Do . . . or do not. There is no try!

Aerobics Info

General Exercise Background

Tracey Kobayashi

50 Phelan Ave, NGYM
San Francisco, CA 94112
(415)452-7311
tkobayas@ccsf.edu

Tracey's Home

PE 9A: Fit or Fat
College & Career Ed
PE 50: Fitness Center

IM Me!

AIM - TKatCCSF
Yahoo - tkobico
ICQ - 155909399

[ Course Home ] [ Fitness Intro ] [ Aerobic Intro ]

Counting

If you've ever taken an aerobics or dance class, you know that being able to hear the music and count are important to rhythm and relative proportions...didn't know you'd have to think about math, did you?!? If you've never thought about this, now's the time!

Exercise music is in what is known as common time (or 4/4 -- 4 quarter-note beats per measure). Luckily for you, that first sentence is probably only important to the musicians who play the music! However, the part that's important to you may not be all that simpler! The music is formatted into:

Sequences consisting of 8 beats/counts (2 measures).
Phrases consisting of 32 beats/counts (8 measures, or 4 sequences).

Listen to some exercise music and see if you can pick out the counts by just snapping your fingers or clapping your hands in time to the music. Each clap or snap represents a beat.

Now listen more carefully for what sounds somewhat like a sentence -- there's a definite beginning and end in a relatively short time. If you start counting at the beginning of the sentence in time with the song, you'll probably be at the number 8 at the end of the sentence. This represents a sequence, as described above. The first beat of the phrase is called the downbeat.

Phrases are a little more difficult to pick out. The best description I can give you of a theme is the chorus portion in most popular music represents a theme. A phrase has a definite pattern to its tones and rhythms and may be repeated in a song. A song may also have more than one phrase (or theme).

I'll bet you're wondering WHY all of this is important outside of a music theory class. Well, musical phrasing and themes give us the structure of our exercise routines. Rather than assemble random movements that don't consider phrasing or beat, it's much easier in the long run to memorize routines in specific patterns that are matched to the phrasing...and it also makes it easier to find your place if you get lost, because you can usually pick up within a few phrases. So let's get started with how to move!

Coordinating Phrasing with Motion

We can keep time to the music when walking in place. Each normal step represents one beat. However, the foot you use for a particular beat counts! If I say Right Foot Lead, it means your right foot hits the floor on the first beat of the phrase. If I say Left Foot Lead, it means your left foot hits the floor on the downbeat. The lead foot remains constant for pretty much all moves in a phrase. In line with the phrasing, a movement sequence usually takes 8 beats. There also can be a series of 4 sequences...to make up a 32 beat combination!

Two basic movements form the basis for many others: the walk and the change.

Walk (aka march, step): walk in place, hitting the floor with your foot on the beat, transferring feet with each beat. Variations...
- Width: feet can step out wider than normal, or more narrowly.
- Direction: march forward, backward, side-to-side, diagonally, in a circle, etc.
- Timing: if you you take two steps per beat, it's called double-time; one step for every two beats is half-time.
Note: you can alter your intensity of your march by changing the depth and range of movement. If you take small steps, it should feel easier, if you make large movements it should fee more difficult.
Change: a change is a movement that allows you to change leads, the easiest of which is a tap with the ball of the foot on the ground next to the other foot, followed by a step onto the first foot. If you step on your right foot on count 1, tap your left foot next to your right on count 2, you have done a move called a step-touch, and your next step would be with your left foot. Variations...
- Step-knee (knee-ups), step-heel (hamstring curl) and step-kick are all variations of the tap. You'd still step on your lead foot on the downbeat, but either draw your knee up in front, your heel up in back, or kick out in front with your other side on the second, and then step on that other foot for the next.
- If you tap your foot on the downbeat, it's called a lunge. You can lunge to your front, back or side.
- ball-change: a ball-change is done on a half-beat, so it's a quick change from one foot to another. This one is best explained in class.

Going back to the lead foot, if I tell you to march on the right foot, it means I want you to march with your right as the lead foot. Likewise, if I say something like step-touch right, it means I want you to step-touch with a right foot lead.

Confused? Don't worry! This will make much more sense when we do it in class in time to the music.

[ Course Home ] [ Fitness Intro ] [ Aerobic Intro ]