Marching: Defining the 8 Core Principles of Technique and Movement

In this episode, Mike Lunney breaks down the eight core or fundamental principles for marching techniques and movement. These are borrowed from the book "Beyond the Basics" by Nick Benson, Adam Oswald, and Dylan Thomson. Mike introduced these principles early in the marching series, but this week he gives a deeper definition and provides some practical application examples.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Mike Lunny, I I hate to say this to our friends, but I think we're about halfway through a summer at the time that this podcast is airing. Time must be flying, right? Or we must be having fun. Is that the same? That's right. We're having fun. But we are having fun. You and I. One of your uh one of the neatest things that you do is is compile information and organize it in such a way that it's it's helpful to be. I love it. Um one of the things that I appreciate is you've kind of put together uh, you know, we t we affectionately refer to it as Mike Lenny's Bible for marching band, but a series referencing ways to win at Marching Band. We talked about that.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

With a very specific definition of winning.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Sure, winning means successful for your group.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Not uh trophy hunt.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Sure. The second kind of thing we went through was that your your band probably advances through five different boxes, or you can be categorized in five different boxes as you progress from just learning your show through creating the most artistic version of that show. Right? And the different things that kind of help you characterize or uh you can kind of pinpoint where you are in the season if you'll listen to that and go, oh, okay, I get it. We've learned it. Now we actually uh don't have to look at the music or look at our our charts or our we we know where to go, we know what notes to play, but then you kind of advance through that to where you're emoting to the audience. It's not just about you guys getting it. Now you're trying to get it or you know, share it in a way that somebody else can get it, all the way up into the oh my gosh, that is so artistic face. So I think those are the things we've talked about. And today, my friend, we're going to help people by talking about see how leading that was.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, there you go. Uh just kind of integrating, you know, what we do for basic marching fundamentals, which sounds really dry, but it's so important. But you know, you've got to be able to do the basic things, uh, produce those and get them where the kids understand them so that you can get to the point where you can uh emote, where you can become the performer, because there's nothing worse than someone trying to perform at a level that doesn't have any basic fundamentals.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Right. That's such a funny word. Emoting, it's like a a scientific word. The caterpillar emotes its skin.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

It really is. We've got to think of our brain. There's a whole kind of it's an interesting process to me because I I read lots of books because I just didn't I just love it. But the neuroscience of it is the fact that think of your brain like a 9-11 Porsche, a Porsche 9-11. I'm glad to do that. Yeah, because you you're you in a Porsche, in that 9-11 Porsche, you sit in the middle because you're the driver. The front of the Porsche is actually not the engine, it's the storage compartment. And then the back of the Porsche is the actual engine. And your brain works exactly the same way. Your frontal cortex is where you store information. Okay. You're uh you're the driver, so the driver, the emotions as we emote, uh drive the engine, and it uses information from the front of your brain. So we have the front mind and the hind mind. And the hind mind is like your uh brain stem. It's how we learned how to walk. Think about that. You know, it's uh you just someone grabs you and holds you up in the air a little bit, and you learn how to move your legs and you learn how to walk. The parent doesn't sit you down and go, now, Derek, you're a year old, so now you need to lift your left foot up off the air. Yeah, that no one does that. We just do it. So it's the the hind part of our brain is is where everything is functioning. That's what our brain knows what to do. We hundreds of thousands of things we've learned. So think about it in terms of playing like a piano, the frontal cortex is what is happening when we look at it and we go, um, this is an A on piano. You're gonna use your first finger of your right hand to play that A. That's storing information in the trunk. Okay. You do it enough times, and if you uh excuse me, sorry about that. But if you do like those hand-in studies on piano, you know what I mean? They just go on and on forever. Because I did them as a kid, and first you do them and you have to think of every single step. Pretty soon you just it goes to the hind part of your brain, right? Your brain just takes over, and then we call that muscle memory, okay? But muscle memory is where you can actually use the middle part of your brain once your muscle memory is engaged and you've done those things repetitively so many times that now it's just a part of your being. Now you can what we call a moat. Because without the driver knowing what to do, the Porsche can't go anywhere. If you look inside the window of the Porsche and the driver has his knees up to his chin and he's shaking, then it doesn't matter with that powerful engine behind him. And it doesn't matter what's in the trunk in front of him. You know, so then at that point, that's all of a sudden that Porsche 911 becomes that kid that can actually emote on the field. They can sit there because they got all the repetition in their mind. They've got the frontal cortex, which has learned all the information to begin with, and now they're the one that drives it with their emotions because all music is driven by emotion. Sure. So that in a synopsis is Mike Lenny's uh philosophy of teaching music.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

