Physical limitations and tango

[Zoopsia59]

Wow... lots in this post.. I'll go point by point:

keeping good posture and being on axis on 4-inch stilettos while twisting, turning, and basically doing lunges on the balls of your feet? Not so easy. Don't get me wrong, tango shoes look fantastic, but I think they really put the follower in a mechanically disadvantageous position.

Yes they do.. ditch those 4" heels and get something lower. Even 3" heels are easier and look about the same. Anyone who won't dance with you because your heels aren't as high as so-and-so's isn't a leader you want to dance with anyway. The best leaders know better.

foot and ankle strengthening and stretching exercises.

See previous post about ballet. I highly recommend it. You can almost always find SOMEPLACE to take adult beginner ballet classes.

hip mobility, because how much I can extend the leg depends on my hip range of motion. It's really easy to compensate from the lower back when the hip socket is stiff, which leads to a lot of lower back pain.

I hear ya... this is my problem area that I've given up on. I have strange hips and there is little flexibility. I won't be doing those boleos where you kick your opposite elbow with your foot. Kudos if you can gain increased mobility. I have to do things "wrongly" to compensate. However, I do keep stretching just to avoid being crippled. (PS - I'm "of a certain age")

lat and oblique strengthening. I've been struggling with pivots for a long time and I still never feel stable and confident in them. Trying to piece together which muscles generate that rotational motion is pretty much a guess, since I have no training in anatomy or body mechanics, but for now I'm guessing lats and obliques would be important.

Your problem with stability in pivots could be due to a myriad of things besides lat strength. For instance, are you "collecting" properly and diligently? Pivots will go wonky if you don't. Are you dropping or raising your free hip when on one leg? Are your leaders pushing you off balance? Before you blame lack of strength, make sure your technique is good. All the strength in the world won't help if it isn't and you don't need THAT much strength when your technique is sound. You don't need to generate a pivot with YOUR muscles, and you can't muscle your way through one... the leader should be generating a pivot. you just go with the flow. You only need enough muscle to keep your body together rather than "breaking". Again, this doesn't take all that much strength, but it does take awareness of how to use what you've got.. ie: technique

posterior chain in general (hamstrings, glutes, back, calves etc). Because I sit at work, I think I spend a lot of time in flexion. People in the fitness industry believe this leads to tight and overactive hip flexors, rectus abdominus, pecs etc, and weak posterior chain in the general population. Since followers mostly walk backwards, I figure the stronger the posterior chain, the more stable and stronger the walk.

You've clearly done a lot of fitness research. Yeah.. if you sit alot, you need to work on that stuff even if you DON'T do tango, although for walking backwards in tango you don't need super glutes.. you need flexibility in the front of your hips which is lost through sitting. It also takes awhile to get the hang of... wait for it.. the proper technique.

thoracic mobility. Dissociation is such a big part of tango, yet I think a lot of us are very stiff in the upper back and have very limited range of motion there. But if I don't dissociate enough or if I'm not comfortable in that end range of motion, it throws me off axis or it forces me to disconnect from my partner (impossible when in close embrace; there I just suffer ).

In Close embrace, you do not need to dissassociate so much... just do "crossing" ochos and molinete's. If you don't know what I mean by that, I'll explain further.

 

[Zoopsia59]

Yup, sounds like sound advice . I do try to work on my posture, but I don't find it as straightforward as keeping the shoulders back and the head up. Pulling the shoulders back obviously is the first thing people do to fix posture, but I think there's good reason to think that's not ideal. I've been working on cues like "put your shoulder blades into your back pockets". But really, I think bad posture often comes from muscle imbalances, so I'm trying to figure out what's weak and what's tight that's leading to my posture.

My chiropractor advised me to do 2 "fly" sets for every "Row" set on the gym machines. (I slouch like you wouldn't believe) But make sure to do both fly and row. They are both good for the muscles that support your posture.

There is also a machine that you hold the handles in front of you and swing them out to the side and back (palms down, straight or nearly elbows) If you do this one with your chest up, it does wonders.

And.. ballet, ballet, ballet... seriously... Only Marines have better posture than ballet dancers.

 

[Zoopsia59]

4" heels creating a disadvantage

Not with a good leader and a good connection --when the leader actually helps you be comfortable. If he pulls you up or doesn't let you adapt your height to make the steps he leads be your natural step size, yes, you're at a disadvantage. But ideally that shouldn't happen.

I respectfully but strongly disagree. Some people's foot structure is not suited to heels that high. The best leader in the world won't change that basic fact. If nothing else, there is a difference in how high a 4" heel feels to someone with a size 6 foot vs a size 9 (think about the geometry.. the triangle created by the foot, heel and floor) Some people do not have the flexibility in their arch to be that high, and many don't have the strength even if their foot structure would allow for it. The real test is in walking FORWARD in the heels, not backwards.

If you think that the only reason some ladies have trouble with 4" heels is the leaders they dance with, you need to think again. If I wasn't stable with Jorge Torres in my highest heels, I hardly think it was because of HIM.

 

[toothlesstiger]

But keeping good posture and being on axis on 4-inch stilettos while twisting, turning, and basically doing lunges on the balls of your feet? Not so easy. Don't get me wrong, tango shoes look fantastic, but I think they really put the follower in a mechanically disadvantageous position.

