Popping is one of the main elements of street dance where the dancer mainly contracts and relaxes his or her muscles to show a jerk. This concept is called a pop or a hit. To pop is to be able to hit on the beat. While the idea may seem easy, when it comes to reality it is often difficult to have your hit when you need it, that is, in terms of strength, timing, and speed.
This article is going to give you a few tips and ideas on how to strengthen your pops and also have them on the beat.
1- Drill Drill, drill, and drill. Think of it as a sport. A soccer player practices any skill by training hard and repeating. Ronaldo for example wouldn’t be able to tackle three players at once if he did not practice controlling the ball between his feet for a while. When you practice hitting, you have to repeat until you no longer can lift your arms. One of my favorite drills for arm pops is doing the Fresno. The interesting part of the Fresno is that your arms are straight so when you pop you are focusing on the biggest muscle in the arm which is the triceps. You can also do a push up position and try to pop, at first you won’t see any muscles moving but after awhile you will be able to see a difference and your pops will be precise. The chest pop can also be drilled by facing the wall and lifting your arms against the wall and trying to pop your chest up, by doing that your back muscles will also work and become stronger.
2- Work on your timing. A common mistake in popping is that people usually pop earlier than the clap of the beat. Popping before the clap is very false and look sloppy. The idea is to pop after you hear the clap. It takes a lot of practice, but there is this one exercise that will get you to be on beat. A guy goes by the name Otis introduced an exercise by Skitso which is an air pose Fresno exercise. It is like the normal Fresno that you may do however you are air posing between right and left while popping on the beat. You can also have someone touching your arms every time they hear the clap so that you can get a feel of the actual time that you should pop your muscles on.
Photo Credit: Broadwaydancecenter
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