sunnuntai 4. syyskuuta 2016

Stories from Budapest: Brain and ballet work in progress

Sunday is my new favorite day of the week. Earlier it was Friday but I’ve started to love peaceful Sunday mood. Slow breakfast (especially huge cup of coffee), Sunday church service, no school work, time for relaxing and spontaneous things... I have realised that ”rest day” is  e s s e n t i a l  for  human. I can’t work properly and dance at full if I don’t have one rest day in the week. It’s my right and responsibility to take time to rest and relax.

Well, the rest day is obviously good for the processing new learnt things and skills. During the last week I had morning ballet classes and lectures and practical classes of ”preparatory gymnastics – aesthetic body building”. Summarizing lot of brain and ballet work. Here are some insigihts from the last week.

Spine and ballet
Some of my teachers have spoken about this also earlier but I had kind of aha moment last week about this issue. Working with healthy spine will prevent lot of injuries and helps basically everything in ballet. It’s very important to find natural curves of spine and strength the supporting muscles of spine. Easy to say but hard to do. Among the ballet dancers there are lot of problems and injuries with the back. I think that focusing on healthy spine alignment at classes would help with these problems.

Strong abdominals and hamstrings
These muscles are now on my ”muscle strengthen list”. Last week I just realized that I have too weak deep abominals (for example to stabilize my natural curves of spine) and hamstrings (for example keep on my active turn out).I also have learnt about how important is the muscle symmetry (as much strength and flexibility in the muscles).

Body awareness
This is absolutely what I want to learn more. I started ballet when I was teenager and I wanted to learn quickly everything. I had not time to feel movements or process things because I learnt ballet technique mostly by visual perception. I tried to follow suit and just do the exercises with full of energy. Well, I have improved my body awareness but it’s still my weakness. For me it’s difficult to use and active only necessary muscles (not everything together). Developing body awareness will make the dance easier and more energy saving.

Warm up
Usually I come to the studio 45 minutes before class starts. I open up myself by stretching my cold and sleepy muscles and cracking ligaments. Then I do little workout for abdominals and back muscles, some tendus and swings for my hip joints. And finally I am physical and mental ready for the class. During the last week I tried to do my warm up differently: first step by step warming up the muscles (starting from the hip joints and core) and then stretching but no cracking! I think that’s the more logical and healthier way to prepare yourself to the ballet classes.

Now it's time to set alarm clock on and enjoy the last hours of the rest day :) 

- Jutta


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