In this lesson I was asked to take a flexibility/ballet class (as I am the only one in the class who does ballet). Initially the boys laughed at the thought of ballet, but they soon realised how demanding ballet is and what it requires of your body. I began this lesson with a thorough warm up to increase our heart rates so blood was pumped around our bodies quicker and to reduce the risk of pulling a muscle. The main part of my warm up was joint mobility (e.g. shoulder rolls and instep stretches) as ballet and flexibility exercises rely on having lose joints.
In the flexibility part of my lesson I began with our legs. We did a variety of different stretches for our legs (such as lunges, touching toes and splits), arms and backs (such as back bends and table tops). As well as doing a variety of different stretches, I taught the class some exercises to tone and strengthen our arms without using weights (doing different exercises with arms fully extended and not putting them down or bending our arms).
After the flexibility lesson I moved on to a ballet lesson. I began this with pliés to improve alignment and promote good posture. To do a correct plié, your knees should be over your toes rather than your knees going inwards. Your bottom should also be tucked underneath you and your back should be straight. After pliés, we moved on to pirouettes. At this point, the boys realised how challenging ballet is. I taught them how to prepare a classical pirouette (begin in first position, then arms and feet in third and plié, extend and point to second with arms in second and then pull up and place leg in a 90 degree retiré) and then what you need to do the full pirouette (spotting with the head, arms to whip from third to first position, knee to push you round, and a strong relevé). By doing pirouettes, they learned how important posture is. We then moved on to leaps and corner work (i.e. kicks). The corner work required flexibility (to get their legs up higher), alignment (to ensure the kicks were in the right place), posture (to ensure they kept their backs up) and core strength (to ensure they were in control).
I then did a cool down to decrease our heart rates back down, and to reduce the possible build-up of lactic acid. This lesson was beneficial to me as I would like to become more flexible to improve my dancing which will open up more opportunities in choreography as well as being able to perform more demanding movements with ease. This class has hopefully helped Toby as he is looking in to doing physical theatre later on at university, so this lesson hopefully helped him realise how he can push his body further. I hope the others have taken something from this lesson and it has just basically opened their eyes to what their bodies can achieve if they keep working towards it.
