The Casual Dance Teacher's Podcast

Maia
Welcome to the Casual Dance Teachers Podcast. I'm your host, Maia. Today we have a very special guest joining us. I'm so excited to welcome Kristin Stam, who's one of the track coaches at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She's had a very impressive career as a collegiate track athlete herself, and she's now been a track and field coach for many years, specializing in the sprints and jumps events specifically. She also happens to be my sister, so she really didn't have a choice other than to be here today, but she's so knowledgeable. I really think she's going to be a great asset to talk to us a little bit about how she goes about training her athletes and how that might apply to us as dance teachers. So without further ado, hi Kristin.

Kristin
Hello, thanks for having me.

Maia
Yes, thank you for involuntarily being here. Outside of the introduction that I just gave, is there anything else that you want to say about your own career?

Kristin
I think you pretty much hit most of it. It's kind of crazy to think back, and I just finished up my 12th year of coaching at the college level already, so I can't believe how fast time flies. But I think you and I would agree that we've been able to share all the similarities between our two experiences with coaching dancers, so I'm excited to talk about that more with you today.

Maia
Yes, and I forgot to mention that you also danced for, was it 10 years?

Kristin
Yeah, 10 years.

Maia
Yeah, so you know like what this is all about.
You can apply both worlds.

Kristin
Oh, absolutely, and I would say hands down my dance background helped me so much with my track career, just in terms of coming in with body awareness and skills that I had before I did any kind of technical work with track, and they have stayed with me through my whole career.

Maia
Yay, amazing. So let me run this by you and make sure I have this right. Your students are competing throughout the season at different competitions to qualify, but you really want them to peak and perform their best at the championships which happen at the end of the season, correct?

Kristin
Correct, yes.

Maia
Okay, so how do you build like a whole arc that goes through the whole season to guarantee that they're going to do well and not burn out and peak at the end?

Yeah, I feel like track and field is pretty unique in that we actually have two conference championships that we're trying to peak for, so there are two peaks in a year. One of them's in February, the other one is usually early May, so there are essentially four phases per season that we move through, and these aren't my terms, these are terms that I actually learned through the Coaches Academy, but there's a general preparation phase that's all conditioning. We're not doing very much, if any, technical work during that phase, and we say it's building the foundation. The general prep phase is building up the foundation that's going to last you through the season. So yeah, high volume, low intensity during that phase. The next phase is called specific preparation, and that's when you start to incorporate the technical elements into things.

So we're moving into doing maybe one technical day per week, we're moving into doing more event-specific type workouts, and then the next phase is the pre-competition. We're doing more technical stuff during that time. That's when I move into the second technical day each week. So there's one in-flight mechanics technical day, and then there's the pre-competition. So that's when I move into the second technical day each week. There's a second day that's all based on the approach, which, again, in track and field can also kind of double as a workout day because an approach is running. So our kids tend to like the technical days that are working in-flight mechanics a little bit more because the approach days are essentially doing sprint repeats, just very short distance.
And you're working through the different phases of that short sprint. Okay. And then the final phase is the competition phase, where we're having to balance competing in addition to our training. And that's when the volumes get really, really low because we're trying to make sure that they're primed to compete at their best on those competition days. So we'll have a recovery day in the middle of the week. We'll also have, we'll have a pre-meet day. We don't want them to do a hard workout or a lot of volume or lots of impact on their legs doing lots of takeoffs the day before a competition, so we have two really low-volume days plus a competition day in a week. And that's when we talk about, all right, we have to go back to our foundation.
Everything we worked on in the general prep phase is carrying us through the competition phase. All that work you did back there is going to- Is going to stay with you until we move into our peak.

Maia
Wow. Okay. This is like blowing my mind.

Kristin
I know. It's a lot.

Maia
Well, like right now when we're recording this, I'm leading up to when actually my recital is, and I'm beating the poo-poo out of these kids, like being like, we have to do this again. You know, they do their dress rehearsals. They're like, they're all night working really hard, like going full out 50 times. And I'm like, oh, that's maybe not- Yeah. It's so interesting how we have those different perspectives.

Kristin
Well, yeah. I mean, there's a whole nother element.
I just moved through the phases, but another element to constructing those phases, there are basically three things at play. One of them is volume. One of them is intensity. And the other one is rest. So early in the season, the volumes are super high. That's when we're doing our repetition over repetition, I mean, we might have a day that's 3,000 meters in volume, which is a high day for us, for our sprints group. But the intensity is a lot lower. So I know that's kind of hard in dance terms. You can't really take the intensity down to work on a specific movement.

Maia
I mean, yes and no. Yeah. I think you could, definitely. Yeah. Can you just, because you're saying, so just like isolate one season, from the beginning phase to the competition phase, is that like roughly a month for each phase?

Kristin
Well, indoor is different than outdoor. So technically the culmination, our indoor championship is in February. We start our preseason in September. So it is kind of one giant season because we have September to February for indoor, but then we only have March and April for outdoor. So a lot of what we do during the indoor season is carrying through to outdoor. It's just that outdoor, everything is much more condensed. We still kind of have a general prep phase, although we're continuing with the technical day in the week. We don't go all the way back to not doing any technical work once we move into the outdoor season. But we will kind of move back into doing outdoor.
I mean, then we do it just like the other phases, like lower intensity, higher volume, and then just more quickly moving through the phases during that outdoor season because we have less time.

