[Jimmothy]

There are a few things that come into play when learning to toprock, this post is to let ya'll know which are most important and in which order to learn them because learning them in the wrong order WILL slow down your progress. Before i start i want to let everyone know that i have learnt this through experience without any guidence and have made many of the mistakes later mentioned myself. I have been breaking around 3 years and toprock is by far the strongest part of my dance.

First of all (this is assuming you know the basics) you want to be dancing on-beat. The music is your guide and without it you are lost. For the time being you only need worry about the snare, this is the easiest rhythm to follow so be sure to step out onto it no matter what step you are doing. This is the most basic way of dancing on beat and in my opinion the most important step towards having nice tops.

Second is form, you don't need to worry about anything other than stepping out onto the snare and doing the basic steps with proper form. Now you're probably saying "oh but toprock is my own self expression i shouldn't have to conform and do it a certain way" ok i understand what you're saying but there are certain guidelines to follow. I will give examples of some of the common mistakes beginners make when learning to toprock:

1. Slouching - nice posture is sexy wether you are dancing or not.
2. Lack of body weight transfer - This simply means you're not moving your body weight around when doing the steps, you are just putting your leg out and it looks mad lazy.
3. Trying to hard - Chances are if you've only just learnt a step it's going to look awkward and need changing. The easiest way to do that is keeping it simple and making small suttle changes to build on it from there. Think of it like building a house. Do you build a house in 1 day and expect it to look good, NO. You start from the floor and work up, adding to it AFTER the foundations have been layed down. You can't build the whole thing in one day, it's not only going to look horrible but in the long run it's going to take longer to make look good because of all the mistakes you have made. Start with the basic leg and arm movements, from there you can either change them or add to them, it's up to you. But remember small changes are the key.
4. Heels - Try and keep your body weight on the front part of your feet. Dancing with your body weight on your heels looks wack unless its for certain steps or spins you have come up with.

Next thing you should be worrying about after you can dance to the music with proper form is variety. This is what stops your toprock looking so repetitive. The best way to learn this is by varying the basic steps you already know and stringing them together in different orders. This is very hard to explain in text so i will post up an example video clip the next few days.

The last things you should be worrying about are originality (making up your own steps) and Dancing to complex rhythms in the music such as horns, lyrics, drum rolls etc. I'm not giong to go into that in this post, this is a guide for begginers and they shouldn't be worrying about this stuff yet.

I realise most people wouldn't have read this far but to those few of you that have i'd first like to say thank you and i would really like to hear what you think. Please let me know what you found hard to understand and i will try my best to any questions you have. I probably missed a few things so expect a few edits in the next few days. peace.

[D.n.A]

Originally Posted by Jimmothy

I have been breaking around 3 years and toprock is by far the strongest part of my dance.

Damn right it is!
Sticky, but add some more

[Jimmothy]

More to come baby.

[Desi Boogie]

Sigh, i'm going to take my guide down, get to practicing and sink back into the shadows

Nice guide jimmothy.

Peace

[thunderhetz]

yeah.. good guide..
makes me think of some small things.. lol ..keep it rolling
*respect*

[TjisOrignalru]

Its decent but it really didnt have that much detail...add some more

[Death Jester]

We need more like this.

[Jerram]

awsum but i think you should give examples
so it creates more of an image in the readers mind.
but overall really good just have to work more on it ^^


~Jerry

[r3ven4nt]

nice, cuz its not liek, "here are the diff types of toprock", its more n00b-friendly by sayin, "here are the diff parts of basic toprocking" kudos and much thanx, i vote for some sticky-age here

[YingYang]

Sik guide, maybe you should've described more about the arm movement but other than that or posting a vid, nice work.

[Man of Confiden]

First of all..from a beginner's point of view...dat wuz a hella good guide, n' u got FULL appreciation from me! As i wuz readin thru it i realized dat i wuz headin in da right direction wit muh toprock, but i read a few thangs i culd touch up on! So big thanx from me...full props!

On da suggestions tho....im kinda glad he didndt go into da arm movements n' stuff like dat! It keeps da concentration on da learnin process, n' not da moves of toprockin. There's guides everywhere about basic steps, arm movement, n' all dat stuff...but not many on actually applyin wut u learned! Others gave us da tools to "build our house"...so he told us "how to build it right"! LOved it dawg...thx again! Peace n' Love yall!

Alan-Michael

[JKT]

good sticky... But as everyone said add mroe and maybe even copy and past some basic toprock guide lol.

[Bboy Veritas]

This gets my vote for sticky as well, this is very valuable information. Im going to have to disagree with JKT though as this is a guide on improving toprocking in general and making the toprock you already have look more smooth and clean. Putting in tops tutorials may dilute the information and confuse some of the newbies.

I am loooking forward to further updates!

[B-Beginner]

Thank you Jimmothy for this nice textual explanation.
I watched some vids, tried to practice (it's my first day :P), watched some more vids and practiced again.

Your tips really pointed me into the right direction!

[Magi101]

I found the this guide to be helpfull and i thank you for the time and effort it took you to post it. one