Dance team sections is definitely the buzz today! Congratulations to every team and tribe of supporters, as you have worked very hard to peak this season!

Coaches, if you find your team working toward state, you might wonder “what can I do right now to help my team improve kick in just a couple of weeks?”

First, let’s take a moment to consider 3 common practices to leave OUT of your plan:

1. Increase full out kicks with extra run throughs, two a days, etc. There’s a good chance your dancers already have sore hips, and many are dancing injured. Adding more reps will increase inflammation and pain, which will lead to more compensation like bent knees or lower kicks.

2. Extra partner stretching or over stretching. Over stretching can create soreness. Soreness will also limit your kick height.

3. Strengthening the hip flexors with bands, weights, or extra high knee running. It takes 4-6 weeks to gain sport performance strength. You don’t have 4-6 weeks right now. If you happen to pick an exercise that targets the TFL muscle, injuries may really increase at this point in the season.

Now, let’s look at the big 4 that you can use right now to help create instant kick improvements:

1. The standing leg– When you stand on 2 legs, the tail bone should be evenly between them. When you stand on your right leg, your tail bone should align more toward your right heel instead of being centered.

Take a moment and have your dancers practice being aware of how the tail bone needs to shift over the standing side when you move from standing on 2 feet to a parallel passe. Next, try this awareness during a kick set of 8 counts slow. Next, repeat more quickly.

When dancers can experience the subtle right to left shift, and then apply it to kick, they will pull less on their fellow dancers when hooked up in formation. That will help the upper body posture, which is also critical to kick technique.

2.The upper body– Have your dancers wear a bun or high pony tail for this drill. When you stand on 2 feet, the bun lines up over the tail bone. When you lift one leg in front of you (i.e. kick), the bun needs to travel both upward to lengthen the spine AND slightly back to be slightly behind the line of the tail bone. This allows ease of motion for the leg to lift in front of the body.

Have your dancers practice the slight backward upward movement of the bun on their heads as they alternate high knee marching, and then kick sets of 8. See how their ease of motion in getting the legs up changes.

3. The pelvis– Let’s talk about sits bones. When you are sitting, you feel two bones (ischial tuberosities) that you sit on. One is under your right buttock area, and the other is on the left. Let’s call these “sits bones.” If I’d like to perform a right front kick, the left sits bone needs to lengthen toward the floor/standing side heel. This is not a level change, but rather a sense of lengthening that will create a sturdy standing leg and opposition for ease of movement in the kicking leg. If we have a stable standing leg, we can do just about anything with the moving side.

Now, let’s think about the right leg (kicking leg). The pelvis has a hip socket toward the front side. If the dancer can orient that socket upward to face more toward the ceiling, it will free up the right kicking leg to go higher without pinching the front of the hip. Think of it like a steering wheel, or a tuck only on the kicking side. The pelvis steering wheel rotates so the front of the hip can go up toward the front. We will share some video drills later this week to help dancers feel immediate success with this complex movement.

4. The kick initiation– From a choreography standpoint, we often focus on the accent up to “whip” the top of the kick, or the accent down by pounding the feet toward the floor. If you want to see straight knees and pointy toes, then don’t delay the straight knee pointy toe motion.

Have the dancers try traditional ballet degage front, alternating sides. Have them really focus on brushing the floor so they can feel their straight knee and pointy toes before the leg elevates to 45 degrees. While high kick technique does not typically have the brush component, the dancers can still learn how to properly weight shift right to left and achieve the correct straight knee – pointy toe line before 45 degrees. This improves both technique and ease of motion in elevating the kick height.

Summary:

The secret to improvement at this point in the season is to work with alignment and sensory motor processing. These are the two areas that can lead to immediate improvement.Remember that not all cues or drills work equally for all dancers; building your toolbox over time is critical to helping more dancers achieve success. While the above tips can help immediate improvement, they can also be practiced for years on end with continued skill development.

Give these tips a try and feel free to share your experiences and thoughts here or on social media; this community is stronger together, and I hope that these tips help add to your toolbox.

This article was written by Dr. Meredith Butulis for educational purposes. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any condition.