PRACTICING BREAKDANCE-
PREFACE-
In my opinion, practicing is the most important thing in Breakdance and Breakdance is probably one of the only true things that requires practice. For instance, lets use the piano as an example. Say your doing a recital and you didn’t practice at all. But, you can still play the piece perfectly, even if it’s only your first time playing it. Now imagine yourself at a battle, and your crew is getting seriously burned. You decide to enter the circle and try to pull off some huge move like flares, even though you’ve never practiced at all. You toprock, then split your legs and put your hand down. You sweep your leg, and then......you fall down. Hard. It hurts. You lose the battle. This is why practice is so fundamental and mandatory for breakdancing. With the exception of few moves (usually acrobatic moves like back tuck, front tuck, etc.) it is virtually IMPOSSIBLE to bust a move the first time you try. Maybe you’ll get it half right, but not completely. Practice is what MAKES you who you are in the vast world of breakdancing.
GUIDELINES-
This section is the fat of the article. It will cover mostly stuff about exercise and how you should conduct your routine. First of all, it is good to practice every day for as long as possible, preferably at least an hour or more. Try to have most of your practice sessions identical, or you can have a schedule, like on Monday work on power moves, Tuesday footwork, etc. Every practice, no matter how long or how short, should ALWAYS begin with stretches and warm-ups. If you think that stretches don’t do anything, your WRONG. If you practice every day and don’t start out with a warm-up and nothing happens, no injuries, then chances are that you DO have an injury or a muscle strain or something of that matter. An ideal set of warm-ups and stretches should include some cardiovascular warm-ups, like jumping jacks, to get your blood pumping and heart going. For stretches, you should stretch at least you arms, shoulders*, groin area*, calfs*, wrists*, neck-muscles*, knees*, hips*, back*, stomach, and your pelvis area. The things that are marked with an asterisk are VERY important, and should not be left out. Even if you don’t use your neck muscles, you still need to stretch them out and most likely you do use them, indirectly. Shoulders, wrists, and knees are important because a lot of pressure is put on them in breakdancing. You should rotate these around to stretch them out for starters (especially the wrists). The real killers are the calfs. When most people (at least for me) have muscle cramps, it’s usually in the stomach or calfs. The calfs hurt much MUCH more (trust me). This happens because you didn’t stretch out the calf muscle, which can be a very dumb mistake. Stretching a muscle out relieves the tension in it and gets it loose and ready for any physical activity involving it. If you feel your calf while you have a muscle cramp, then you will notice that it will be all hard and this proves my point. Hips should be treated like the wrists, shoulder, and knees. A GREAT stretch/warm-up is to stand up and rotate your upper body around (yes you will look like an idiot but if you fail to do this and injure your hips, you will look like much more of an idiot). Hips are really important and also should not be overlooked, because hip injury if not treated can result in long-term and even life-term problems. Moving on to the back (lower & upper back, as well as the spine), good exercises are the bridge position, and also the corkscrew stretch (hard to explain, but it’s where you cross your leg and turn and look behind you, if you still don’t know ask your gym teacher or anyone they will know). What’s also great is the standing corkscrew, where you twist your upper body one way and kick your leg to the opposite direction, kick the right leg if twisting right and left leg if twisting left). Injuries in the back can also lead to life long problems. Now, when you practice, you should NOT overdo yourself (you know your limits) and f*ck yourself up. That is dumb and your fault. Be careful of this especially is you train with weights, because you could break your growth plates and not grow at all and be a little shorty when you "grow" up. Drink LOTS of fluids, NOT coke or mountain dew. Drink water, and water only. I see no point in sports drinks, in my opinion they are just colored water with a label with false claims. Drink fluids at anytime you can, the instant you feel thirsty, even the slightest bit, drink you water. I usually have a couple of bottled waters near my practice area and drink them down when needed. If you also want to build strength along with practicing moves, then have an order. For example, my generic practice session usually goes like this:
1) Stretch and warm-ups.
2) Practice moves that I already can do to perfect them.
3) Practice moves that I can’t do so I can be able to do them.
4) Main water break and short rest period.
5) Strength building.
6) Final water break, cool/calm down and rest.
I have an exercise sheet with little boxes and columns that I have for each day, and lots of rows for each exercise. My first row is pushups, then in the little box I have a smaller box and a number inside. The number is the number I have to do, and if I do it, then I fill in the box. My next row is wall pushups, then inverted pushups, then situps, then crunches. I also have some extra stuff to do like jumping exercises and hold handstands, turtle positions, and elbowstands. I also have to hold stretch positions like the bridge position and the splits. To close this section off, here are some do’s and dont’s.
¤ DO drink water.
¤ DO stretch and warm-up before hand.
¤ DO breath.
¤ DO try your hardest.
¤ DO get the most out of your exercise.
¤ DO take a shower after your exercise unless you want massive acne.
¤ DO wipe your sweat off.
¤ DO wear protection if you’re gonna try something crazy.
× DON’T exercise right before you sleep.
× DON’T exercise right after you eat, wait at least 45 min. before & after.
× DON’T strain yourself and do something dumb.
× DON’T kill yourself.
MOVES-
This section is about practicing breaking moves. It is good to first practice footwork and then power, but it’s your choice. The bottom line of your practicing a move is to gain the ability to do the move. However, you should not try repeatedly over and over you will get tired, and if you are practicing an acrobatic move you will most likely tire out and then crash and get seriously injured. It is ok to practice repeatedly footwork and techs, since it is not as physical. Always practice acrobatics with mats, or a spotter. A good place to practice (as your last resort) is a kiddie place like Chucky Cheese or Discovery Zone. The areas with those plastic balls are GREAT for acrobatics, you will not get a scratch or anything at all, but make sure the balls are piled high enough and isn’t too shallow. Some power moves are not good to practice repeatedly on, let’s say, swipes. Swipes burn out your energy pretty quickly, and if you keep trying them you will not have even practiced for a second and you will quit your practice. Windmills are okay for repeated practice, because they are not so much of a strength move (practice them on smooth carpet to reduce your chances of getting colossal bruises on your shoulders). To practice a freeze, just keep going into the freeze and holding it for as long as possible. You will master it eventually.
OUTRO-
The old saying goes, "Practice makes perfect." Well, to tell you the truth, in my opinion, that’s a whole load of bullsh!t. Practice DOES NOT make perfect, so don’t trick yourself into believing that. It all comes down to how bad you want a move, and how much you are willing to sacrifice. Practice WILL, however, make you a pretty decent bboy/bgirl. Remember, practice in moderation. Drink liquids.
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