OK, zoopsia's post brought this to my attention...
By all means, if you are having any trouble with 4-inch heels, ditch them. Don't make things harder than they need to be.

 

[sixela]

In Close embrace, you do not need to dissassociate so much... just do "crossing" ochos and molinete's. If you don't know what I mean by that, I'll explain further.

Parallel close embrace with ocho milonguero and ocho cortado. In VU-style close embrace or any cose embrace with a "V", that's less true. As always, there are so many different styles and embraces that anything you can write is an overgeneralisation, including this .

 

[sixela]

The best leaders know better.

Yesterday I was a bit late in catching a dance partner for a di Sarli instrumental tanda, and she danced it in low-heeled boots after the last minute interception.

Not such a big problem, at least not for a single tanda (though I must say the end pose is a bit less graceful with one partner on the heel of low-heeled boots, especially with me wearing cuban heels. It almost made me look the female of the pair).

 

[sixela]

I respectfully but strongly disagree.

Uhm - no you don't, at least not with me (I think you have the "let's scan this thread quickly and catch up" syndrome and are crossing your attributions).

I don't advocate very high heels for followers at all - in fact, I'm on the record for suggesting kitten heels if these are more comfortable to a follower. My comment was about "tango shoes" and _nowhere_ did I state these should have 4" heels (for the simple reason I don't believe it).

Remind me to post something one of these days with which you can really disagree.

 

[opendoor]

..catching a dance partner for a di Sarli instrumental tanda, and she danced it in low-heeled boots...

How did she actually dance? With heels down or high heeled on low-heels?

 

[Zoopsia59]

Uhm - no you don't, at least not with me (I think you have the "let's scan this thread quickly and catch up" syndrome and are crossing your attributions).

I don't advocate very high heels for followers at all - in fact, I'm on the record for suggesting kitten heels if these are more comfortable to a follower. My comment was about "tango shoes" and _nowhere_ did I state these should have 4" heels (for the simple reason I don't believe it).

Here is the entire exchange (forgive the weird formatting).. although I scanned the thread before responding to the FIRST post, I did actually READ the other posts I responded to... and the ones I didn't.

From the OP:
But keeping good posture and being on axis on 4-inch stilettos while twisting, turning, and basically doing lunges on the balls of your feet? Not so easy.

Your response:
Only practice helps there, until your muscle memory does the rest. But that only 'fixes' itself if there are no flaws in your posture to correct (and if you have a good embrace with your dance partners). You _do_ need to be able to relax (in particular, relax the upper body and dissociate between ribcage and hips), and lots of things can go wrong there (often it won't even be your fault, especially in smaller tango scenes where all leaders have the same defects).

From the OP: Don't get me wrong, tango shoes look fantastic, but I think they really put the follower in a mechanically disadvantageous position.

Your response: Not with a good leader and a good connection --when the leader actually helps you be comfortable. If he pulls you up or doesn't let you adapt your height to make the steps he leads be your natural step size, yes, you're at a disadvantage. But ideally that shouldn't happen.


Do you really not see how this gives the impression that you think the problems associated with 4" stilettos are attributable to the leader or other technique issues that can be fixed? Can you see how the OP's reference to 4" heels followed by a reference to "tango shoes" creates the impression that the tango shoes she refers to are the higher heel varieties? And to be fair, "tango shoes" for ladies usually DOES imply high heels. Go on any of the famous maker sites and the lower heels are not only a minority, but harder to find (and rarely as attractive) I'm guessing, but I'm thinking that when she says "tango shoes" she is not talking about 2" heels.

So while you don't actually say above that 4" heels are no problem with the right leader, the context in which you answered definitely gives that impression... at least it did to me, and I assure you that my reading comprehension skills are pretty solid.

 

[Zoopsia59]

Parallel close embrace with ocho milonguero and ocho cortado. In VU-style close embrace or any cose embrace with a "V", that's less true. As always, there are so many different styles and embraces that anything you can write is an overgeneralisation, including this .

From a practical standpoint, the follower can use "crossing" style moves any time she wants. It may not be "correct" for the style, but if it gets her where the leader wants her without changing the connection, then it shouldn't matter. Of course, that latter part is the tricky part, but it can be done, albeit much less so on the open side and quite easily on the closed side.

Of course, it may be that I only think so because few leaders around here dance with a V and then leave the embrace unchanged for molinete. Most of the ones who dance V open up the closed side for back ochos to the follower's right and for molinetes. Maybe because the followers have so much trouble with the back ocho to her right?

However, most of the leaders here dance either a more flat CE or in open, so I rarely encounter a situation where I can't use crossing style if I need to (and it comes up frequently as sticky floors are common)

 

[Zoopsia59]

Remind me to post something one of these days with which you can really disagree.

Seems like we've already managed that... though why you're being so snarky about it in these posts, I'm not sure.

 

[sixela]

Here is the entire exchange (forgive the weird formatting)

I bow before your superior command of stack unwinding. Yes, reading all of that, you may have thought that I meant 4" heels were by definition OK. But I didn't, that original post had been beyond my horizon for some time.

 

[sixela]

Seems like we've already managed that... though why you're being so snarky about it in these posts, I'm not sure.

That's my natural mood. No offense or even hostility is implied, on the contrary.

 

[sixela]

From a practical standpoint, the follower can use "crossing" style moves any time she wants.

No argument from me. If there's a dial on the follower to control the amount of dissociation, but none of them have ever told me where it is .