Staying In Shape

Dances:  Waltz, Tango, Viennese Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep
Part:  Lead
Workout:  Chest and shoulders at the gym.

Today's practice started with the dancing of a round.  To both of our surprise, we were both gasping and wheezing at the end of it.  After recovering from that, Sarah and I realized we hadn't danced in a round in months.  We had been so busy focusing on little different parts of each of our routines that we overlooked rounds.  Because of that slightly embarrassing incident, Sarah and I have decided to start dancing round more frequently if not daily from here on out.  All that being said, the round went fairly well.  The Waltz is still our best.  The Tango was better than usual.  Other than a few parts where I'm certain I rose more than I should have, it was smooth.  Viennese Waltz was like the Waltz, very smooth except for the attempted Fleckerl where Sarah got wrapped up in either her or my legs and almost went down.  Don't worry, I caught her before she hit the floor.  Foxtrot was better than usual.  Surprisingly, our connection is getting much more consistent in all the dances and that seems to help out our Foxtrot quite a bit.  Our timing is also getting better there.  Last but not least, the Quickstep.  I was impressed by our performance in that dance.  We made it all the way through without any major issues other than being a little off time here and there.

After the round our mission for the day was the Tipsies in Quickstep.  Sarah left it to me to decide how to work on them.  So I experimented with a few strategies.  In previous practices we had employed our trusty metronome to help even out the Tipsies as well as slow them down with the end goal of slowly ramping them up to competition speed.  To be honest I'm not sure that did us any good.  Every time we try them at full speed they don't feel like they have improved at all.  So today I decided to focus more on our shape in the Tipsies.  Making sure to stretch down the floor rather than up or down (depending on where you are in the step) and ensuring my head is in the right place.  This worked out fairly well.  We traveled further down the floor and were mostly on time.  On the other hand we had trouble slowing down for the Lock Step at the end.  Sarah is matching my timing much better now and that helped a lot.  I think the next step will be to try and level out my frame coming out of the Tipsies so I can effectively slow them down.  For the time being we need to get back into good cardio shape!