How To Be a Super SHARP Irish Dancer

When it comes to Feises, and especially major championships, it is important to stand out from the rest of your competition. Dancers do this in many ways, but what always catches our attention, is when dancers are super sharp. Sharpness is something that a lot of dancers struggle with and find it hard to improve without a lot of focused hard work - but it can be done! 

Annabelle always jokes that she ‘couldn’t dance a decent reel until she was 18 years old’ because she couldn’t figure out how to gain that sharpness required to take her reel to the next level. If you can relate to this, then try these three exercises for the next four weeks and see how your sharpness improves and your overall dancing with it. 

What is sharpness?

When we talk about sharpness we are talking about being explosive with certain types of movements - this could be kicking up at the back, clicks, drags or being to pull the front leg up nice and sharp too. One of the main things that stops dancers from being sharp is their alignment. So in order to work this, we need to work on explosive moves, but also moves which will help to correct our alignment. 

Hip Tucks

This first move is quite easy to mistake as a glute bridge but there is a difference, so read carefully.. 

How to do a Hip Tuck:

• Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet touching the ground
• Use your ab muscles tuck your hips, so there is no gap between your lower back and the floor. Imagine that you are trying to push your lower back into the floor
• Without putting any pressure into your feet, use your ab muscles to raise your hips and bottom off the floor (imagine rolling each bone in your spine off the floor one by one)
• You won’t lift as high as a glute bridge and that’s ok - this is all about using your abs and removing any pressure into your feet
• Lower your hips and repeat 
• 8x reps for two sets

Hamstring Bridge 

This exercise focuses on our hamstrings, at the back of our legs, which as Irish dancers we often forget to strengthen! 

How to do a Hamstring Bridge: 

• Lie on your back with your legs out in front of you (further away from you than in the Hip Tuck move)
• Dig your heels into the floor and raise your hips into the air 
• Using one foot at a time, move your feet a little closer to your body (still with pressure on your heels) 
• Move both feet back to the starting position, one at a time
• Complete 8x reps twice through 

Adductor Bridge 

What is important to understand about this exercise is that the higher the surface is that you use, the harder this move will be. 

How to do an Aductor Bridge: 

• Grab a chair and place it near your feet 
• Lie down on your side 
• Place your top leg onto the chair and have your bottom leg underneath the chair 
• Raise your body into the air, resting your weight on your arm (elbow and shoulder in line) 
• Bring the bottom leg up sharp, to touch the underneath of the chair 
• Then lower gently 
• Repeat 8x per leg, two times through

By repeating these exercises 1 - 2x per week for one month you will notice how much sharper your dancing will look! 

It would be interesting to video yourself dancing before completing these moves and then again afterwards to see if you can notice a difference in your dancing after one month. 

Sharpness is often one of the final pieces of the puzzle when it comes to making dancers stand out from the rest of the competition - if your basics are all in place but you feel you need that extra sparkle, then this is what I’d recommend working on!

Let me know how you get on by contacting us and using the hashtag #MWMEra on Instagram