[electron]

alright
i'm kinda tired of reading about pompos and six step over and over so this is a post about how you drill your footwork

what do you practice - what do you think about when you practice it
are you mainly interested in getting a tight foundation ( strict bboy style , all the standard steps down) or do you like to make up your own stuff, and if you make up your own stuff, how do you go about that ?

me?
i start by drilling - i'll do 10 6 steps in each direction , or else i'll go over parts of the step forwards and backwards to make sure it's clean
then i go in to 4 step and three step for a while, same deal
then two step/ baby swipes - same drill

after a break i'll do the length of the room sweeping and hopping on each leg to get some air and momentum , then drill as such :
6 step 6 step 5 step 5 step 4 step 4 step 3 step 3 step baby swipe baby swipe on both sides , slowly then gaining speed but trying to maintain accuracy.


after that i'll do one of two things - either work on 12 step and adding in variations ( turning it around, addind in knee or body rolls )
or ill go in to rotations and try to find new things i can do with my legs ( kicking them out , how much i lift my hips , if i pause somewhere and do some small movements with one foot )

then i drill CC"s - those are hard for me to get equal on both feet ( height and body positioning )

I've got some original footwork , mainly through the rotations and adding in rolls through bridge or a swipe here or there , but i'm still working on making everything as crispy as possible


oh - and i do this all with my fingers flat on the ground but the palms off - asia one had some good opinions on that - you do footwork higher up on your hand to get more space between you and the floor, and some guys can do it on their fingertips but in general girls have longer fingers and thinner hands so it's easy to sprain a finger if you do it on the tips and you're a girl. I've got to agree with her on that


so this is my post about my footwork
now talk about yours
if you have any good practice ideas , shoot them in
if you have opinios , put'em in

let's make this a thread where we can get new ideas

[ultraman__26]

this is good.for me,i basically blast my radio and i juz move to the music.no one way movements,lotsa twist and turns.
pz

[Chucky]

I think this is kind of piontless, I never do anything like this. Once you got a move, especially foowork move you got it, and don;t need to do "drills". I just try to come up with techs and clean up the techs that I am sloppy at, plus just freestyle. Hard to freestyle for like 2 minutes without getting repetitive.

[Moochy - Mania]

hmmm how do i practice ?
well i don't do drills or something like that . i got my foundation down good and clean and i mainly focus on inventing new stuff and tweaking old stuff . i usually just go down and start doing my regular footwork , hitting the beat . now at some points my legs/hands slips into some new places or suddenly i get a momentic enlightment and do some new shit instantly . that's how i get new footwork ideas , lol , by accidents . i rarely sit and think or imagine new moves , cause i'll just end up sitting hours without new ideas . my best bet is to get down on the floor and freestyle .
bout my style .... i don't do a lot of body rolls or too much threading . i practice em sure but i focus on smooth "stepish" ( new word , lol ) footwork . most of my moves are fluid and fast while the same time on beat . quick turns , swift movements .
i wanna get kind of suspention style footwork - when you slow down movements and then blaze em out nicely , which give great smoothness , flow and illusion of skewed gravity . ehhh , yeah ...

[electron]

Originally posted by Chucky
I think this is kind of piontless, I never do anything like this. Once you got a move, especially foowork move you got it, and don;t need to do "drills". I just try to come up with techs and clean up the techs that I am sloppy at, plus just freestyle. Hard to freestyle for like 2 minutes without getting repetitive.

that's great chucky, and i'm sure that for where you're at that works fabulously.
But right now, i'm working on cleaning up the standard steps and trying to work on freestyling without looking sloppy, so the drills help that a lot.

I don't mean that people have to drill shit for footwork to be good, but that's what I'm doing right now and , you know what ? It works for me.
Maybe in 2 months from now i won't be drilling anything anymore, but it's a useful technique for cleaning

[Bboy Furious]

i spose its not a bad idea to do drills like that then invent on top of ur footwork, i usually sorta practise my footwork to slower beats then when im sorted go all out.

as for the fingertips thing, ive tried it and i have pretty massive hands and fingers, i cant keep up like that fr more than a few seconds but i could really use that extra height with my legs being so long.

do u have ne tips for strengthing maybe the fingers??? or is it the tarsals u need to strengthen? either way that would help me improve my footwork.

do u think you can do ur footwork faster without shoes on? i always cud so i bought sum real light thin puma trainers n theyre gud, not as much weight on ur feet.

[electron]

definitely lighter shoes help with faster and cleaner footwork, but i never practice in bare feet because the weight and also they way they keep your toes together affects your balance. So if you're doing freezes, it makes a difference whether or not you're wearing shoes. I never bust out in a club with bare feet- why would i practice as such ?

also , you run the risk of hurting , pulling or spraining a toe if you've got bare feet . I know Azn practices without shoes but i can't do that

[theb]

it also depends on the floor tho...cause i have a big space in my house(well not that big but its ok) that i could use to bboy but the floor has nothin to do wit smooth so its pretty hard to bust ish there...

[Bboy I/Self]

keep doing you girl....I drill the same way b4 i get into some freestyle.....Practice makes perfect regardless of what you're doing......I also train on the concrete in my driveway, so when I'm on the floors, my shit is tiiiiiiight!....Haha yea......

[electron]

something else i realized ... about drilling or not and inventing new stuff or not

i have certain habits when i break - and not that i don't like them , actually , i like them a lot...i spin around a lot, do a lot of rotations, use sweeps ... most of my stuff is really circular . But i didn't have a broad enough vocabulary to freestyle and have it be consistently interesting. The boot camp style drilling that i did back then really helped to open up my freestyle - now i move between a lot of different steps way more easily.

I don't drill like that right now, i do try to work on my flow and finding different steps, but it had a profoundly good effect on my breaking style.

[young_uprock04]

I think another thing peeps forget is when dey become all technical n complex dey lose dere rhythm sometimes n I think its imperative to kno dat footwork has to be or flow wit da beat, I think a lot of peeps especially n dis generation of b-boys forget dat.