So watch me jump in the middle of this. If your Porsche 911 happens to be a manual shift, as you learn to use uh that powerful engine behind you by recognizing things from the front, it's it's almost like when you're first learning how to shift, you have to figure out when the clutch and the stick go at the same time. I'm a good manual driver. My first cars were all manuals. I me here's what throws me off. Side note, I can do it on the floor. When it was on the actual steering column, I had a harder, much harder time. Three on the crew. That was hard. That's what we call that's what my grandpa called it. Three on the crew. My point is, you can still drive it. You might look and everybody's going, ooh, baby, uh uh. Because they hear him grinding and they see the the car jerking. Yeah. But once you develop the skill, or once you develop the knowledge that you need, or you've done it enough times, however you want to look at that, it goes to the line, doesn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

So you you just hear the whine of the engine, you know exactly when to shift, and you just move your hand and you move the clutch and you just go. You don't think, okay, I'm going from second to third gear. Now I need to push down, now I need to let off the gas. You go like that. It just works. Yeah. And if you get really good at it with uh with a good car at a Camaro Super Sport, it's 1969, and it was a manual with a Hearst shifter. And I could shift that thing without using the clutch. You could you could go shift it because if you just did it exactly at the right time, you could pop into one gear to the next gear and not damage the transmission. And man, you could get some acceleration out of that thing. That thing was it would that was an amazing car. I wish I still had it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Look, I touched the core memory.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That poor old car. I didn't even have a uh a gauge for the gas. I had to use the mileage to figure out when I needed to fill it up. But back then, gas was 35 cents a gallon. Yeah, I could work two hours at the pizza place and fill up my Camaro. Think about that for a second. Ratio finance-wise, two hours of work at a pizza place and I could fill up my Camaro. But how long did that tank last you? A week? Oh, oh God. Sometimes six hours. It depends on where you're at. I probably got like nine, nine miles per gallon. That's I mean, it just it blew the doors off things, and you know, it'd been wrecked a couple times by me. Yeah, we spent a lot of time in bar ditches and going through barbed wire fences, and you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Just being a good old North Texas kid.

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Oh, yeah, yeah. We just blown through dirt roads and the back roads of Iowa Park, Texas.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

That's funny. So, front brain, hind brain, middle brain. How does that relate to what we're doing?

SPEAKER_00 8:23

It relates to it because as we go through this process of discussing what we need to do to make things very fluid and very comfortable and concentrated on the field as these basics. It's the repetition of said basics over and over that pushes it into the hind part of our brain to where the kids can actually not have to think about how do I step off? How do I hold my horn at trail? How do I do a platform run or a flutter step? How do I do these things? Um, we do it, we do it so many times in a row that it just becomes a habit. That's the kind of the definition of habits, I suppose. You know.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Even on the atomic level.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, that's right. That's right. And so it's it all goes together because atomic habits kind of gears into that whole, you know, front of the brain, the middle of the brain. But in music, the middle, we try, I try to think of it as that's the emotional part. And there's gonna be uh Allison Wilkes Wilkinson has a book uh uh about the emotional playing of music, how to make emotional musicians, etc. And I'm on the second podcast developing it, and there's gonna be five, and it's gonna be really awesome because it has to do with like beginner band, middle school band, and high school concert band mostly. Okay, but uh that's a teaser for people to maybe look forward to because that's it, it's gonna be it's gonna be a fun one. I've really enjoyed digging into those books. I spent about an hour a day just reading and studying those books because I'm just a retired old fart.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

