Kicking and Grappling With Inanimate Objects

I went to my first Muay Thai class yesterday. The instructor is very inexperienced, and although he may have an idea how to do things, he can't really elucidate why he does those things. Regardless, I got a lot of kicking/punching practice, and worked up a prodigious sweat. I think he was very surprised at the power in my kicks and punches. I knocked him off balance over and over again with my "swing kick" (or what I refer to as a high roundhouse).

After kickboxing, I went to ATS class, then pole dancing. We covered Arabics and Arabics with a half-twist in ATS. Pole dancing was ... unfortunate. An unprecedented amount of students showed up (more than twenty), and a second class was hastily put together in the small studio. The poles used were craptastic and highly unstable, and snowy_kathryn ended up falling on her arse when her pole collapsed, falling on top of her. So not good. Not Good At All.

Today my entire back aches, likely from all the high-impact punching and kicking I was doing. I haven't been actually making contact in quite some time (my wing chun class is still mostly non-contact and highly technique-driven), and whole groups of muscles suddenly come into play when you're actually beating the shit out of something.

This afternoon I'm checking out the facilities at the handmade paper shop. If all goes well, I'll be supplementing my meagre dance income by making paper. I'm also planning to audition for the Royal Medieval Faire this autumn.

.... I just got a message from someone (name not given to protect the sanctity of the workplace) telling me their co-worker has been trying to stick magnets to a wooden filing cabinet for the past while. Oy!

In other news, I want to play this video game.

Danse du Jour

Today's clip is another ballet fusion: a duet between a man and a 22-tonne excavator. The performance is part of a series called Modern Daydreams. The dance is entitled Deere John.

Watch on YouTube

How-To: The "Egyptian" Shimmy

As per the request of water_of_fire, I bring you my breakdown of the "Egyptian" shimmy (so called because it's the most common shimmy I see on Egyptian dancers).

This shimmy is the antithesis of the Suhaila shimmy. In this one, the glutes remain completely relaxed throughout. The quads also remain mostly relaxed.

To get the basic technique down, it's easier to start sitting on the floor with your legs out in front of you. They shouldn't be quite straight. You should be able to keep your heels in place on the floor throughout the exercise without sliding them toward or away from you.

Bring one knee up a couple of inches off the floor. Use your hamstring to pull the leg down to the floor. As this leg hits the floor, let the other one "bounce" up so the knee is a couple of inches off the floor. Again, concentrate on firing the hamstring to bring this leg back to the floor. Rinse and repeat to a nice steady beat, all the while making sure your quads remain completely relaxed and jello-like. Start slow, and pick up the pace as you get more comfortable with the movement. Just to check the level of relaxation, throughout this exercise, you should be able to grab onto your quads with your hands and give 'em a good wobble.

This floor exercise in itself is really good for building speed and endurance. I use it as a warm-up exercise in all of my classes. When you're comfortable with the movement on the floor, try bringing it to standing.

Your knees should remain soft throughout the shimmy. When you contract your hamstrings, make sure you never hyperextend your knees, but only bring them back to straight at most (when sitting, the floor prevents you from doing this, of course). When standing, your weight should be in your heels, and the heels should remain on the floor throughout the shimmy. Every now and then, test your weight placement by lifting and giving your toes a wiggle.

Keeping the weight in your heels accomplishes two things:

1. It keeps the stress off your knees
2. It lets your arse hang free. When you've got a good shimmy going, as Aunt Rocky says, it'll move like two cats fighting in a bag!

This butt movement is what makes the shimmy appear so deceiving. It looks like an ass movement, but it's entirely a leg movement.

When you're doing this shimmy in a standing position, the tendency is to let the movement of the legs shrink and shrink as the shimmy speeds up until it's basically a vibration. Fight this. This little vibra-shimmy is all but invisible on stage. If your shimmy shrinks, slow it down and make it bigger again, speeding up gradually and maintaining the size of the movement.

Variations:

Once you're comfortable with this shimmy, you can play with the weight distribution. The same shimmy on a forward lean (think of a ski jumper's posture) will look completely different. The degree of movement of the legs will shrink, and the emphasis will move away from your butt and onto the new, loosely-hanging bits of flesh: your thighs. This is a comparatively subtle looking shimmy, and it looks nice in a slim-fitting skirt.

Bending and releasing both legs simultaneously gives you a third option. I use this one more as an accent then as an extended shimmy, as it looks rather silly if held for too long. You get a good bounce with this one all over your body. If you contract both glutes nice and hard while doing the bounce, all the movement moves to the front of your torso, and you get a good belly shake going on.

BTW: I believe Suhaila is being a tad disingenuous in her description of her glute shimmies. Those shimmies are not fired by glutes alone. The hip flexors and psoas are very much involved, too. They're just not visually apparent.