This is my typical Tuesday schedule. Work, gym, work, Lindy Hop JV team practice, home briefly, teach Salsa to my Spanish tutor and her boyfriend, and come home. Work was solid today. I’m getting further with Plone and look to have a working development site tomorrow. It’s been a process to tease out the necessary python, Zope and Plone installations to get this thing moving forward. But I’m on the verge of getting all the pieces sorted out.
The workout went well. I do some Olympic lifts on Tuesday. This was what I did.
Powerclean 145#X10, 8, 6 with 1min rest between sets. I got 9, 6, 5 and 4 reps.
Front Squat 155X10, 8, and 6 with 60 sec rest between sets. I got all the reps. I’ll bump by 5# next week.
Military Press: 100X10, 8, 6 with 60 sec rest between sets. I got 9, 5, 4, 3, 3. Vertical pressing seems to be my weakest direction.
Inclined Dumbbell Curls: 35#/Hand X 10, 8, 6. I got 4, 5, 4, 3, and 4. This was a ten pound jump from last week. I’m not surprised I missed my target by so much. I’ll stick with it.
After that it was time to jump rope. Did you know sweat can cause an iShuffle to malfunction? Well, it can. I was jumping rope when the volume started increasing on it’s own. I looked at the device and noticed I had the instrument panel facing some rather sweaty skin. It wouldn’t respond when I tried to lower the volume and soon stopped working. The happy ending to this story is a short time in front of a hair dryer solved all problems. I’m now typing and listening to ‘Shape of my Heart’ by Cadence.
The only movement thing I did in the afternoon was to continue working on the first part of the Chicho and Eugenia La Estrella performance. I’m actually starting to develop a new visualization/feeling skill. In order to really understand what the lead’s footwork means, I have to keep in mind what the follow is doing at all times. I do this routinely while dancing. It’s a little easier when I have a person dancing with me. The result of this new ability to hold the movements of two people simultaneously in my mind is I feel like I’m integrating the information a bit faster. I still need floor time in practicas and milongas to make the vocabulary mine, but I’m very happy with how things are progressing.
After work I grabbed some food and went to the JV Lindy Hop practice. I say JV because there is a full blown performance team that’s also part of JumpTown. Some of the community’s most advanced dancers are on it. The JV team is fun. The choreographers are very excited about what they’ve put together. The only thing is time is running out and we still have eight eights to get through. Tonight they moved quickly through a lot of material. And this is one of my biggest remaining issues: rapid instruction.
As Abraham would say, I went upstream. When I feel like I’m getting run over with information I get pretty frustrated almost immediately. I can also get frustrated if information is presented too slowly. I’m like a movement student Goldilocks. I’ve got a bunch of strategies for dealing with both ends of the continuum. First, for all group classes I’ll bring my camera. It can take fifteen minutes worth of video with a 2GB memory card. That should be more than enough for the demonstrations most teachers do to finish classes. Given what I can do with video analysis, I should be able to compile a pretty nice manual of class material quickly. For the slower classes, those usually happen locally. I can either skip them or look at it as a social time rather than a learning time. And the thermonuclear fall back is YouTube. I am taking great solace in knowing I can tear apart just about any video and figure out most of what’s going on. It’s a nice tool which will hopefully help me stay moving downstream.
After practice I came home, took a short break, and chatted with Dave. Then it was off to teach some Salsa to my Spanish tutor and her boyfriend.
It was fun. I used my ultimate movement training tool, the metronome, to help him develop a better sense of the basic salsa rhythm. We worked on four basic turns, the cross body lead, and the horizontal salsa footwork with a couple types of breaks and staying in closed position while breaking with the feet. It’s quite gratifying to see their, especially his, progress. By the end of this third class he was staying on rhythm to moderately paced Salsa music most the time, giving clear leads, having fun, and more motion was coming through his dancing.
After that I came home, blasted my iShuffle with the hair dryer and wrote this.
Oh, on somatic note. While jumping rope, after about ten minutes, I started noticing a little acid reflux. This is quite rare for me. I’ve tracked it most of the day and come to this conclusion. Because of the shift I’m making with contracting TA (Transversis Abdominis) more frequently and strongly, my entire posture is shifting. I’m also focusing on keeping my head back. This is much easier to do with the additional support being given by TA. These two things, the head more upright and TA more contracted, have combined where I’m now pulling more up on the esophagus. I think I’ve managed to pull the esophageal sphincter (although anatomists will argue whether one really exists) through the hiatus. This leads to a poor seal for the stomach and acid reflux. It’s really a small deal. In my Rolfing days I studied Visceral Manipulation extensively, taking approximately 120 hours of training. I know the manual manipulation to address this issue and will use it tomorrow if a solid night’s sleep doesn’t put things right. This is actually a very small consequence of having better posture. A very small consequence.
Well, on that note. I think I’ll sign off, do a little video analysis and get to sleep.
Ciao,
Craig
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