Toe Touch Tips

Terry Lilly, former National Aerobic Champ and 13 year veteran JFK Staff member private coached the Wayzata Trojetes last summer. One of their coaches Meghan Johnson (also a former JFK Staff member) shares what she andher team learned from Terry.

We learned SO much from the hour the team spent with Terry that night at camp. Of course I thought they may die at any moment, but now we have incorporated the entire thing into our practices and it has helped a lot!! This is the series of things that we do. The team does it all together and must stay in sync with one another through every excercise sequence.

1. Twenty five jumping jacks
2. Twenty five straight jumps with arms above head
3. Twenty five X body jumps with arms in high V
4. Twenty five tuck jumps with arms out in a T, trying to pull your knees up and as close to your chest as possible
5. Twenty five situps with arms reaching behind body when you lie down and then above head on the sit up
6. Two sets of 10 V sits lying on the ground, where you have to "snap" up into them (avoid these if dancers have lower back issues.)
7. With everyone in columns the whole team runs and then the front girl does a toe touch, runs to the back of the line, the next girl runs up and does hers and we repeat this until the whole team has done two or three toe touches

This series has helped us work on building the muscles needed for the "explosive" jump you need, timing for bending our legs for the prep and landing, rotating our hips and getting the "snap" at the height of the jump. We did this 3 days a week throughout the fall and will be doing it two days a week throughout the winter season. We still have a long way to go, but the confidence level of the team has begun to rise when it comes to toe touches, because up until now it has not been one of our strong points. Now we feel we have some tools to help us improve on something that we have tried to work on for years, so hopefully now we can see some improvement with our toe touches and actuallly start choreographing them back into routines.

Megan Johnson, Wayzata, MN