Beginner Salsa Dance Turns and Spins

Hi , this is addicted to salsa dot com podcast .

And my name is Julie Merrill today .

I'll be teaching you three components to proper spinning technique .

The first component of proper spinning technique is having good posture , good posture means that your knees are slightly bent .

You're staying on the balls of your feet with your heels , slightly raised , your core is engaged , which means that your abs and your lower back are nice and tight .

Your arms are in table top position or if you're with a partner , then your arm here is at a 90 degree angle .

The second component to having great spins is the prep .

The prep is what gives us all of our momentum and speed for the spins .

There are lots of different styles of prepping out there .

I'll just teach you what it is that I do when I prep .

So first I'll talk about the basic mechanics .

You're going to shift your weight from your right foot to your left foot , rotating your body and you can sink a little bit if you want .

And then you push off into this bin , breaking down the counts on one , they go 123567 , prep 123567 .

Now on two , here's the basic step , we go 123567123567 .

The third component to having great spins is spotting .

Spotting is what prevents you from getting dizzy or from stumbling a little bit as you're doing your spins .

So the way this works is we get into our prep and as you begin your spin , you want to isolate your head from your body .

So your body starts to turn first and your eyes are still focused on the target .

And then as you get so that you can't do this anymore , you whip your head around to the target and then your body follows .

So you do this for each spin .

If it's multiple spins , you want to keep your head focused on your target and whip your body around .

Just another note about spotting is you want to focus on something that's eye level .

This depends because guys all have different heights .

So if the guy is really tall , it might be his chest so that you're not off balance looking up .

Now , I'd like to mention a couple of other aspects of spinning first .

A lot of people want to know where does the power come from ?

The power comes from your core , which can be considered your powerhouse .

So you want to make sure that you keep your whole body united as one piece rather than bringing just your arms around or just your hips around .

You want to make sure that everything is one sort of stiff but muscles engaged unit and you go around everything together .

Next is important to know whether you spin on your right foot on your left foot on both or whether you tap with just one .

So the general rule is if you're spinning on your , to the right , then you're going to spin with your weight on your right foot .

When your weight is on your right foot , your left is supporting .

If you watch my feet as I go around , it just brushes the ground .

If you're spinning to the left , then your weight is on your left foot and your right foot brushes the ground like this .

If you're just beginning spinning , you're just starting multiple spins .

You may want to try tapping as you go around .

So that means that each time you go around in the front , you're going to tap with your supporting foot , you go around tap , tap , tap that can kind of help you .

It also helps if you're say you're a good spinner and you just get off balance a little bit .

It can help you bring yourself back into balance .

All of those things that we just learned can also be applied to your partner work and spins .

So now I'll show you how it looks going from the basic step into a triple spin .

Here , we go 123567123567 .

And remember practice makes perfect .