left right left right left

[keryx]

I can't say "left" and then "right" without thinking of that Chemical Brothers song. Which this really has nothing to do with.


I wrote a list awhile back before I started the anti-dance THP. It was a list of all the weird little things about my right vs. my left.

It's a 9-point list that charts a pretty obvious spiral (as tension is wont to appear) of tension from my feet to my head. Some of it no doubt came from past left-knee injury. But it's not like I sat on my ass from 1996 to 2000 to 2005. The situation escalated into a problem after the intensity of my dancing picked up a coupla years ago.

The Yay!ATS!Wow! crowd on Tribe were talking like noooooo, there could never be anything problematic about ATS! It's not sided at all! Both hips are equally active! And indeed they are equally active, but they're performing different tasks. Performing different tasks means you coordinate differently, and your muscles develop differently as a result. That is totally okay for an art to do - ballet's not designed for optimal efficiency and balance, either, ya know? Nor is any other form of bellydance (like moving one hip differently is the dumbest thing dancers have ever done... I doubt it). It's art. You make artistic choices that could even be physically damaging, and if you're smart you train your body to enable those choices in the least dangerous ways. I used to intentionally take the most painful possible positions to pull the performances I wanted out of myself as an actor.

I didn't counter-train against all the dancing I did, and I screwed myself up a little. It would be beneficial for more dance instructors to say this than to say "no no, dance is a truly wholesome and safe activity". I'm not talking about folk who come to a class a week just to move around - there you teach the gentlest things in the gentlest ways, and maybe if you're teaching for fitness you actually change what you teach - but people who aim to actually learn to dance. They need to know to counter-train, to release what dance builds up. They need to school their own bodies, to build the strength and endurance that prevent dance choices from becoming day-to-day injuries and patterns.

The depressing thing is that this argument was had by dance teachers (including my teachers), certified personal trainers, even physical therapists - and they were all a little bit right, but also quite a bit wrong (and also having an argument on the internets, where one's true position is often misrepresented by one's poor choice of words). Those of us who are supposed to understand things don't, not really. And I include myself in this [I certainly haven't really hammered this in for even members of the tribe - though of course, it's really only arovd who dances near enough to build screwed up tension, and she already trains.]. It's unbelievably frustrating.

I do understand better, though, and I hope to come back from Bellingham even better. I'm still slowly breaking down my issues, and my anti-dance training means I rarely experience one-sided tension patterns after dance (mind you, I still get tired and still hurt sometimes when I skimp on mobility practice).

Comments

[kazoogrrl.livejournal.com]

To my (layperson) brain, it seems that if you work on focused movement of one body part that includes weight or natural resistence of the body, you are going to develop the muscles that make that movement. Repeated arm curls using both arms make my biceps bigger. Repeated right side hip bumps/lifts will make my _______ (R obliques? L inner thigh? ??) bigger, especially if I'm doing them with training in mind. That is, 15 minutes a day of hip lifts done on one side of the body are a lot more than NO hip lifts, and there will be a difference between the muscle development no matter what muscles are used. But that to me is just how my brain thinks of it, I have no evidence to back it up.

What kind of things do you do to balance yourself after dance training? Would yoga and strength training help that?

[keryx.livejournal.com]

It's a lot more complex than developing one or two groups of muscles - it's more like, you develop muscles around the whole body, from your left foot, round your calves & knees, your thighs, your ass, your obliques, even your shoulders - all tiny little shifts that train your body to go do a hip lift. Even the right-foot-forward Arabic or Turkish Shimmy does something similar. I don't have a lot of formal education on this, but I do have *some*.

I have a mobility drill I do before training & sometimes after, and a mobility/yoga-ish flow thing that I do after to release. And I do some specific weighted training to release, too. I have a trainer (not a regular gym trainer) who helps me figure stuff out. I think gym-type strength training is less effective. D does yoga, and she seems to recover fairly well, too.

[noralita.livejournal.com]

Hah - this IS interesting Ames - thanks for pointing me over here - I didn't mention to you yesterday that when I'm in the gym working on strength training, after working say, both arms, I've been doing more reps and/or more weight on my non-dominant side. Hard on the leg machines tho, but I haven't been approaching it as someone in P.T. would have to.

And hello Keryx! Har, I just noticed the name pattern: A=K & A=K. Funny, that!