Flex From HomeWork: Week Four
If you attended any of my flexibility classes this past week you 
got a little taste of dancer pose and needle scale prep. Challenging, but fun! As you can see, these two skills require a great deal of body awareness and have quite a few moving pieces – balance, open hips, splits and back flexibility. This week we’ll continue working on balance and also give some body-love to our hips and splits.
Just a quick note: If you’re a current student of mine you know the importance of being properly warmed up before jumping into your stretch sesh and you’ve hopefully been paying attention to our warmups *wink wink*
For those that do not currently take classes with me (although I hope to see you in class or a private lesson soon): please be sure that you are nice and warm before jumping into your stretch sessions. Not warming up your body is equivalent to getting in your car on a cold, snowy day (after not driving for a few days) turning it on and mashing the gas for a quick getaway….NOT a good idea. You have you allow your car to warm up, let the heater kick in, windows to defrost..and if you’re lucky enough to have seat warmers allow your cakes to get warm! Your body is the same way, you have to get your heart rate up, raise your body temperature, wake up the muscles and stimulate the synovial fluid in your joints. If you don’t have a favorite/preferred way to warm up try this circuit out:
Do 30 seconds of each: Running in place, Jumping jacks, Squats pulses, Squats – 30 seconds, Squat jumps. *Repeat three rounds.
Now on to the good stuff! This week’s FFHW is a mini balance and split-work routine. There are five parts to it:
- Passe balance with the knee to the front
- Arabesque. Hold 30 seconds
- Leg pulses x10
- Fold forward to standing split. Hold 30 seconds
- Leg pulses x10
Switch legs and then repeat combo in reverse on the opposite side.
- Leg pulses x10
- Standing split. Hold 30 seconds
- Leg pulses x10
- Rise to Arabesque. Hold 30 seconds
- Passe balance with the knee to the front
Check out the video of the full mini routine below! No edits were made to this, you get to see that I am human and can be a bit of a weeble wobble myself at times!
