Ido Portal workshop
Oct. 5th, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonI'm coming back early to post about today's workshop with Ido Portal.
He's teaching a series of handbalancing / acrobatic / floreio workshops in Boston this week, and after attending the first one tonight I realize I must skip out on acroyoga tomorrow night to catch his second one as well. He's teaching handbalancing in exactly the way I want to learn it.
Here's his idea of a complete wrist warmup, to be gone into after a few circling motions:
* 10 pushups with fingers rotated inward and back as far as possible -- elbows extend out to the sides or, preferably, forward. This makes a strong man look like a broken doll, very creepy.
* 10 pushups on the backs of the hands (!), fingers pointed in toward each other. Come up onto fists at the top, down onto the backs of the hands as the elbows bend out. Painful as hell, I did these in a hands-and-knees position.
* 10 "wrist pushups" where you just come up to the base of the fingers. I learned these from Z-dawg as a warmup, but didn't know it was possible to do in a full push-up position.
* 10 fingertip pushups. I thought I was amazing for being able to do three or so with good form. Turns out that ten is a bitch.
Wrist warmup = 40 pushups, that's right.
Then we did "body line" work. It was all very classic stuff about tucking the pelvis and engaging the glutes and actively opening the shoulders, but with an added twist: partner work, with one partner constantly trying to work a hand under the lower back or poking at the butt to make sure it was engaged. Or doing light karate chops to the belly the whole time. Surprisingly, it turns out sixty seconds of that kind of thing is tiring.
The last part was the best, though: work on correcting overbalances while remaining in good alignment, with promises of correcting underbalances tomorrow. Must go back. This is exactly what I want in my practice -- the idea that there is no perfect balance point, that learning as an adult can be all about adjustments that eventually become smaller and smaller. And I badly want his drill for correcting underbalances, which I've never been formally taught how to do.
Quote of the night: "it doesn't really matter what you do, there's always a six-year-old girl in China doing it better."
Good feeling of the night: knowing five other people in the room, from yoga and Zacro and adult gymnastics.
Question of the night: what exactly is so great about getting harsh instruction from a guy with the body of a professional acrobat?
Exercise for the reader: hold one arm up in the air with index finger pointed. Staring up at your finger, spin quickly in circles for ten seconds (get someone to time this). Then try -- immediately! -- to stand on your right foot. Even knowing that I had to ignore my inner ear, knowing that only the bottom of my foot would be giving me correct information, didn't help at all.
I've been sick, and this morning I did the elliptical machine and this afternoon I played dodgeball for an hour with my office -- so all in all, it was a tremendous day of diving back into being in my body. More later on all the rest of the last 3+ weeks.
He's teaching a series of handbalancing / acrobatic / floreio workshops in Boston this week, and after attending the first one tonight I realize I must skip out on acroyoga tomorrow night to catch his second one as well. He's teaching handbalancing in exactly the way I want to learn it.
Here's his idea of a complete wrist warmup, to be gone into after a few circling motions:
* 10 pushups with fingers rotated inward and back as far as possible -- elbows extend out to the sides or, preferably, forward. This makes a strong man look like a broken doll, very creepy.
* 10 pushups on the backs of the hands (!), fingers pointed in toward each other. Come up onto fists at the top, down onto the backs of the hands as the elbows bend out. Painful as hell, I did these in a hands-and-knees position.
* 10 "wrist pushups" where you just come up to the base of the fingers. I learned these from Z-dawg as a warmup, but didn't know it was possible to do in a full push-up position.
* 10 fingertip pushups. I thought I was amazing for being able to do three or so with good form. Turns out that ten is a bitch.
Wrist warmup = 40 pushups, that's right.
Then we did "body line" work. It was all very classic stuff about tucking the pelvis and engaging the glutes and actively opening the shoulders, but with an added twist: partner work, with one partner constantly trying to work a hand under the lower back or poking at the butt to make sure it was engaged. Or doing light karate chops to the belly the whole time. Surprisingly, it turns out sixty seconds of that kind of thing is tiring.
The last part was the best, though: work on correcting overbalances while remaining in good alignment, with promises of correcting underbalances tomorrow. Must go back. This is exactly what I want in my practice -- the idea that there is no perfect balance point, that learning as an adult can be all about adjustments that eventually become smaller and smaller. And I badly want his drill for correcting underbalances, which I've never been formally taught how to do.
Quote of the night: "it doesn't really matter what you do, there's always a six-year-old girl in China doing it better."
Good feeling of the night: knowing five other people in the room, from yoga and Zacro and adult gymnastics.
Question of the night: what exactly is so great about getting harsh instruction from a guy with the body of a professional acrobat?
Exercise for the reader: hold one arm up in the air with index finger pointed. Staring up at your finger, spin quickly in circles for ten seconds (get someone to time this). Then try -- immediately! -- to stand on your right foot. Even knowing that I had to ignore my inner ear, knowing that only the bottom of my foot would be giving me correct information, didn't help at all.
I've been sick, and this morning I did the elliptical machine and this afternoon I played dodgeball for an hour with my office -- so all in all, it was a tremendous day of diving back into being in my body. More later on all the rest of the last 3+ weeks.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 02:23 am (UTC)nothing that I can think of. I got one free trainer session with my gym membership; didn't do much for me - though maybe I should go back for one every few years for new ideas. I quit karate because the higher level classes taught by certain black belts got a little too jock-ish reminding me of all the things I don't like about football.
On the other hand, I do better with some leading and encouragement to do more. I like Z's style pretty well. :-)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 02:55 pm (UTC)I miss Z's class and hope it starts up again soonest. My back walkovers are doubtless gone again by now.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 02:44 am (UTC)i don't know if i coul dformally teach someone to correct an underbalance. i just suck my stomach in like mad and it seems to shift my organs toward my spine enough to save the balance. or sometimes i bend my arms a little to bring my shoulders forward to save it. the former is preferable.
and i will be skipping your dizziness exercise :)
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 05:20 pm (UTC)did he teach you anything to correct overbalances beyond pressing down like mad with your fingers?
Well, no... but somehow he got me to do that while keeping good form. Basically we did hs against the wall, a hand-length away, got the body position and then used fingertips to pull off the wall a few times. I think it's a good drill for me, because when I'm in the middle of the room I often don't detect an overbalance until it's way too late and only flopping into a scorpion position can possibly save it. I need to be able to feel them while they're still catchable.
I didn't know about the stomach-sucking trick and am not so good at the arm-bending one (though I used to practice this in a split handstand at my old job, where we had a 6-feet-across room, that feels different from a straight handstand). Ido claims to have an underbalance drill, and if he does, I wanna learn it.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 06:44 pm (UTC)the arm-bending for me feels more about pushing my shoulders forward -- that's the primary goal, and my arms may or may not bend to make it happen. it's really hard to recover a straight hs after i do this though. it's much better if i can stay focused and save the underbalance before it gets bad. as you say, it's about detection. which is why at a certain point hss are much more a mind game than a body game.