Indentifying skills to devise a suitable training programme

GCSE Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Section 1: Identify the important skills/techniques and/or fitness components needed for a participant in his/her role.

In tap dance, there are simple steps that, once mastered, can easily be combined to create more complex and involved skills. These basic movements include:

Hops
Toe/Heel Beats
Tap Steps

Springs
Shuffles
Shunts

Stamps
Scuffs
Brushes

An example of one of these more difficult skills is a cramp roll; this involves two steps forward and two heels. However, this can be turned into five and six-beat cramp rolls by changing one or two of the steps into tap steps. Similar steps consist of:

Ripples
Wings
Progressive Taps
Time Steps

Maxi-fords
Suzie Qs
Pullbacks
Waltz Step

Riffs
Flaps
Close work
Scuffles

Each of these steps can also be modified by changing the number of beats, how they’re put together or the timing of them. Some of these more complex steps can also be combined to make compound steps (e.g. wing time steps). Generally, the preparation and recovery for these skills is a plie (bending the knees) in order to gain height and to land safely without causing any damage to the knees.

In order to perform these steps to a high-quality, various fitness components are especially important.

Timing: Although this is required in most kinds of dance, it is particularly necessary in tap because the dancing is as much to do with sound and rhythm as it is with being aesthetically pleasing. During a performance or examination, it’s crucial the tap beats are in time with the music and with each other; if not the whole dance looks messy and the performer is likely to make a mistake.

Speed: Particularly in the advanced, vocational grades, footwork can become very rapid and intricate. Speed is essential in getting every beat heard synchronized and in step with the music.

Muscular Endurance: Strength in the lower leg is continuously needed throughout a dance to maintain separation and clarity of beats; without this sustained power and muscle sounds will begin to slur together and the whole performance will look sloppy.

Coordination: This is fundamental in being able to work the different parts of the foot with each other and with other parts of the body like the arms and head. It is impossible to synchronize and manage the body as a whole without it.

Balance: While this is needed throughout the entire dance to be able to transfer weight appropriately in order to create clear, crisp sounds, it is particularly important when performing turning steps and steps where only one foot is working. Good spotting is useful in maintaining this fitness component while changing direction.

Cardio-vascular endurance and strength are also fairly important in upholding presentation and movement throughout a piece and having enough power to produce all sounds with precision particularly in steps involving pick-ups (i.e. pullbacks).

Generally dance sessions work towards an examination or competing in a festival; components an examiner or adjudicator would be looking out for in order to give a high mark for distinction or first place would comprise of:

Clarity of beating
Precision of footwork
Line and Style
Rhythmic Interpretation
Posture and Weight Transfer
Tonal Quality
Response and Knowledge of a Sequence or Syllabus
Sense of Performance
Use of Space
Entertainment Value

An examiner would look to see if each of these factors were achieved before deciding on a final mark or opinion. However, each of these would be given greater emphasis depending on the audience, level of competitor and the circumstance of the performance.

Section 2: Analyse and identify in detail the strengths of the performer.

One of Suzy’s main strengths is her performance and entertainment skills; every time she dances her head is lifted, she looks confident and she makes the sequence look effortless. This makes the overall routine look more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to watch. This skill is probably so developed because it is practised in all the different forms of dance she learns; this includes taking part in festivals and annual shows at Oakengates Theatre. These skills were demonstrated at the recent ‘Wrekin Dance Festival’ where she won a number of medals and the adjudicator commended her on how well she managed to entertain the audience.

Her coordination is also of a very high standard, allowing her to move different parts of her body in time with each other, particularly her arms with her tap beats. Steps her coordination skills are particularly seen in include riffs, cramp rolls and ripples where a lot of quick, successive beats using the heel and toe together are demonstrated. However, these movements are often not in time with the music, reducing how much her coordination appears to improve her overall performance, sometimes making her dances look untidy.

Line and style is usually of good quality from Suzy too; she usually extends her arms fully and keeps her shoulders relaxed, looking along the arm line when appropriate. Her style reflects her lively atmosphere, and while this is fun to watch, it sometimes means foot-work becomes a little slapdash. Sometimes, certain movements could be highlighted with a short pause or accent too, but overall this makes her performances enjoyable to watch and aesthetically pleasing, keeping an audience attentive and interested.

Another of Suzy’s positive features are her strong muscles, meaning she’s able to produce all her steps with clarity and ...

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Another of Suzy’s positive features are her strong muscles, meaning she’s able to produce all her steps with clarity and care, especially when doing pick-ups in steps like maxi-fords, ripples and pullbacks. Without this strength in the lower leg, she would not be able to jump high enough to get all the beats in and stop them slurring together. Again, this improves all the tap-work in general as it becomes much more clear and crisp but this height is normally not sustained throughout an entire dance or session, meaning her muscular endurance needs to be improved; occasionally her left foot is slightly weaker in this area too.