But we said before you quit learning, you start dying. So I'm glad you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

That's right. That's right. So in this situation, you know, we have different schedules depending on if you're a 1A, a 5A, a 6A, whatever. So we've got to figure out a way to integrate the basics of what we do as a marching band within the schedule that we have in front of us. Okay. Um, because uh, you know, if if I was at my last couple of years at a larger 4A, about to become a 5A, you know, we could do the full eight hours after school. And we would miss kids for like soccer and stuff and cross country, but we could do it. But you know, there's we could not have done that at a at 2A, probably. You know what I mean? So you've got to make it fit what you've got. But we have a I have a system of rehearsal in place, you know, and I I have it as a detailed system of fundamentals. Um, we all teach the same way, okay. Um, so we have this all set down and it's in a uh it's in the uh a document that Rick has put on to somewhere to download. I don't know where where do we download that from. Rick will tell me later. Okay, but it's a word file, so you can change it to what you need. But the main thing that I want to get in this podcast to lay the groundwork for the future ones is you must have a to me, you must have a written system of how you teach fundamentals. It can't be this is just how we do it, you know, because what we will lose continuity so quick, you know. Oh, I just teach them how to do it. It's all in my head. I know.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Right. And I would think that's important even for your staff to have that written down. Oh, yeah. If you if you have others that teach with you.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah, and you can kind of change it up from year to year if you get a new staff member. If you're lucky enough to have a staff, and uh they they've come from a different school, they might have some really cool ideas or or ways to say things. And it's like, well, let's let's let you change this up then. Let's change because nothing in that document is something I made up on my own.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Not you mentioned that before.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

Yeah, it's all stolen from other people. I I started as a military marcher and worked my way up through open class marching and then did drum core. And so I feel like I you know went through the whole uh patterns of motion from the Bill Moffitt Sound Power series where the squads of four, you know. So I I think it's interesting in my particular journey. I've kind of gone through all those different things, you know, the different styles of marching. And the one thing that stays consistent is that it all has to look the same.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Whether you're a uh military marching band, whether you're an open class marching band, whether you're uh uh, you know, Grambling style HBCU style marching band, it has to look the same, you know. And if you make it look the same, then you will you will entertain.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

You will mean everybody's consistent in what they do.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, their movements are consistent, their shoulders are the same way, their chin is the same way. Okay. So let's go through some of these core principles. So because we got to figure out how we're gonna do things. Okay, so there's eight core principles, and uh and I listed those in that first podcast, or actually, I guess it's our second podcast for this. Uh, with uh, but I want to give a brief explanation for some of those. Okay. Uh, one is relaxation, learning to recognize areas of tension that need releasing. Because a lot of times we tell a band to stand at attention and they everyone gets really stiff and every muscle in their body is contracted.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

And they lock them down. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, we lock them down. So, you know, we don't want hunched shoulders, we don't want clenched uh teeth, you know what I mean? We don't want locked knees, we don't want any of that stuff. I try to really process for the kids the fact that when we stand at attention, um, it's just a way we stand. It's not a musculature thing where we're just gonna make everything really tense, like we're gonna lift up a 50-pound barbell or something. Right. You know what I mean? It's uh I think that's an important thing because I see bands on the field and you can just tell they're just they just really look up tight, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

If this is so uh out there, tell me, it's almost an attitude. Standing at attention is just conveying the confidence and and the stillness of I'm about to move into motion, but for now, be impressed with how just the confidence that I stand here in. That that probably didn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

