Hi guys, so, this week I want to talk about and study and practice the Leg Motion.
The leg motion, in my opinion, is a very important thing.
Not everybody, actually I think most of the people don't work on the leg motion as they
work on all the other kind of motions that they do.
Especially on ankle motions, sometimes we focus more on the technique it self and not
on what actually starts everything.
In fact, in my opinion, the leg motion is the injection of everything we're going to
do, for example, when we have to play 32nd notes patterns on the drums, for example for
a breakdown, sometimes I see drummers struggling with that part, with the beginning, where
they kind of start in that way and then they get rolling, and they start... being able
to play what they want, but how it should be is that we should be able to start straight
away to play with no problems, and that's possible using the leg motion as the first
stroke.
In fact, if we use the weight of the leg that's actually what happens in the leg motion, it's
using the leg to go against the force of the spring.
The spring is a force that we have to deal with that wants to throw the beater back as
the beater reaches the surface that we're playing on, in this case the pad.
So, from there dealing with this with small muscles like the articulation muscles of the
ankle, it gets difficult, it makes us lose control, and we either have to, kind of, do
a pressing motion, to beat that, or working on the release motion, which is starting already
in a stressed position, in a contracted position, against the spring, putting the weight of
our body in front and working on releasing the pedal, instead of being relaxed, work
with the leg motion and the weight of the leg against the spring and then take advantage
of that, which is what I do.
And this benefits me on staying relaxed the whole time and not putting pressure on the
knees, putting all the weight of my body in front, so on my legs, which damages your knees,
especially in the Swivel technique, and so, for this reason I really think the Leg Motion
is very important, and that 's why I want to start from there and talk about this today.
So, we will structure our lessons starting from the body control, which is practicing
without pedal, practicing just working on our body, and then we will do other steps to get
to the final result, which is playing, of course, the pedal with the spring on.
Basically the leg motion works exactly how the upstroke and downstroke for our hand works,
so we raise our arm leaving our hand relaxed, and we do the same thing with our leg, we
raise our leg in this position and then we just let our arm go, and in the same way,
we let our leg go.
So, what happens is that when we release the leg, when we let it fall, the noise that we hear,
the sound that we hear, it's a Flam sound, it's not a flat sound.
It's not a Tap, but it's a Flam.
Because the toe reaches the floor before the heel, because our ankle is completely relaxed,
so as with the hand, where the fingers are in a lower position thanthe wrist, the same
thing happens with our foot, where the toes are in a lower position compared to the ankle.
So it's exactly the same concept, the same mechanincs that happens, just applied to the
lower part of our body.
And of course this requires us to put all the weight of our body on the seat and not in
front, if not we're going to have hard times doing this motion.
But we're going to talk about balance in another episode, I want to focus on the leg motion
today.
So the first exercise that we have to do, is, we have to raise our leg and make sure
that as we raise the leg our ankle is relaxed and we don't have tensions, we don't do anything
like that... we don't raise our toes, or any kind of contraction or muscular activation
Outside of this part of our leg, which, of course, it's going to work because it's going to raise the leg
So, the same thing has to be done with the left foot of course
And, we can work on this for 60 seconds
for each leg so, 60 seconds right leg, 60 seconds left leg
making sure
that
all our muscles are relaxed while we do this
it's very important to stay concentrated and it's very important to
repeat this exercise for at least the whole week once per day
From the moment that you understand what you have to do, that's just the beginning of your study curse
what happens when we study is, we have to make this kind of feeling
spontaneus and natural everytime we play
so even when we don't think about it, because now we're really focused on this part of our body
so, we can control it and we can let all the muscles relax while we do this
but, will this happen when we're going to play and we're dealing with clicks, the live stage and other situation?
we don't know, we have to keep repeating this so that our brain memorizes this thing
and this message that it sends, and then from there, it's going to be spontaneus, it's going to be natural
so yes, if we repeat it, then our brain will get used to this andwill apply it every time it has to work in this way
so, this is the first thing that we have do to, so working on our body, educating our brain to have this kind of approach
everytime we work in this way
then, we will work on the pedal without the spring
working without the spring is very important because it allows us to work very slowly
and we don't have the pressure and the needs that the spring gives reacting and controlling
the reaction of the spring, but it's just going to be dealing with the rebound
that really depends on how powerful we hit the pad or the surface that we're playing on
we'll have to think about different things in this situation, we have to think of raising our leg without
pressing down, if not we're already going to have a problem, and when we're going to put the spring
we're going to have tensions already, because we're working against the spring so, we'll have to work on
really raising our leg, and then letting it go, keeping the same exact motion that we were doing before
and then we'll have to work on not pressing the beater down but letting it come back
because all these motions are going to be in preparation of the final step, which is working with the spring
so once we can do this, and this is going to be done 60 seconds per leg
both right and left, again, so it's going to be another 2 minutes added
the final step will be to practice with the spring, and we'll have to deal with the sring, so as I was saying
before, we'll have to work with the weight of our leg against the spring
we're going to do the same exact thing that we were doing without the spring, so
raising our leg without pressing the beater down, and then we will let the leg fall
and then we will control the rebound, the come bac of the beater,
just by relaxing the foot and leaving it laid on the board
in this case, this a one leg motion stroke, instead if you want to work on different techniques
anduse the leg motion as the injection, this is what's going to happen:
so, this is why, in my opinion, the leg motion is very important
it's going to be the injection of all the motions that we're going to do and all the techniques
and also, of course, will help us playing slowly and without making any effort
just by working using the weight of the leg working against the force of the spring
and try to work on these motions with these steps at least once a day
and, of course, we're going to go through all the other techniques the I play and perform
this is just going to be the first step of a long way that will take us through all the techniques and all that we are
going to need to play fast with control and power without getting tired