Why Am I Losing My Balance on Dance Skate Moves?

Hey skaters, just want to share a quick detail of something I found that was missing when I was first learning and trying to understand a lot of moves when I first started skating. So the way that I figured out moves really was just going on Instagram, going on YouTube, and screenshotting videos of things I liked and then slowing them down, zooming in, and trying to see what the technical breakdown was of what the person was doing, what edge they were leaning on, what foot they were picking up, which wheel they're picking up, how their body's moving, what kind of rhythm they're doing it in. But a lot of the time what you can't tell by videos is that they're barely lifting their foot. And really with so many moves, ideally you want to lift it as absolutely little as possible. So let me just give an example. Say with the dribble and pivot. Now if I'm going to do a pivot, people instinctively think, okay, well the stabilizing foot, the one that's basically the leg of the table that you're spinning on, has to lift. It has to lift the heel in order to turn. But do you see how I'm not really lifting much at all? I mean obviously mentally I'm a little bit lifting that heel, but it's nothing that the eye could really see because it's just about leaning. My body's doing the work, my hips are doing the work, but people instinctively will lift this heel like this and then they'll lose their balance. I feel like eight out of ten times people are losing their balance. It's because they're lifting something too much. So another example is a back corkscrew. So when I was first learning that, I thought that the stabilizing leg, the one that I was on, the leg of my table basically, had to lift the heel because otherwise I wasn't going to get around. How was I going to move? But really it's just fine tuning, seeing how little I actually have to lift that heel. And like I said, it's almost more like a tiny idea of lifting. I think it's better to actually get stuck over lifting too much because when I was lifting too much, I was losing my balance. If I thought, oh, I have to lift this heel to get around, I'm going to lose my balance. Okay, so say I get stuck, okay, but then I'm like, okay, I need a tiny bit more lift in that heel in order to get around. So of course a lot of it too is my body. My body is facing where I want to go, you know, learning what to lean on here. The same thing is going to apply for two foot pivots, one foot pivot, you know, like you're really not doing this and over-exaggerating like, ah, I have to lift, I have to lift. You think that you have to lift more, so you're going to start to lose balance if you lift too much. But really I'm just keeping it flat, bending into it. You're really using your body to turn and keeping it as flat as you possibly can. This really does matter, of course, too, what kind of wheels you're wearing. You need a harder wheel to be able to do this sort of sliding. Obviously, if I had a stickier wheel, I would have to do more work to get this to slide. So for even this movement, what's picking up is the toe. I have to pick up the toe, right? But I'm barely picking up the toe. I'm just dragging it, dragging it, dragging it. An exercise that can help with this is just doing these. I'm also using balance and my body to move. And I'm just lifting with a tiny bit of a percentage. People think naturally, it's a natural instinct that they go, okay, I have to pick up my toes to move. I have to pick up my heels. I have to pick up my toes. But really, you have to slide your toes, slide your heels. And in order to slide them, you just need to pick them up 9% or something. I think with skating, a lot of it is getting into the ground. A lot of it is bending. I'm trying to be solid into the ground, staying low so that I have control. Because if I'm picking up too much, and I'm like doing this, I'm like up too much. There's too much chance for me to lose my balance. So anytime you find you're losing your balance, check to see if you're bouncing, if you're going into the ground, if you feel solid into the ground. Or if you're lifting up something a little bit too much that you don't really need to lift up that much. Even a heel toe spin, I can do that totally flat. Can you tell which one's lifting up? Right now, it's a tiny bit of the left toe. But it doesn't really have to be because I can use the body to do most of the momentum, and I can rely on the hard wheels. Using your hips, using the top of your body, using this whole core of the body basically to be the thing that's moving you. Not trying to muscle through it with your feet. Of course, this doesn't apply to everything. With toe spins, for example, you're going to have to really lift your heels. Or with a one foot spin on the toe, really lift your heels. But even with a one foot spin, not a toe spin, you can really do it very flat if you want to. And then you feel more stable. Hope this makes sense and helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Bye.