Stretch It Out

Creak, creak, creak…. Ouch!  What’s that the sound of?  Yep your beloved knees in pain.  We put our knees through so much pressure when we dance.  Everytime you hop and jump your knees are receiving the impact of the shock.  Unlike in some forms of dance like ballet and contemporary dance, irish dancers land from jumps with straight knees, which is far from forgiving on the joints.

How can we combat injuries?  Two words: strengthen and lengthen.  Yep that’s right we need to build up the muscles that support our knee as well as stretch those muscles and surrounding ligaments.  Let’s talk about the “lengthening” part of this duo today.

Free Ways to Cross Train

I've been dealing with a knee injury for a almost a year now.  Didn't realize that it was anything until about 5 months ago.  So I've had to result to a few dedicated months without dancing.  Okay so I cracked a few times and danced hoping that I was magically cured only to realize five minutes later that it probably wasn't the brightest idea.

So I have been trying to find other ways to keep myself active and in shape for dance.  I sort of made it a personal obligation to see if I could find free resources by which to do this.  Ofcourse anyone can go out and dish out a wad of cash to get a gym membership or pilates classes.  But it's even more fun to find this stuff for free!  So here are a few of my tips and findings.

Jig Roundup

Okay as you read in my last post, I have scoured Youtube for all Jig

related videos.  Here's the roundup of all the videos jig related!

Official Jig Trailer

It's All About "Jig"

I've hardly been able to contain myself with all the excitement surrounding Jig.  Even before it came out in America, with the premiere on June 17th, I've been obsessively scouring the web for any news and videos about the documentary.  I think I watched every video on Youtube related to the documentary.
I finally went to see the film yesterday.  I really wasn't sure what to expect as far as how the story would play out.  The documentary follows the stories of  Julia O'Rourke, Brogan McKay, John Whitehursrt, Joe Bitter, Will Sandun, a Russian ceili team, Simona Mauriello, and Claire Greaney.  Each faces a very different road and journey to the 40th annual irish dance world championships in 2010.

As different as their challenges may be they all do it with the same goal and aspiration in mind, to be a world champion.