Latin Dance Forward Bend Stretch

Series Summary

Exercising combined with appropriate dieting is a great way to manage your weight and maximize your flexibility. Stretching is an important part of warming-up before a good workout. Did you know that stretching is also a great way to wind-down after a workout? By stretching your muscles, you lengthen and lubricate them, giving the muscles protection from tears and other injuries. By stretching after a workout, you increase your static flexibility. In this free video series a choreographer, Enrique Lugo, will teach you several stretches to help you prepare your body for Latin dancing. Stretching is a key component for building flexibility and increasing strength. Enrique will show you several stretches, such as: the forward bend stretch, lunges, the butterfly stretch, cobra stretch as well as leg extensions. He'll also show you how to perform a few contractions in order to improve the flexibility of your ligaments and joints. In the end you'll know several stretches for Latin dancing, which will drastically improve you elasticity.

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Enrique. Thank you so much for being here with me one more time. This is Latino dance flexibility. This is what I, pretty much, what I do, what we do in class, for the people that take my class, an advance class, normal jazz class where we do a just a warm up. Then, I'm going o teach you, right now the first move. We're going to keep your heels and knees together, your legs together and we're going to stretch my arms, all the way as high as we can. I'm going to stretch one, two, three, and four. Then from there we're going to plea, we're going to bend out knees, we're going to go all the way down, stretch it, and roll up my body all the way up. One more time, continue two, three, and four, bring it down. You can do this three, four times yes. It depends how you feel. All the time try to think of an expression along your body, along your muscles. Yes, and we're going to go to the second position. The same thing, we're going to go all the way up, stretch it up, all the way up. Yes, four counts, bring it up and open, keep your legs straight, and then roll up. One more time, one, two, three, four, open up. Be careful, don't open and expand your torso, try to keep it together. One more time, bring it all the way up, open up, and stretch and this is the way that you can start warming up your body so you can stretch. Think about all the time, your breathing. Breathing is going to help you, two, all the time, release and don't tense your body, don't tense your ligaments so you can stretch a little bit more. The accenting, you can move a little bit more to the side, bring it forward, plea, and stretch. Moving on with the next step."