But instead of tensing everything up, yeah, you know, it's if standing at attention kind of sets the tone. That's kind of our visual uh tone quality, you know, uh when you compare it to like playing our horns and our drums. Um but it's a fact of, you know, um, we have to stand a certain way, and there's a certain power in that stillness. You know, if you see a speaker who talks in a room, uh this is one of my pet peeves. I hate it when preachers pace back and forth when they're given a sermon. It's just distracting it does not command the room, it just shows that they're nervous and they don't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? I know that's kind of for a lot of public speakers, that might be a technique they're taught to use. Um, but there's something powerful about the pulpit. Commanding the pulpit.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, just stand behind the pulpit and just give the word and just uh stand and deliver. You know what I mean? There's something powerful about commanding a room that way. And I'd like to try to convince bands of that same power that you can convince the stadium, everyone at the stadium to watch you as a band while you're just standing on the ramp before you even come down to the field.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

There's that relaxed confidence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah. Yeah. It's just we know what we're doing, everything is set up correctly, and we're about to perform. And this is going to be fun for you, audience, instead of them looking going, why are those kids over there wiggling around? What's what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Oh, that nervous energy.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Then concentration, it's the mind that builds the body, and that all-important connection comes only with concentration. Um, and going back to what we talked about earlier with the brain, you know, when we concentrate, uh at first, we're filling up our trunk with information. And then as we fill up our trunk and if we concentrate and do that, then pretty soon that information goes to the back part of our brain and it becomes a reflexive thing, it becomes a habit. So we're not worried about how do we bend our knees? Uh, we don't worry about whether we're bending our knees, we just do it the way we've done it a hundred thousand times. And we keep correcting the students until they all do it the same way. And that's the goal. Now, does that ever happen? Some band Jess, I've never had a band that every kid marched exactly the same way. I mean, it's it's the goal. And I've had some pretty good marching bands, but you know, there's always going to be some discrepancy because we're dealing with humans, not little computers, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

So you've got to kind of figure out, you know, the concentration has to happen from the the get-go of where we learn how to do things. We're trying to fill up the trunk of our Porsche, you know, in the front of us. And we're still the driver, we're in the middle, so it's up to the student to fill up the trunk. We can give them the information, but it's not taught until they absorb the information. Then we do it a thousand million times or whatever. And then finally, that whatever that is, it becomes habit form. Okay.

