In the powwow industry there is a vast amount of athleticism during the events throughout the three day competition. In which a lot of movement and energy is being used to dance that can be very difficult for dancer if they dont do any proper warmup beforehand.
There is many way to be proactive about this. Stretching is a very effective and it also benefit our ability to dance and to improve on our performance, this can also help with other aspects that most athletes that should take more awareness. If this is wanting to dedicate to enhancing your mobility or wanting to be a little more aware of preventing injuries, I present affective stretches and warmups that you can use before and afterward during powwow sessions.
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Arm stretches: #1.
Arm stretches is crucial for dancer especially when most of our categories use heavy, fast, vigorous arm movement when dancing. To be able to be take care of these muscles, the. Most effective stretching is highly focused on our joints and more relatively on our shoulder since most of the movements of our arms is heavy on our shoulders.
For one, circular arm movement loosens the muscles and will prevent any strain or pulling into the muscle and improve your flexibility of your arm if done daily. This exercise is down by keeping a straight posture, this stretch shouldn’t be rushed and slowly begin with a wide forward circular motion which helps strengthen the rotator cuff and increase the range of motion.
This stretch should be done both with an internal rotation which involves with rotating your upper arm toward the front side of your torso (forward rotations) and an external rotation were rotating your upper arm away from the front side front side of your torso (backward rotations).
Another effective stretch to utilize is to stretch the backside of your shoulder muscles by standing shoulder width apart and extending one of your arms across your chest, then by using your other arm to lock and pull your arm closer to his chest.
This stretch improves the mobility of your shoulder which is essential for holding our regalia and keeping the upper body fluid in dancing.
Hip Stretches: #2.
Hip stretching is also an important part in our body that we need to stretch since working on our center of gravity helps greatly with dancing. For one, the core and hips are vital because most of stretching and as well as warm up help boost endurance and our ability to maintain solid and steady pace throughout song performances.
There are a couple of things that can help improve core and endurance abilities, as well as the flexibility in our hips. An effective and easy way to improve is starting by using hip rotations and really flexing your muscles tightly and slowly rotating your hips one way, and then switching to the other direction. This will focus on your mobility and improving the range of motion in your higher muscles in your upper thighs, your core, and the muscles in your hips.
After that is completed, it’s important that you utilize the majority of your lower abdomen is being used during your exercise sessions. Another stretch to effectively use is to do hip raises, this stretch is dont by laying on your side with your body taking a straight and firm posture and by using on of your arms to raise your upper body up, you can slowly raise your hips to the sky until you feel a tense sensation in your core.
Both these stretches can be as long from 2-5 minutes, depending when you dance and how long you want to focus mainly on your hips. If these stretches are both done consistently, your health and fitness will improve and as well as your ability to improve moves in your dancing.
Core: #3.
The core is usually strictly focused on our ability to be powerful and fast and is highly worked on to improve our endurance. Unlike hip stretches, core exercises are not entirely focused on or flexible ability, when doing core strengthening it benefits our endurance and our balance and stability.
One efficient exercise is set of fast and short session of plyometrics. This is a from of jump training and fast foot work speed that will increase your speed and improve the muscles in your core and as well as your own footwork. This implies using exercises using your muscles exerting maximum force for short periods at a time.
Though this is very difficult to do, there are always way to make things easier and just as effective, one exercises that you can do is a set of fast feet and constantly switching directions and places in short spurts. This will hit the all the core muscles and work on the speed in your footwork, dont be discouraged if you feel slow at first! Everyone starts at a level and with consistency, you’ll keep improving.
Another effective method to improve your core ability is going for runs, a simple exercise with a lot of benefit. This also helps with your athletic endurance and builds up the pace of when you’re dancing in the arbour. Even if there is walking involved, the core will still be put to work and soon enough your endurance will improve and your dancing will become easier.
Using both of these methods will set apart you from others, having a strong core and a large amount of endurance will greatly benefit your performance as well you healthy during the powwow season.
Legs: #4.
Legs are the most vital witching our powwow season, in every single category of dance, everyone’s style is unique. However, our ability to use our legs is crucial to powwow and is important to improve everyday to ensure that we prevent injury. There are many ways to improve the ability to strengthen our legs, from running or using stretching exercises, but they must become consistent to maintain their strength.
One effective way to improve our leg muscles and prevent them from tearing is the dynamics of stretching from our upper thighs, to the achilles muscles. For the upper part of your legs, it is important to start with wide lunges which stretch out the hamstring, reducing the tightness and increasing the range of motion.
Starting from that, pulling your knees from your chest in either a laying or standing position also stretches the glutes. Both stretching should be done before and after dancing because of how effective it can prevent injuries such as tearing and pulling muscles during your sessions. Important aspects to this stretch is making sure that it isn’t done in a haste, using slow movements is way more efficient and will guarantee that the muscle is stretching.
In the lower parts of the legs, it is important to make sure the the ankles and calves are properly stretched because it is the most common injury to be prone to in powwow. Exercises to work on to prevent these types of injuries is to fully extend the leg in the straightest position possible and then lean your body to reach for your ankles.
Locking your legs in place will stretch your entire calve, and you’ll feel it depending how far you reach down from this position. Using the full extension of tour legs will allow you to to move your legs with full mobility without having to hurt yourself.
Now moving down to your ankles is it important that you do this in a flat area so you dont end up hurting yourself. Ankle rotations are important and a really good way to fully stretch the muscles in full motion, what you want to do is place the tips of your toes, make sure there is firm pressure and you slowly turn your ankle one one direction until you feel like you completely stretched it, and then move to the other side.
Using all these stretches can fully change your performance both physically and mentally since you wont have to worry about injuring any part of your body.
Rest: #5.
Ironically, rest can help you dancing as well. Rest can be effectively use to relieve and reduce soreness and relax the muscles that need to be used later on. Methods of rest such as relaxing the whole body by napping or using recovery methods like ice baths and warm baths can help greatly to recover the body. Doing these types of methods can help relieve the stress in your body and the physical soreness until its time for you to dance.
The most effective way to utilize this is the way that might have the most effect on you. Resting by napping can focus on the whole body as it relieves the tense muscles.
Ice baths focuses on fast recovery that benefits on large quantities. One being that injuries of soreness and fatigue are being treated and acts as a whole reset.
And warm baths focuses on relaxing the internal pressure entirely, making the muscles in your body to relax and soothe them from the inside out.
All of the methods are just fragments on what can you do and there is many other ways to utilize this in a smart way, by doing all of this things it is important that you add both the rest and the warmups/stretching to your arsenal.
Conclude:
It is really beneficial to take this into your training session and as well as your daily life within powwow season. All of this should on be 10-15 minutes a day and rest can happen within the rest of your day as well. By doing all of this every single day, your life will improve and your skill set in dancing powwow will grow and soon enough you’ll become a way better dancer than you were before.
It is also nice to have things in order as well. For example, stretching for most, starting from head to toe while stretching also make you have a stable organizes and planned system to warm up to during your sessions.
