Exercises

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Warm Up

Injuries can happen with every move, step or freeze you make.

But if you pay attention to some simple things you can avoid as much of them as possible:

Accurate Warm Up

Never stretch your cold muscles!
Try to warm your muscles up by doing easy steps or other stuff that isn't stressing them too much (like toprocking, uprocking, basic footwork).

Your joints are the most susceptible parts of the body.
You really should warm them up carefully!
shoulders: Swing your arms in circular motions.
hip: Swing your legs.
wrists: Put your hands together and make circular motions with your hands (in both directions).


Stretching before session


Pay attention to a correct and proper position!
Check out these sketches of stretching positions: [read more]

Get in a position in which your muscle gets streched but which doesn't cause pain! Pain is always a bad sign.

Always keep your body in a "proud" position.
Keep your sternum and your neck with the head straight on a line all the time. This prevents from making a hunchback which actually gives a lot of pressure to the lower back.

Keep breathing calmly!
Do not press breath because this causes that you get harden.

Hold the position for about 20-30s!

Never bob up and down to stretch!
This brings you in a overstretched position. The muscle receptors (nerve cells) wanna protect you of an injury and cause the muscle to contract. Because of that you have a contrary effect: the muscles aren't relaxed but hardened! (bob up and down stretching can only be used to build up muscle tension to make you aggressive).



Correct Stretching



Calf

press the heel on the floor
lean your body forwards

tip:
by bending the knee you can also stretch the deeper calf (m.soleus)

Hamstring

.
stretch the knees
move your upper body forwards

tip:
keep your back straight
differences in tension right-left indicate
which side you need to stretch more

Quads

pull the heel towards the seat
move your knee slowly backwards

tip:
keep your back straight by straining abs and seat

Quads

bend the knee of the standing leg
move your hip forwards

Front Hip Muscles (m.iliopsoas)

move the pelvis with your hand forwards
push the hip forward down

tip:
keep your upper body upright
keep your feet parallel

Adductor (m.adductor femoris)

spread your legs

tip:
place your seat as near to the wall as possible
intensify the stretching by pushing down the knees with your hands

Behind Hip Muscles (m.piriformis)

pull the other leg with your hand

tip:
keep your upper body relaxed on the floor

Twist Spinal Column

lay on the back
move your putted up knees to the side
move your head to the opposite

tip:
keep your shoulders on the floor

Back

stretch your knees
achieve a round back

tip:
feel the stretching in the lower back

Neck - Shoulder

pull the arm downwards
move your head opposite

tip:
keep your upper body upright

Chest

step in front with the leg on the same side
move your shoulder forwards

tip:
by putting your elbow higher and deeper all parts
of the chest muscle can be stretched

Triceps (brachi)

pull your elbow down with the other hand

tip:
keep your upper body upright
breath relaxed


Cool Down

Easy cool down after the session!
Try not to immediatly stop but to cool you down with some further exercices (because of the stress and during the metabolic processes in the muscles, metabolits were builded up during the session. with a cool down your body dismantle them better againand thus they don't cause catabolic effects like over acidified muscles).


Stretching after session

(Easy) stretching after practising is at least as important as stretching before! Always stretch also some minutes after the session to avoid shortened muscles.

Pay attention to the things listed above about stretching.

Exercises

"Are there any special exercises one can do to prepare for specific moves?"

It's not easy to answer this common question because it always depends on what move you wanna do. Further most of the moves you can only do with drive. Thus it's not really possible to practice "one position" for itself of the whole move. So, most of the common moves you can only improve or learn by just doing them. And that's the dangerous part of Breaking - the part where injuries arise. But you can prepare and strengthen your body with some general exercises that it can bear more stress:

Strengthen your wrists

"Wristbuilder":

This simple machine which everybody can build by himself is the best thing for building up your wrist muscles. What you need is a small tube (like the ones used for water pipes) of about 30cm length and of about 7cm diameter (your fingers shouldn't touch the thumb when you are holding it, but the diameter also shouldn't be too big!). Further you need a rope with a weight (between 1.5kg and 2.5kg). And that's it! [read more]


"Crab-, Turtle-position exercises":
If your wrists are already strong enough for supporting your whole body and you would rather like to practice on the dance floor, you can try the following things out:

Go in a Crab-position (one elbow in your stomach, balancing your whole body on this arm and your legs are in the air) and try to keep that position really clean for some seconds (your legs shouldn't touch the ground and your whole body should be more or less motionless. Try to keep your body more or less parallel to the floor, don't bring the head to the ground).

For going a step further try to take your second hand/arm off the ground (not the one you are balancing on but the other, supporting one) and balance without support of the second hand/arm (you can put the second hand on your back, to your head or where ever you like). Again try to keep that position as clean as possible for some seconds. The more you practice it, the better it gets.
Usually people can hold themselves much better on one arm than on the other (particulary also because of learning the "windmill"). That's why you should never forget to also practice all that on your "weak" side !! Especially for moves like "turtles" it is really important that you can hold yourself equal on both arms. A good exercice for strengthen both wrist during the same exercice is the one where you change your support hand while keep balancing on your elbows (without your legs touching the ground and without circular motion!). If you can master that already pretty good, try to do the changement to the beat of the music.


Improve your upper body strength

Do normal push ups (if you place your hands further down closer to your feet, it will emphasize the wrists more).

Do push ups in the handstand (if you can't hold yourself up, use a wall for support).

Push you up from the Crab-/Turtle-position into a handstand. Try to move down again into the Crab-position by not touching the ground with your feet. Then change the side and do it on the other side with the weight mainly on the other arm.

Do the splits and place your hands in front of you on the floor. Now lean the weight of your whole body onto your hands and try to move your legs up from the floor (without pushing with your legs off the ground and thus support the whole movement) and then go into a handstand. Go slowly down again with spread legs and try to keep all positions as long as possible. Try to stand on your arms with spread legs as near to the ground as possible without touching it. Also watch your hip and your back: Try to be in one line with the legs.

(This Article is taken from"http://www.spartanic.ch/")