much shoulder shaking even).
Be I a girl or do I zouk, I'd think about proper stretching way more seriously.
I guess you're right, it must be easier for a leader to have couple of warm up dances. A follower can of course also control the dance, but trust me, there are some leaders who can be pretty rough on you, and if you haven't been warming up before dancing with them, you sure hope you did.
DeleteActually I figured out some "hidden" warm up moves I can do even when sitting in bus on my way to dance party. Just repeatedly tense and relax your muscles, e.g. thighs or arms, to get that blood running, and your body will be more ready for dancing!