Thoughts of movement

Ok, so I'm watching the Strictly come dancing midweek show at the moment and my "how things work" eye is being caught by how they're moving.

On the dance show, it's all about movement with :

Precision
Coordination
Elegance
Timing
And a little bit of power

Whenever I see people do things, I'm always thinking of whether I can adopt what they're doing to make what I do better. That's how I learned how to sprint, although it caught me out when it sent my bowling completely wonky for a game. (I'd listened to commentators and a small change made the ball move in the air the other way to what I normally did).

I'll never be a great dancer. I make things up as I go along a bit too much. I'm reactive when I move. (I dodge well). When I try, I'm usually trying to ape what other people are doing which leads to an uncoordinated mess.

What I do have though is power and precision. When I hand things to people, it's usually such a gentle handover that they don't realise they have the object I've passed to them. As I've said before though, that power can work against me because it can take that extra fraction of a second to get the legs moving.

Elegance ? Yeah, it looks good but it tends to be extra flourish that can get you in trouble. (Like today when I nearly tripped over my own feet doing a spin-dodge!) With the cricket, I'd tend to try and work out any flourish, it slows you down. Quick, precise movements are what you need. That's why sportspeople tend to look wooden on programmes like Strictly.

I've put a reasonable amount of thought into how I move. Mostly, the interest is in protecting my body against itself. I can walk extremely quickly but it tends to grind my knees away. I can walk even quicker but that breaks the ligaments in my knees. I can run super fast - but without knee pads it feels like it's making my knees explode.

That thought on movement has led to me adopting a walking style that tries to minimise how much sideways movement goes through my knees. It's precise enough with the footfalls that I can go near silent with the right shoes. That's not about sneaking up on people (although that can have hilarious results), if you make noise that's energy that's not going into getting you where you're going.

The protection thing goes into other movements - because my muscles are so sensitive at the moment that I have to be very careful to not make moves that will send me into cramp or unhook the damaged bit in my back. (Hopefully that'll get better !)

So for me - it's about learning how to move to protect my body from legs that got too powerful and to avoid causing further damage to the damage I already carry.

For other people - I can't but help notice how some people move. Some look trained, some look absolutely totally natural. The natural ones can be dangerously compelling to watch. Why dangerous ? Lol - cos standing there with the slackjawed expression can lead to a damn good slappin'.

And I'm a) running out of things to say and b) written a lot already.

I'll be trying to :
Stay being efficient and precise in my movements
(cos it helps me in other ways)
Continue confusing people who are taking things off me
Keep looking for moves I can adopt
And attempting to avoid those slappings