unknown 16:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

So things that have to be habit, one is alignment. Proper alignment is the key to improving posture. Um, and I know this sounds really dry, but man, this is the difference between having a band that looks really good and a band that looks sloppy. Um, it's the clarity of the articulation of the body. Okay. Learning to feel where every part of the body is at any one time is the foundation of standing and moving well. When you stand there at attention, you need to be able to feel the balls of your feet. You need to be able to feel where your heels are, you need to be able to feel where your calves, what you're doing with your legs, what you're doing with your shoulders, what's your head, your neck, how you're breathing. All that kind of ties in together because once everything's aligned properly, and we'll go into all the alignment stuff later, but we want everything aligned the same way. You know, just the short synopsis of it. We want the, you know, that little bone behind your ear that's on your skull. We want that right above your shoulder, right above the hip bone, right there, right above the knee, right above the ankle, down to the foot. So that's one straight line. It's it's a gross way of saying it, but it makes an impact on the kids. If I took a metal rod and shoved it down a body right here, like a rebar, and went and shoved it all the way into the ground, it should intersect with right where that bone is, right through the shoulder, down through the hip bone, through the leg, all the way through the knee. There shouldn't be anything sticking off that rebar. You know, it should be one complete rebar all the way down. And I know that's kind of a gross way of saying it, but kids really kind of uh makes an impression. Instead of stand up straight, you know, it's like if I took a rebar and shoved it through your body, what? Whoa. At least you get their attention for a little bit. Right. Okay. Um, breathing. Um, I mean, you know, uh, we all took a breath on that first, you know, slap on the butt by the doctor, you know what I mean? So it's uh we we did learn how to breathe. We didn't we didn't have to learn how to do that. That was instinctual, right? Um, so the problem is we we have to kind of somehow make what is a natural conscious breathing pattern and make that coordinated with movement to help activate all the muscles and direct focus to those particular muscles because the way we breathe when we play our instrument is different than the way we breathe when we just watch TV. And I think that's obvious to most people, but a lot of people don't really think about how we're breathing and how we're expelling air. And I like to think of it this way, and this might kind of rock some people's worlds, but you know, we use the word blowing through our horn, right? You know, blow more air through your horn, blow faster air, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow, blow. I like to think of it as we exhale appropriately. There should not be all that tension. Blowing air sounds tense. If I if I try to pick up my trumpet and I and I'm I'm the band geek, I was practicing my horn at five o'clock this morning. Right? There's no one else in the house, so I don't have to disturb anybody. So I just get my horn. I like to practice from five to about 545 or 6. And, you know, and I can, I I knew I was doing this podcast, so I kind of experimented with it. You know, I just I thought I'm gonna play as loud as I can and blow as hard as I can. And yeah, I can make a pretty big sound. It wasn't the sound I wanted to get, but then if I take a deep breath and I excel, uh expel the air through the horn without forcefully blowing air, just making sure there's a lot of air in my lungs. Think about the difference there. It's a finite, it's a little tiny line you cross, but I'm not breathing a bunch of air and blowing a bunch of air. That's not the goal. I only want to blow enough air through my horn. I want to expel enough air that my lips vibrate at the frequency I want them to vibrate. That's all it is. And if there's enough air in the bottom of your lungs, it'll be a pretty sound. That sounds so simplistic. You know why? Because it is because it is. It is. Because we try to make it a lot harder. It's like uh, you know, blow harder. So what do kids do? They clench their teeth, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Blow harder to make their neck. I think when we say the word blow, you automatically tense muscles that you don't necessarily have to. That's and I also think that when we say blow, there's a subconscious interpretation of real fast, but a short amount of time, because you can't blow everything you've got and hold out a note.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Uh so I think it's controlled exhale. That's a another great concept, Mike. Greg.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Yeah, and it works, you know, it could be especially with your brass players, you know, because it's uh, you know, the woodwinds have like these things called musical instruments.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

