Thread: Down hips

I am having trouble getting my down hips to look the way my instructor wants. Maybe I am not understanding, but she wants no movement in the knees. I don't feel like I am driving the movement from my knees but they do move. I have tried practicing on my knees to take them out of the equation, but I am only able to move my hips in a washing machine fashion and any other horizontal movement. She says the movement is coming from the hips or glutes, but I feel it in the lower back when I try it lying on the floor and even then I don't have it the way she wants to see it. Is there something I can do to get this? Or are there many ways to accomplish down hips? Any handy hints? Horizontal seems to come easier for me than vertical. Does your build have any bearing on some movements? I want to be able to get this.

can you post a link to a video of the movement that you want help with?

The down hips that I know can be done on releve or on flat foot. Stand with feet hip width apart, knees soft (that's the most important bit!) lower abs pulls in to protect your back, spine lengthened, pelvis neutral, not tucked.

Focus your attention on the hip that you want to move, push down on it as if trying to drive your foot into the floor (this is why soft knees are important) since your knee is soft, your leg moves down, hip moves down.

If you have trouble with it, do a hip lift and observe what the hip that you are not focusing your attention on does, see how it drops? The difference is your focus on the movement.

That whole thing makes sense in my wittle head...

lay down on your back with your legs straight out. Engage your glutes so that the curve of your lower back is minimized. Put your feet close together and point your toes. Now using only your waist/hip muscles, try to make one foot come down longer than the other, then do the other side. make sure your buns stay flat on the floor and your knees don't bend.

This works many of the same muscles as downhips. To someone standing over you, it should look like down hips.

Sedonia

Does it matter if you point the toes or flex the feet? .

Originally Posted by tasya

Does it matter if you point the toes or flex the feet? .

No, I don't think it does.

Sedonia

It's not possible to move the hip down without *some* movement of the knee (unless you remove a leg bone).

I teach down hips using the lying-down technique above. If you place your feet against a wall (sofa, etc) with a slight bend in the knee, you'll find that your knees do have to bend so the leg can get out of the way of the descending hip (since that foot is stopped from going lower than the other now). So this same technique can still produce a knee movement.

Sounds to me like your teacher is looking for you to use this technique but create a very small, controlled movement focused in your oblique (side waist) muscles just above/in front of the moving hip. So there's less movement of the knee.

Are you dropping an unweighted hip? If so, it's possible to create the movement with the foot off the floor, using just those side waist muscles & not needing the leg muscles. Maybe that's what your teacher means?

I think (and I could be dead wrong) but what I'm thinking your teacher is talking about is not just a hip drop, but what I learned as the "down hip walk", which is done with a straight leg and where the drop is done ONTO the leg that is taking the weight.(again, as I learned it.)

For me, it's easier to do on the balls of my feet. To do this you really need to be able to do a good weighted hip drop. That is, have all your weight on the "working" leg of the drop.

If you cannot do hip drops while standing on the working leg, you are going to have a hard time doing down hips.

If you can do weighted hip drops with little to no issues (and hey, there are days I still have issues! lol!) then try this in addition to the other suggestions here:

Start out getting comfortable with your weight shift. Stand on 1/2 releve with your weight equal between both legs. Shift your weight onto one foot, keeping both legs straight and still on the balls of your feet. (It's gonna feel very odd.) Then shift over to the other side.

You'll start to notice that with keeping your legs straight, and on the balls of your feet, that one hip ends up sort of dropping.

Now, take that "sort of" dropping and really REALLY think about dropping that hip on the side your weight is shifting to. (This is where being very comfortable with a weighted drop comes in handy.)

This is really complicated on paper. LOL! It also kinda seques into the whole "muscular vs. skeletal" discussion, because it is a very "muscle" oriented movement as opposed to being driven through the skeleton - in this case the knees and femurs.

I hope I just didn't mix you up horribly. If I did - just ignore this completely!

Is this the move you want http://www.raqs.co.nz/moves/hip_rock.html ?

The knees move but do not drive the movement. I sometimes use an exercise similar to Sedonia's - but with flexed feet as we tend to work with flat feet when dancing.

Or it is it something like you see here at 1:04 and again at 1:26?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byvTT96B7Gk"]YouTube - Kamaal-y Finale - A sampling[/ame]

Babsgrrrl, I think the hip down she's looking for is what you describe as happening on the working leg 'cause she also has us try to get it by doing a peg leg move. Boy, I've really got to work on this one. My hips keep wanting to twist, but the exercises lying on the ground are helping me know where I should be getting the movement. No question, I am going to have to practice, practice, practice.

I just took a Jim Boz workshop this past weekend (he was awesome!!) and one thing he mentioned with down hips is to practice keeping the knees together, the feet close together... When you're ready to practice the move standing, imagine that you're holding a Nerf ball (or hold a real one ;P) between your knees while doing the move, say for the span of a song, without dropping the ball. Your knees will move past each other slightly, but the impetus of the move is coming from the obliques over the hips, pushing down.

Something that clicked for one of my students last night was to imagine that your hips are like opposite sides of a steering wheel. As the hip goes down, it's actually going down and in (along the curve of the steering wheel), rather than straight down to the floor. The opposite hip will come up along the opposite side of the steering wheel. In fact, you can drop one hip by lifting the other up and in, but I think that that changes the "feel" of the move, even though it may look similar.

I hope this helps! If not, feel free to stick your fingers in your ears and chant "I can't hear you I can't hear you I can't hear you..." I won't be in the slightest offended! What I've learned teaching, if anything, is that everyone has different ways of "getting it;" sometimes it just takes that right image, or sound, or explanation, to "click", and everything falls into place! Good luck!!

OOoooo!!! I am so stealing that steering wheel visualization!!!!!! ..g.:

Originally Posted by BabsGrrrl

OOoooo!!! I am so stealing that steering wheel visualization!!!!!! ..g.:

Me too me too!! ..l;,

If you are talking about a walking, downward hip movement, when you step, contract the opposite glute from the leg that you are stepping with, and vice versa. In other words, if your weight is on your right leg when you step, then contract your left glute, and when you step with your left foot, contract your right glute. And keep your knees soft, not straight legged.

Progress report - I've been practicing with the visulizations and tips you all gave me and this week...well, my teacher says I am getting it. Happy dance!!!! Its small but its finally down hips. Thank you for all the great tips.

Just in case you need any more- try the opposite - on toes - straight legs -soft knees- and push up from the floor as you as you step - gives you "up" hips (the other one goes down but the emphasis is on the up) or what I know as Soheir Zaky lifts. has the benefit of being much less tiring - the gluts are completely relaxed and you don't use the hip flexors (much) either.
Makes a nice change!

Suzanna DelVecchio (sp) teaches these as an ACROSS visualization.That is, think of the working hip swinging down and across the body pane, like a pendulum. Or a steering wheel!

I teach what I call the "zoot wolf" visual. Remember the cartoon wolf in the zoot suit, swinging his watch and dropping his hip? Not making that up. It works in my head to work my hip down.

Kitty

How interesting - isn't it amazing how many differnt ways there are to think about something! I'd definitly be filing that one away fro future ref>

The Zoot wolf sounds fun - but I've never seen him!