There is also consistency in Suzy’s work; she attends regular practises and manages to perform to an impressive standard each week, often making rapid improvements. In classes, the only time when she isn’t at the best of her ability is at the very end of sessions when her legs are getting tired. Throughout entire shows she is able to keep performing to a high standard without running out of breath, showing she has good cardio-vascular endurance.

To test this I asked her to try the Cooper Run; this is where the performer runs for 12 minutes around a 100m circuit; no matter what the pace is they cannot stop. Every time they pass the 100m point it is recorded and the final distance travelled is totalled and compared. Although this test was not entirely specific to tap dancing, it had pre-determined figures to show whether the result was below average, a high score etc., proving how good Suzy’s cardiovascular endurance was – Suzy managed to travel 2000m, confirming she is above average.

Movement around a studio or stage is also executed well by Suzy; she manages to extend her steps far enough so that most of the area in the space she’s in is used well. Use of space is one of the criteria that an examiner marking her would look for also helping to improve an overall grade or mark. Dances that only fill the very middle part of a stage are usually not very interesting to watch and often lack variety in choreography, design and style.

A further strength of Suzy’s is her ability to work within a group sequence; she is well practised of reacting off other people and can create rhythms in conjunction with their footwork, whether it is in unison or canon. She even manages to react off people’s mistakes, disguising them and carrying on with the performance, which, if she is planning to make a career out of dancing, is a very good skill to have as it keeps the show looking skilled and professional.

Suzy’s work rate is also excellent; not only does she put all she can into lessons at least once a week but makes sure she puts continued effort in on a regular basis so that she comes back each session having perfected what she’s already been taught and ready to learn something new. Due to this persistent application, she often receives Distinctions in high level assessments.

Section 3: Analyse and identify in detail the weaknesses of the performer.

As pre-determined, Suzy’s muscular endurance prevents her from sustaining the strength needed to produce clear, precise sounds. Near the end of a piece or session, foot-work starts to get sloppy with the taps not getting high enough off the ground, causing her either to scrape the floor or sometimes making her fall off balance. This can consequently distract her, causing her to lose her place in the dance.

To test this, I asked Suzy to do 20 successive pullbacks to the best of her ability; 4 marks were awarded for any pullback if each of the 4 sounds were precise and separated, 3 marks for 3 clear sounds etc. For the first 5 pullbacks she scored 18/20; for the second 5, 17/20; the third 5, 13/20 and for the final 5, 9/20. After comparing the results, it is evident that she is able to produce an excellent sounding pullback without too much effort but finds it very difficult to maintain this standard after a period of time. I also noticed whilst observing her that most of Suzy’s missed or slurred sounds were made by the left foot, proving it needs more work than the right.

Timing is also another issue with Suzy’s work, making dances sound awkward and unpractised. This too can sometimes cause Suzy to have to start again as highlights in the music can help to remember steps and when stresses in the rhythms come when they’re not expected, it can be very off putting. She particularly struggles with even, repeated beats, tending to either rush them or put accented rhythms in. Unless steps have a distinct pulse that corresponds with the music, steps are very often off-beat; this is one of the main aspects she needs to improve.

As Suzy is a very good ballet dancer, she sometimes has difficulty with adapting her posture for a very different style of dance. Practising being very up-right and posed can prevent her from being comfortable with moving her body weight forward. Without this weight transfer, back taps prove very tricky and it becomes hard to balance when doing pick-up steps, obscuring sounds made and making the performance look rigid and mechanical. To correct this she needs to get used to having her upper-half leaning over her feet.

Her posture often affects her balance too and stops her from making clear, crisp taps, meaning that she sometimes finds turning steps and taps on one foot hard to master. Whilst she spots when doing simple turns, when changing direction within a dance her head doesn’t turn around first, making it hard to stay up-right. This means that often during practises, she can lose her balance completely and fall over. In addition to this, being off-balance means that she can’t travel and move her steps as much as she could to make full use of the space, affecting her agility around corners.

Additionally, Suzy does not have enough speed, at times, to keep up with the music. In advanced grades, footwork is repeatedly required to be incredibly fast, neat and agile and without quick movement in the legs, this is nearly impossible. Again, this will make a performance look scruffy and untidy as: tap sounds won’t correspond to the music; in order to get the taps in, movement will begin to stay on one spot and the performer will start to concentrate too hard on getting the beats in that they will end up making mistakes and getting even further behind music or peers.

Another one of Suzy’s main problems is her memory of sequences. This means that she has been working towards her current grade for a long time now because she has not been able to recall all the different exercises in the syllabus required for the exam. Consequently, she is beginning to tire of the lessons as the same things have to be repeated many times. In an exam situation itself, she would get marked down on her ‘Response and Knowledge of the Syllabus’ and on a stage not remembering certain aspects of a dance might mean stopping half-way through and spoiling a show.

Section 4: Suggest what training/practice methods might be used to improve performance. Outline a six week training/practice programme that will be used to improve performance.