As opposed to weaponized brass.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Yeah, but brass players, we have PVC pipes with a bell and a mouthpiece. It's just it's plumbing. You know, we just have a hunk of plumbing in our hands, and I've got a bunch of different hunks of plumbing at home and on my shelf. And I love playing my flugelhorn plumbing, and I love playing my cornet plumbing and my E flat trumpet plumbing, but it's it's all just plumbing. And so it's it's the physics of blowing air and hitting overtones. Where Woodwinds have musical instruments, you know, that they they they have an advantage over us. on that. So so kind of think about that in terms of breathing. So we have to, and I say that because a lot of groups don't do any kind of breathing exercises. You know? Right. And we'll go into that later on in another podcast. But you know, there has to have some, even if it's only three minutes a day, that will do wonders for your band. Just to do three minutes of some just real simple breathe in, breathe out. Making sure they don't hold their bow. Make sure they don't do that. It's in, out like dribbling a basketball. The basketball doesn't stick to the court and then pop back up. Okay. The air goes into your lungs. It comes right back out of your lungs just like bouncing a basketball. Okay. And then this next one is a really important one in today's marching world. Your core strength or your center strength, developing muscles in the abdominal area, lower back and the deep hip flexors, it takes pressure off the spine and it allows you to maximize the efficiency of movement. Energy for all movement initiates from these core muscles. And it's the weakest muscles for most kids. And most adults and most adults, yeah. But you know we we we don't dare have the adults perform you know it's like I'm in the marching band director's band. We sound really good. We don't move really well. The hotel was sold out of Advil I think every night with a 400 of us because the average age is probably about 51 you know so uh so we can play like monsters but man we're a we're we're kind of like uh you know nursing home uh marchers so it's it makes I love doing that because it it makes me realize the the uh the stress we put our kids through right because it's easy to forget that you know but you know have some sort of strength exercises it doesn't have to be a full blown you know uh my both my parents were both marines and I'm a marine and this is what we're gonna do and hit the deck and do a hundred pushups. Yeah it doesn't have to be that extreme at all. If you've got the band kids that can do it go for it. But a lot of it's simple balance exercises simple balance you know it's like I think it surprises kids a lot of times because I I do enough work with my legs that and this seems like an easy thing to do but how how many band students can actually stand there and lift up their right or left leg and hold their ankle with their hand and stay balanced and stay there and count 10 down to one without falling over not a whole lot I can do it. So I like to do that for them and say I'm 63 years old said I can do this and said all you have to do is practice it. You have to do these certain exercises half and half drills things like that. And even this morning after I practiced my trumpet I went to Planet Fitness and I did my stretching and I did my little workout thing and I I'm no big weightlifter or anything but I spend 20 minutes on the step thing. You know what I mean where it's like a uh I don't know how to explain this a platform you know where it's like right foot left foot right foot and I step up I step down I turn around I do it heel first I do it toe first I straddle I go back and forth. It's to build up all the hip flexors because I've been told as you get older if you lose your legs you're going to the nursing home truth so kids kids don't realize that at the time they're you know they're they don't have that core strength and it's a sign of the times too this is the kids are so smart but you know I grew up in an era where we were all hauling hay and we were mowing yards and we were you know what I mean it's it's like throwing 50 pound bales of hay up into hay lofts and loading trailers and and uh you know kids don't do that as much anymore so we've got to somehow have something in place to help them do that. Plus they'll feel stronger. It's a good life skill it's a good life skill we're not trying to build necessarily athletes you know what I mean right but but I do think more of a balance and core muscle we've become such a sedentary society yeah through wh whatever device we have in our hand or whatever computer that we stare at or whatever television streaming service we have we sit we sit and we exercise if we extra call it exercise we exercise mentally but we never really get up and do stuff anymore. Yeah yeah we're all about being comfortable so listen this it is hard watch the movie WALL E and you'll it's true we need those chairs to march in we just control it from our laptop at the front as a band director so the kids never have to move their feet. So that's gonna be the ultimate goal in marching band is to have everybody in a WALL-E chair. Okay. The next one is coordination improving coordination is essential to this process and it's a multi-step process because to involve coordination we're going back into we learn the information we put it in the the forward part of our brain which is the cerebral cortex which is the trunk of our Porsche 911 you know so we put all that information in there and then we have to do it multi-step so many times in a row that that coordination becomes just a habit just becomes a habit. And it's it doesn't matter whether it's playing an instrument or we learn to walk or we uh um I mean just getting up in the middle of the night if you get up in the middle of the night and there's no lights on I bet most people can find their light switch in their bedroom. And that's the hind part of your brain isn't that interesting your front part of your brain has memorized where that light switch is but you're not sitting there thinking I am 6.3 feet away from the light switch. Now I shall approach the wall and you know you just go and you reach your arm out you go and you usually you kind of hit the wall a little to the side and it's like oh I found it. Yeah but even speaking to my part of your brain that's the hind mind.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

To my age I can navigate from my bed to the restroom going around furniture. I yeah I know the path in my brain I don't you know without lights.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah yeah my one of my grandsons said it best he goes yeah if I get up in the middle of the night so I'm like a bat I can use my sonar. And I go what do you mean said I when I'm breathing I I can hear it when it hits the wall so I know I'm closer to the wall I said that that is your sonar by definition. He's a cool little kid he's he's part bat he thinks he's part bat but we'll just let him he's a part bat bat we'll we'll let him think that okay um but you know the we reach that automatic phase of muscle memory and that's where we get that's where we kind of perform into the box five thing. You know what I mean? Because all that stuff that we play on our instrument and all that stuff where we move our body and all that stuff where we watch the drum major and we know whether to listen to the drum line or whether to watch the drum major depending on our position on the field all of that is first starts in the front part of our brain and then we do it enough times to where they don't have to think about it anymore. It becomes just a a habit. They know if they're in the front part of the field they don't think I must listen to the drum line instead of watching the drum major in front they don't do that. And if you tell me that a kid this might just be me Derek I don't know about you but people say as you're marching and playing you need to be able to count your drill sets. What a bunch of bull there's no way in you know what I can march 16 counts and actively count the 16 in my head while I'm playing my trumpet. If I was doing guard I think I could probably do it maybe I don't know because I'm not having to play a musical thing I the guard work is directly related to every single again muscle memory right yeah it's muscle memory but you know it's like no no we did you learn it by 16 counts and you marched enough time still becomes a habit then you figure out where it fits with your music and then I know the halt point is the be natural whole note. Yeah it's like right and platform close I'm on the second valve. Okay so we learn it that way. That's what becomes the habit.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

