Tag Archive for: dancing

The Power of the Pause

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When talking about discrete time intervals, there are two specific examples that come to mind. As a professional speaker and a Distinguished Toastmaster, I’ve learned one of the most difficult things to do in giving a speech isn’t selecting the correct words, it’s knowing when to pause. It’s one of the most difficult techniques to learn because when you’re speaking, you think every available second needs to be full of sound. You can say more with a moment of silence than you can with a shout.

Discrete time intervals also apply to ballroom dancing, and that’s even harder to master because it can involve the entire body. A specific move in a waltz or a tango can be broken into smaller and smaller pieces. They don’t seem important individually but when they flow together, they make the simple seem elegant; a pause speaks even more loudly in the context of that flow.

The pause allows us to make the ordinary appear and sound extraordinary. While it takes a lot of practice to make the sounds or the moves appear to be seamless, once mastered it becomes a habit. Then it’s no work at all.

Where is the going? You’ll find out on Saturday.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Dancing Your Way to Fitness

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Does the way dancers train make them some of the fittest and leanest athletes? On Tuesday, we looked at heavy weights and fewer repetitions. Let’s look at light weights and many repetitions.

In ballroom and other forms of dance, the resistance is almost always body weight. Yes, there are lifts and there are powerful turns and jumps, but the only resistance is often body weight. Think of repeatedly doing half-squats, push-ups, or abdominal curls for hours on end, plus the muscle needed to hold . . .

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Do Dancers Rule the Fitness World?

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Dancing with the Stars began a new season last night, and once again Paula asserted that dancers have the best bodies: great musculature and shape without being unnaturally bulky. She wondered if dancing was the equivalent of exercising at high reps with low weight as opposed to typical weightlifting that emphasizes systematically increasing weight when a specific number of repetitions are met. I do as my wife commands, so this week I'm looking into the difference in results between high reps at low weight and fewer reps at high weight.

Let’s look at fewer reps at . . .

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