This chapter proposes some exercise practices to get started in the real Tangolates system. They are beginning and intermediate. They are the core of the system. With these exercises you can say you are actually doing Tangolates.
Get Ready
Let’s admit it. We all are a bit insecure when it comes to learning new things as adults that are outside your area of expertise. Right? You don’t want to make silly mistakes. You wish somebody out there would tell you exactly what to do and how to do it in the simplest possible manner so that you feel accomplished and not like a fool. Is that it? O.K., then get ready to start because this is going to be easy and fun.
First Things first
The first thing you have to do is follow some simple instructions and you will soon enjoy a gym workout that evokes all sorts of emotions and encounters. In this chapter I will give you some more basics of Tangolates to get you started. Some of them are pure Tango, some are pure Pilates and some are a beautiful combination of the two. Ready?
- The Inverted “V”
- The “V”
- The Eight
- The Hundred
-The Hundred-and-Eight
-The “Penché”
- The Roll Up
- Leg Circles
- Ankle Circles
- Janus, The God of Two Faces
The Standing Eight
The message is clear: you cannot Tango until you know how to do the Eight. Sometimes, the Eight is ridiculed and converted into a stereotype of Tango. If you ask me, the Eight is a nice accessory, something the woman does while the man marks the movement with his hand on her lower back. The Eight allows for some play between the man and the woman, it is a moment where the body stops moving as if to charge energy to start again with renewed vitality.
The Eight is very easy to do. It will be better if you held on to something so you can watch your feet as you practice. If you don’t have a friend at hand who can hold your hand, place the tips of your fingers softly on a wall and keep your body far enough away from the wall so you can see your feet, but not so far that your can not move comfortably. The Eight is easy. It consists in putting one foot ahead of the other and keep doing it in a fluid manner: the right foot crosses in front of the left foot, and the left foot gets ready to cross in front of the right; then the right comes from behind again, and then the left, and so on and so forth. The motion should be:
- fluid
- rounded, almost circular movements.
Watch your feet. See? You are drawing a perfect Eight as you advance one foot and place it in front of the other, while the one in the back gets back on the front. To do a nicer Eight make sure that you don’t lift your foot off the ground but rather drag the ball of your foot in smooth circular movements. Also make sure that the toes of your left foot do no pass over those of your right foot and the other way around.
The “V” and the “Inverted V”
Glue your heels together. Separate the tips of your toes about three inches. You may point your toes or flex them to the ceiling, either way you have got the perfect first position of ballet. Pilates borrowed the first position or rather incorporated into his exercises to stabilize the lower body and to work a muscle often neglected: the back of the inner thighs. A perfect “V” aligns the heel, the ankle the knee and the hip. So what was Pilate’s mistake? He stayed put at the first position. If he would have gone only four steps further, he would have discovered the Fifth position. And this is the real diamond. The Fifth position is exactly the same as the “Inverted V” in Tangolates. See for yourself:
Standing straight, navel to the spine, chin up, shoulders down and arms hanging lose by your sides.
2Forward your left foot, pass over the right foot and return to place it by the side of your right foot. It is as if you had two left shoes on.
3Now, tilt your left toes so that they touch your right toes. There. You are on a perfect Fifth position.
4To finish the exercise all you have to do is to “unblock” the right foot, in so doing, you slowly move the right foot a bit backwards, pass behind the left heel and, drawing a half circle on the floor, go back to the original position of two feet parallel.
The drawing on the floor can be slightly insinuated and small or well marked and wide, but in both cases your center changes and your balance does too. As your midsection changes, your posture changes, your spine stability changes and you re-align your entire body. Muscles that are worked are:
- the wide abdominal muscles: mainly, the transversus abdominus
- the adductors in your inner thigh: mainly the musculus adductor magno
- the spinal extenders: they`re the ones thet help you keep an upright position and keep
your balance
The Hundred
When Joseph Pilates opened his first Studio in Manhattan to do Contrology with this weird looking apparatus he called The Universal Reformer, he did not think of standardized group classes with specific set of one hour long routines and exercises for everybody alike. Rather, his effort was pretty much the work of an artisan who designed tailor-made movements for each individual case. A person – usually a ballet dancer— came to Pilates in search of relief for particular pain, a swollen ligament or a strained ankle.
Sessions were loosely organized, with no beginning or end to them. If anything, Joseph started the class with some kind of warm-up, which he called The Hundred. To this day, the Hundred is an excellent way to warm up and get ready for more focused exercises that come next.The Hundred is an excellent starter because it helps activate your blood circulation, pumps up your heart rate, and lifts your spirits in preparation for the class.
What Joseph did not know was that once you are perfectly aligned and balanced and in a navel-to-spine position, you are perfectly ready to do the Hundred in a standing position without having to lie down. Practice the Hundred in an upright position:
Standing straight with your shoulders low and your head straight, arms hanging lose on the sides of your body and feet at shoulder width apart. The palms of your hands face backwards. Inhale and, as you exhale, start pumping your arms back and forth about seven inches for five counts when you inhale, and five counts as you the exhale. During the pumping, nothing moves but your arms. Make sure that your feet are grounded firmly and that your stomach is pressed in and up, as if you holding your wish to go to the bathroom for number one. This is very important: no belly bulging!
The horizontal version of the Hundred is also nice, but it requires more concentration on your part because it is harder to anchor your spine to the floor and keep scooping when you are comfortably lying down.A horizontal position is culturally accepted as a position to relax and let go, not to concentrate and hold. In contrast, a vertical position puts you in a state of alert right away. The vertical Hundred is also better because it does not put so much strain on your neck. Why did Joseph do the Hundred lying down then? We will never know for certain but chances are that he did it because he had no option since his first clients were wounded soldiers who could not get up from bed.
One more thing: if the count of five is too much for you, you may start with a three count, that is, inhale in three pumps, and exhale in three pumps.
You can also modify the Hundred with this exercise:
Standing up in a straight position, with your arms by your sides, palmsdown, head straight, shoulders low and opened chest.
Pull one leg up, knee bent at the level of the other knee. Keep your balance, lift your chin up, and begin pumping your arms.