Maia
Okay. And that's actually similar to dance too. You have your spring recital, so you're coming in the fall, you really work on the training and conditioning, and then you typically have a Christmas break come back and it's like, okay, we got to really get serious and work on this technical stuff for the recital. Working on your dance. So I can see how we can think about that. You're right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I use that same concept to kind of plan out the arc of the dance season. Yeah. Cool.

So you use the term that I want to hear more about, and this might be pivoting to more of the technical side, but what does that mean when you say 'in-flight mechanics'? Like what, what are you doing?

Kristin
Yeah. So I coach, I mean, I coach the, the sprints, the hurdles, but then also the jumps. So I'll focus primarily on the jumps because that is, those are the events I've most consistently coached throughout my whole career and not to play favorites, but the jumps are, they're my bread and butter. They're kind of my baby. So I'm specifically talking about the long triple and high jump when I talk about in-flight mechanics. So the high jump, for example, in-flight mechanics would be anything that has a high jump.
So I'm talking about the high jump after takeoff, which essentially for them is going over the bar. If you've, if you've seen them doing that in the long jump, there are a couple of different methods you can use. You could do the sail method. You could do the hitch method. So whatever you're doing in the air until you're landing, that's in-flight mechanics. Um, triple jump is really technical. I mean, there's, there's three different phases going on. So we're working a lot on what your legs are doing in the air. So we're working a lot on what your legs are doing in the air. So we're working a lot on moving through the phases, reacting to the ground in between the phases. So that's kind of what I mean by in-flight mechanics.

Maia
When you're doing the in-flight mechanics, are you just having them do these steps or like repeat jumping stuff? Or is it like you're having them get into a position on the ground to show them what it's supposed to feel like in the air?

Kristin
Yes. So, okay. Yes to all. To go, to go back on that. Essentially, I try to, to preach to all of my athletes that anything that happens in the air is just a reaction of what your takeoff looks like. So, yeah. Um, so really the last two steps in the long jump are really going to dictate what happens in the air. The last three steps in the, the high jump coming in on that curve, staying on your curve, staying flat footed at takeoff, that's all going to dictate what happens over the bar.
Um, so yes, I call it an in-flight mechanics day, but it's really takeoff driven because if you can't take off correctly, you're not going to be able to do anything in the air in the first place. Um, but we do everything from a short approach. So when I say in-flight mechanics day, they know they're not doing anything, anything beyond a six-step approach. Um, sometimes our high jumpers come in from a little bit farther away. They'll do more full approach stuff because it's not quite as taxing on the body as a full 16-step long or triple jump approaches, but they know essentially on that first technical day, everything is just going to be slowed down for them so that they can really focus on what's my takeoff looking like.
And then if I do my takeoff correctly, what should be happening in the air?

Maia
Okay, good. So we can use all this in class too. Um, so I don't want to like make you go on forever, but can you give us like just a couple of quick drills that we could use to improve the approach to jumps in dance? Because obviously we're on stage, we can't run as far. So like within a short approach, how can we get higher, bigger jumps in dance?

Kristin
Yeah, I guess I'll start with a couple cues that I love to use. One of them is load the spring. I say that all the time. I think my kids are probably tired of hearing me say it, but in the long jump, especially, and the high jump a little bit too, we talk about a penultimate step.
And basically that penultimate step, it loads the spring to enable you to get more power in the air. So if you think about a spring, if you want it to bounce off of a flat surface, you have to push it down. In order for it to expand and pop back up, the same thing should happen in a penultimate or a second-to-last step before takeoff. So we drill that second-to-last step all the time. They have to load the spring, bend their knees, drop their hips, and then take off kind of on the same plane to be able to get more force and reaction off of their takeoff step. Um, so we do a ton of work on that, that takeoff step. A lot of times they're, they're running fast and they're taking off, but they come in way too tall. They never actually drop their hips, bend their knee. And like I say, load the spring. Um, yeah. And a drill that I think really helps with that is we do a lot of jumping off of boxes and we'll, we'll move that box around to the second to last step or the takeoff step. If you're taking off the box on the takeoff step, it's forcing you to get your takeoff leg down quickly. It's also forcing you to have full contact with your foot and not trying to just come off your toe.
So you're getting more power. It's a lot harder to take off a box on your toe than it is off of the track when you're just running on a flat surface. Um, and then we move that box around too, and we might put it a little bit further back for your second-to-last step. And then your hips drop when you run off the box, and you can kind of feel that sensation of your hips dropping to be able to get your takeoff step down quickly. So you can do a lot with a box to get more power. Yeah. It also, you know, it elevates your jump. So then you have more time in the air to think about what you want to do in the air. Right.

Maia
And I bet you could even use like a folded-up yoga mat or like a mat of some sort to mimic that.

Kristin
Oh, definitely.

Maia
Okay. Awesome. Well, that is really probably all the time that we have for now, but I feel like there's probably a million more things you could school us on. So I'm going to do a plug here and say, for anybody listening, get on the Casual Dance Teachers network on Facebook and tell us what you thought and what you want to hear from Kristen and I'll bribe her to come back and do another episode with us in the future. Well, thank you so much. That was so helpful. I'm really excited to actually implement some of these.
Like I said, while I'm training up for the last couple of weeks of my current season into the recital, I feel really good. And then next season, I'm going to implement some of these ideas too. So thank you so much. Please do come back.

Kristin
Well, thanks for having me. This was fun.

Maia
Okay. So my tradition here is to close each episode with an inspirational quote, but being that this is my sister, it was just kind of a fun way to get her to come back. I thought, why not take some of our super awkward deleted footage that I've recorded and end with a blooper for you. So here you go.

Bye. Love you. Love you. Bye.