Using more weighty movements, improves the movement a lot!...

Today I went into Geoff's lesson with the mental state of not being stuck in one place in the room and move about the space, as I don't want to experience my movement in the same position all of the time.

We began the session the same as normal with a slow sequence that helps to increase the stretch of the bodily parts. This is my favourite part of the sequence (below), as I can feel a counter stretch.

Stretching and reaching the leg away, relaxing the shoulders and back into the floor with a sense of being grounded. Looking towards that arm helps to increase the stretch of the back and gluteals.

Pulling the knee over further pulls the hips over and the arm follows. From this I circle my arms to the above position and back round to the below position. Creating circles with the arm improves the stretch of all of the limbs. This position above uses gravity to relax into the ground.

Pulling back from the hip to release the arm up and over. The above shows my body lengthened and stretched to the full.

The next sequence I performed includes curves, plie's, high releases and rises. I feel confident with this phrase, but I know that I can always improve on this.

I performed a sequence at the bar, which includes, what I think, precision. I always think about what my body is doing in this sequence and today I could feel it. I could feel every metatarsal, and phalangees moving through the floor and I could feel my tail dropping to the floor when performing a curve. When going through retire, I could feel my hamstrings, gluteals and semitendinosus muscles working to pull my turn out forwards. You can see some of this in the video below.

I am super confident with this sequence and I try my hardest to complete it using all of the techniques taught to me. Geoff said to me that I perform this sequence superbly and he would easily give me a 2.1 as I use my technique to the full and I am doing everything asked of me, attacking the space and the phrase itself, but if I put a little bit more weight into my movements then he would give me a 1st. I did that and he told me that was spot on, so I went over it again outside of class to continue improving it (as you can see below).

Moving onto the next sequence keeping this in mind, I performed this using as much travelling as possible and using my quadriceps to push me through the space. As you can see in the video below, I was towards the right side of the room for the start of this sequence and I was slightly squashed (I moved to the middle of the room when I performed it again), this made me movements slightly smaller than normal. I still attempted to execute this fully and then began to travel away from the side of the room. I try my hardest to use the power and energy in my legs to make my sequence flow more and look aesthetically pleasing and I think that I managed to do this eventually. As you can see, there is a varied dynamic range that this can be performed in and I tried to make a few of my movements a surprise. As I like to travel in my classes you can see that there is not enough room for me to do this as I also fall into the mirror towards the end.

We began another short jumping phrase which included the use of power in the legs. This sequence was to travel as much as possible across the room. One of the things that Geoff mentioned was to use our heads with the movement, especially on the side step as he said our heads had to look at the floor to resume normal position for the 360 jump.