Danced Opal this morning with a focus on Abdominals. It was actually an Abs Class. Students looked terrified, but after looking at an image of the four distinct groups of ab muscles (transverse abdominal, the internal obliques, the external obliques, and the abdominus rectus) and a brief discussion about what each group does, both in terms of movement for movement sake (ex: “moves the spine laterally”) and in terms of functional movement (ex: standing up from sitting or shoveling snow”). The tension eased. Then, the whole routine sort of fell into place with a pelvis, chest, head focus. Opal wins the prize (nominated by me) for routine with the biggest aerobic bang for the buck. I forgot how intense Opal is.
Yesterday, dancing Global Unity in Nia FUNdamentals Class to work on movement in the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes and then playing with the spine and body weights: flexion, extension, lateral bending and twisting got great responses from students.
Focusing on student attraction and retention, I’ve been going to anatomy and kinesiology and it seems to be working to attract and keep students. It felt clinical at first and not very fun-Nia-dance-free-spirit-ish,