To sustain Suzy’s strengths as well as working to develop her weaknesses, I am planning to concentrate on:

To maintain: coordination and strength
To improve: muscular endurance, timing, posture/balance and memory*

*Memory will not be focused on as a separate skill but should be improved instinctively as she continues to practise and repeat dances during her regular lessons.

Coordination

Suzy should perform a series of ripples whilst changing arm position from jazz 1st to 5th, back to 1st and then out to 2nd. Not only is this helping her to maintain her ability to coordinate the feet and arms together but the ripple, itself, works both feet at the same time; this step is shown below:

Strength

Muscular Endurance

The arm positions will change after two ripples (which will be performed on alternate feet); the positions are as follows:

5th

1st

2nd

One progression would be to add a heel beat on the end to make a 4 beat ripple; this would mean having to coordinate both parts of the foot together as well as just the arms and toes. An additional development will be to perform arm movements in a random order; just before she finishes two ripples, a change in arm positions would be called out to try and reduce the amount of thinking time it takes to coordinate the feet and arms together. Once this is completed to a satisfactory standard, Suzie could try to include head movements, changing from right, facing forward, to left and back again as she completes two 4-beat ripples and moves her arm positions.

Strength

The main place where muscle is needed in tap is whilst jumping. In order to improve this, the practice involves one foot jumping over the top of a stationary leg as shown below:

This should be repeated on alternate legs but practised slightly more on the left as this foot has been found to be not as strong as the right. This can be developed first by reversing the exercise (jumping the foot in front back over the stationary leg); then by jumping forward and back in quick succession and then, once this is found to be fairly easy, 5 repeats of this without pausing, before changing feet. After this is completed, the stationary leg should be raised so she has to jump higher and sets repeated as before. The exercise, if done correctly, should develop the appropriate muscles needed in order to jump high enough to produce all taps with clarity. As this ability increases she should work to try and maintain body posture whilst attempting this exercise.

Timing

To learn and perform the correct rhythms in time with the music, dances will be broken down into smaller sections. The counts for each step will be repeated out loud and clapped before they are attempted in conjunction with the steps. Once the rhythms are achieved accurately with the feet, she should listen carefully to the music and work out how the steps fit to it. Suzy should then, again, clap the beats and say them out loud with the music before putting the steps to it. After this sounds aesthetically pleasing and Suzy is happy she can remember the rhythms, she can move onto the next section of the dance. When the whole dance is completed, Suzy can work towards putting all of the parts together.

If this proves too difficult, she can just put a few sections together at a time before trying to dance the piece as a whole. Additionally, any particularly hard or problematic areas should be taken out separately to practice with and without music and then put back into the full arrangement. When Suzy feels she is comfortable with the dance and it sounds neat and in time, she can start work on another piece.

Muscular Endurance

The main area where Suzy’s lack of muscular endurance was seen was during pullbacks and other steps where a pick-up on one foot was needed; this was because she couldn’t jump high enough to produce all sounds for a sustained amount of time. To get Suzy used to using these muscles for longer periods, she will jump with one foot in front of the other and, when in the air, stretch her knees with pointed toes for 1½ minutes without pausing.

To progress this and make it more specific to tap, she would add pickups as she jumps; as the foot leaves the floor, it will back tap off the heels. This can gradually be built up the back tap off the toes as shown:

This should be repeated on both feet and should be practised for gradually increasing amounts of time; add 5 more pullbacks each time.

Posture/Balance

To improve balance, an exercise Suzy can practise would be to rise up onto demi-pointe and place the other foot behind a few centimetres off the floor, aiming to hold it there for a whole minute. Once this target is reached, she should try tapping the back foot every few seconds and again, hold it for a minute. To develop this further, she could try shuffling the back foot instead (demonstrated below).

As a final progression, she should attempt to hop on the front foot between shuffles, meaning she will have to reposition and concentrate on her weight transference every time she lands on her toes. As Suzy will have as adjust her weight in order to be able to balance in this position, her posture will gradually improve. As she repeats this and starts to concentrate on other movements whilst in this stance, this posture will begin to feel more natural and she will be able to use it to maintain balance in other steps and exercises.

Important Notes

Before each training session, there should be a short warm up involving a quick pulse raiser (e.g. 100m jog), circling of the ankles, small jumps/springs and, with straight knees, reaching towards the toes.
Having a warm up, prepares an individual both physically and mentally, gets the muscles used to working and reduces the risk of an injury.
As there a range of progressions and only a few days of complete rest, tedium and reversibility should not occur.
Progressions should occur when the individual feels comfortable with the practice and is no longer finding it a challenge instead of after a certain period of time.
After each training session, there should be a cool down involving a short walk around the studio/room, slow rises and deep breathing.
This helps to remove lactic acid from around the muscles so that they are not as sore the following day and following sessions can be effective.

Summary of Initial Practices and Progressions (#s)