Thread: Heels on the ground

We've been learning mayas and taqseem(s?) (spelling? grammar?) and I struggle to keep my heels on the ground. Part of it is because I have zero range of motion, it looks like I'm hardly moving. The other reason is my height, I'm only 5'1''. How do I keep them on the ground without compromising the movements? I've tried lessening the bend in my knees, which sort of works.

That five letter word: drill, drill, drill. The more you practice, the easier and fuller the movements will become. Don't lose heart. Difficulty keeping one's heels on the ground is a common problem in folks just learning the movement. Height isn't a factor in doing the movement properly, so don't worry about that.

When i was trying to eradicate heel lifts from my mayas, I tried drilling them in the deep end of the swimming pool!

It's pretty much impossible to use your feet and knees when you're floating, so you can really concentrate on getting the obliques working to power the movement.

And your arms get a good workout holding onto the edge while you're thionking about your hips.

It is a tough one. We learnt with heels lifting, which has the advantage that you can see a bigger movement immediately, but the disadvantage that it's easy to cheat by pushing hips around with your feet/legs when you should be working the abdominal muscles. (Love the swimming pool idea!).

Flat feet forces you to generate the movement in the right places, and until you get the strength and range it's going to be small, which is fine. If you are working the right muscles they will get stronger. Cheating for the sake of making it big is a shortcut to nowhere.

Until your range of movement is bigger you won't need a crazy amount of bend at the knees because your hip isn't going to go up much. But the bigger you make the move the more bent they'll need to be. That was a key thing for me in getting flat footed - it feels weird standing there with very bent knees, but otherwise that hip goes up and you pull a foot off the floor, which loses that nice grounded weight-through-both-legs feel.

When I was struggling with Maias, my teacher told us if she saw us lifting our heels, she'd put thumbtacks under them!

I'm glad she did - it forced me to learn the movement the correct way.

I learned the movement both ways (heels moving, heels down) from two different teachers. It was actually pretty easy to learn heels down because that teacher focused on the "out" and "down", and sort of left the "up" to physics. Once you get the (L)out, (L)down, (R)out, (R)down, (L)out, (L)down part down strongly, you can focus on getting a smoother rounded motion. At least, it worked for most of my class.

I found that by bending the knees a bit more, it gave me the ability to keep my feet/heels on the ground. I've been working on learning to do it with my muscles to control the movement but I still use bent knees.

Originally Posted by teela

I found that by bending the knees a bit more, it gave me the ability to keep my feet/heels on the ground. I've been working on learning to do it with my muscles to control the movement but I still use bent knees.

As you should/must do.

Thank you so much. Bending my knees more helped me both isolate the movement and keep my feet on the ground, but that was with the maya.....now the taqseem/reverse maya/downward vertical figure 8/how many other names it has. I can drop my hip from a neutral and a raised position easily, but for the out motion, it feels as though I'm swaying sideways or as if I'm doing a horizontal figure 8 rather than a vertical one. Sorry, I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be xD

Originally Posted by hikari_no_yami

Thank you so much. Bending my knees more helped me both isolate the movement and keep my feet on the ground, but that was with the maya.....now the taqseem/reverse maya/downward vertical figure 8/how many other names it has. I can drop my hip from a neutral and a raised position easily, but for the out motion, it feels as though I'm swaying sideways or as if I'm doing a horizontal figure 8 rather than a vertical one. Sorry, I tend to make things more complicated than they need to be xD

Believe or not, most of moves are very small range of motion. If your movie is correct, then you have big impact with small range of motion. For instance, flat footed maya, at first just tilt your hip in the stand position, then stop. Next slide your hip side to side, but stay in between your shoulder range, Yes, this is very small range of motion for both way. Then combine tilt and slide move together. Start with this small range of motion, until your muscle is strong enough to move bigger. Start with small movement is also good for muscle control.

If you are straggling with some movement, start with small and slow move to gain your muscle control and strength.

Then practice, practice, practice. Good luck!