🚶‍♀️ Travel to the Side

This is for you if you want to skip the physics proof: -- Stand on your right leg -- left foot is in contact with the floor (but you do not have any weight on it)

Lets think about how you are going to take a step to your left (without turning your body). Imagine you are in front of a wall. You have options including:

  1. Lean to the left and hope for the best (please don't do this, OUCH!)
  2. Throw your left leg to the side and step on it. You are now almost certainly standing on both feet. Ugh.
  3. Push your hip to the left from the inside edge of your right foot.

When you do 1 and 2 unpredictable things happen. It's not elegant, number 1 is flat out dangerous and they don't work.

You can see our poor dancer leaning to the right and we know what's going to happen. Ouch! (Don't do this) Leaning to the Side

However they pick themselves up and try again, this time just dangling the left leg to the side and pushing from the left foot. They aren't landing on the floor but they are split weight to a degree that they can't recover from. Try this for yourself!

The 'problem' is that the dancer just threw the left leg to the side without taking the hip with it which is actually impossible to do. Throwing the left leg to the Side

Travel To The Side ~ How It's Done

If we look at this diagram and take things step by step. Moving to the Side

  1. Our dancer is standing on their Right foot.
  2. They start to push their hip to the left which takes the left foot with it. The distance they will travel depends on the amount of push (or force).
  3. At this point they are 'in flight' and they know they'll land on their left foot at the end of the push. They can also choose to put their left foot on the floor at which point they are stable.
  4. Their COG is has past the mid-point between right and left legs and they are committed
  5. Their COG is heading towards the left foot
  6. They have landed on their left foot, note that the left leg is where it should be, directly under the hip
  7. Balance is restored as the COG is within the 'power line' of the foot.

This is simple, elegant and Works Every Time.

There is a slight 'rise' or 'bounce' on a side push.

There has to be a slight upward push to counteract gravity pulling the moving foot to the floor. Without this the moving foot will hit the floor prematurely causing no end of 'what went wrong?' thoughts.

Note about the amount of Push

It's obvious that the more they push off with their right foot the greater the distance to be travelled. But there is a danger point where too much force will result in imbalance and instability. It doesn't look pretty either.

Why push the hip?

Easy! Because the travelling leg has to come with it and your balance system (that you use for walking) knows what to do. Throwing the travelling leg to the side will not take the hip with it. Where ever your hip goes, everything else has to come with it

There is no pull (we push instead)

We measure position in a 3-dimensional space (that's you on a dance floor) with a simple term: xyz

Where:

  • x is side to side

  • z is forward and back

  • y is up and down

So if you are standing in xyz and 'travel' you have moved to a different xyz

Example; you are standing at 0,5,0 and travel to 3,5,3 (that's diagonal travel!)

0,5,0 to 3,5,0 would be travel to the side

The only way to move the hip is by pushing from the standing foot

Want the full analysis?

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