Not Mambo #5

So Tuesday is the day I have a work out with my younger male trainer plus a dance lesson.  That means Wednesday is “what the hell did I do to myself” day.

Yesterday was shoulder day.  While we tend to do a variety of different things, he does like to pick a body part to focus on and the shoulders were the lucky winner yesterday.  Had me do some kind of weird lift with a kettlebell which I can’t really describe except my arm is bent with the kettlebell sort of resting on my shoulder and then I do reps just extending my arm.  Actually, replicating the move now, I get some soreness in the triceps so that must also have been working doing this.

See this is the “fun” part of the day after.  Just moving my body around to see what is sore and what types of movements make certain parts hurt.  Its like “oh yeah, I guess we worked that yesterday”.  We finished with a plank which really seems to be one of his favorite things to do at the end of a workout.  “Oh we’ve got time, let’s do a plank”.  I have no concept of time passing except for my arms getting shakier and shakier.  I swear he doesn’t really watch the clock.  He waits until it looks like I’m about to give up and then says “10 seconds left”.  Then, I get competitive because if I’ve only got 10 seconds left, then I’m not going to let this stupid plank beat me.

So I arrive at the studio and I’m a little sore from the workout and group class is swing and we are going to be working on Mambo.  Guess a little cardio from the dance lesson to compliment the strength training early in the day.

Group class was fun.  There were four of us and we got what OwnerGuy was teaching pretty quickly and then I could see his little mind spinning and he’s practicing some steps and then he hits on something and he reaches up into the higher Silver levels to find a step that none of us have done.  Its a Lindy Turn but with a syncopated turn at the end.  Instead of more cowbell, we needed more syncopation.

So now I shall bore you with details of the Mambo.  Remember, if you go forward from here, you will get deep into the weeds of the Mambo.  Proceed at your own risk.  Oh, I do love Mambo.  Its fun and high energy.  But it just makes me wish I was younger and more flexible.

OwnerGuy basically sliced up the routine I had with Kid T and stitched it back together in a different order but with some new stuff tossed in.

It starts with a back spot turn.  Well technically I need to do a cross body lead to get into the back spot turn so it actually starts there.  A back spot (you won’t see this but I keep typing “sport” for some reason) turn is a back spot turn; I’ve done them in Rumba and Cha-Cha.  Same basic movement just the timing changes based on the dance.

When we finish the Back Spot, we do a Fallaway Swivel.  (Again, a caveat here is that I may not have the names exactly right)  It is similar to a step I do in Cha Cha.  It is kind of hard to describe except that it moves to the right and we go into some swivels.   On the last one, I wrap her arm around her head and then, just as quickly walk out of it so she unrolls while I stay close.  I give her a turn to get her back in front of me.

That leads into a Spin Whip.  Which is a step I also do in Swing.  Concept is that after a break, we come towards each other but I sort of fold her arm behind her back with my left hand and pass that arm to my right hand behind her back and then bring her out.  We do a face loop to a fifth position break which then starts something that ends in a hammerlock.  This part is all something that was in the routine I did with Kid T.  From the 5th position, we take three steps forward but I cross my feet on the last one (OwnerGuy really wants me to rotate the one foot to make the next part easier).  Then, I turn her and then I turn by rotating on my twisted foot so we end up in a hammerlock.

I bring her out on the next step and roll her back in front of me and we go right into an open box with a turn on the back half.  We start another open box and I close her up into dance frame and she then does slow and quick swivels on what would be the back half of the open box.

From there, it gets a little funky.  I do a check outside partner on her right and then we walk around for two counts (hold,2,3,4).  In between, I kind of rotate my frame to get her to Ronde.  On the last part, I’m supposed to go under my arm and sort of have her arm wrap around me.  This is hard to describe because it is one of those steps that just kind of happens.  Then we do a basic and we are ready to loop.

Now, I’m thinking my description wasn’t that detailed but I can visualize all the parts in my head so that’s a good thing.  We did it piece by piece but ended up having time at the end to do a full run a couple of times.  We never really got a Mambo so we weren’t quite up to Mambo timing but you have to crawl before you can walk so you get the steps down and if you know where your feet are supposed to go, it is easier to get it up to timing.

When it all comes together, it basically moves.  There’s not a lot of pauses or slow stuff.  We’re on the gas the entire time.  OwnerGuy says he’ll add some of that stuff later.  He’s already got ideas of things he could do but they don’t fit into the closed category so they’ll have to be saved until we get to an open routine in Mambo.  He wants to continue to work on the transitions between parts and a few other things.

That really closes up all the nine dances.  I think now that we have them defined, we just spend more time going through them and getting comfortable dancing them together.  More to come tomorrow.