You know what's kind of cool though is you say that I can remember it it becomes such a a situation where if something is off you're talking about knowing you just develop I know what this should sound like it's almost like a a um a reference point that you have where your brain goes something's not right. Yeah and you then you have to stop and go okay what is it that's not right until you pinpoint it. But when everything's right you feel right you move right everything is comfortable because you've translated it from knowledge into it's just how it's supposed to feel it's how we do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:44

We we don't have to stop and yeah the back part of your brain does the habitual part and that feels comfortable when everything works right.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

And your brain doesn't have to tell the back part of your your front of your brain in the middle of your brain doesn't have to tell the back of your brain that's a hey you're doing good back there. It's just like this feels good.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

I kind of feel like it's the same thing as intonation when it locks in you're like ah okay I can it locks in where I'm supposed to be yeah you you find that tempo pocket or whatever it is it's it's cool.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

And then all this has a sense of once you get everything kind of lined up and you get the coordination going and the breathing going and yeah you think of all these things and it's like what in the heck are we doing? So this is so hard. Right it's not just pee with horns. Okay. But we get this fluidity kind of thing going. It's a continuous movement, consistency of motion and a full range of motion they give kind of a really cool stylistic look to the band where I can see them as an audience member and I can go, I understand this band's style.

unknown 31:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

I get it. I get exactly what they're doing. Their horns are at trail and they do it all exactly the same way per section and there's no discrepancies. All their if they're wearing Shakos, all their the bills of their hats are exactly you know two fingers off the bridge of their nose to the bottom of the or whatever their standard is all the if they're using plumes all the plumes are exactly the same angle so you don't have like a horse pony one sticking way out the back and one coming out the front you know so all those things uh those add up it gives a really strong aesthetic to the band. They just look powerful on the field and I really love that. You know is it's it's just really cool. One of my things uh for like especially area and state marching and region marching um even when I had like 160 kids in the band we used hats and plumes and some bands do some don't that's cool. But one of my things I did and it it helped me and I I think it helped the kids was it was my job to make sure every plume was lined up correctly. So I'd go to every kid with a shaco on their head in in the warm-up area and I would fix their plume and then I'd say wish you guys wish you the best of luck today said I appreciate you being in band. You know what I mean there's just a little tiny human connection with every single person. So when they entered the field they knew that they at least been this close to the head director and the head director thanked them for being in band and then I would bend their plume to make sure I said now stand at attention and I'd bend it where the plume is straight up. Okay. And that way when they're on the field and standing at attention it just looked so cool. You know but it served a purpose of aesthetic but also served a psychological purpose. You know so as a band director figure out things you can do. It doesn't have to be you don't copy what Mike Lenny did because uh I've made plenty of mistakes find something and just a fist bump whatever it is or you know I will tell you though human nature it's off putting if one person has their hat on the back of their head and their plume sticking 45 degrees backwards and yeah because they have so much hair or whatever the reason they say it is say don't look like a circus pony.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

Be uniform.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Be uniform and then when all this the the last part of that you know because is stamina endurance is built up slowly okay challenging strength and stability along the way but ultimately ultimately it benefits both that stamina has to be where they can operate and produce the results you need if your goal is to be a box five band under stress.

SPEAKER_01 34:16

They can do it under stress. You talked about that in the episodes already that teaching them how to operate under stress and uh you know on a timeline or whatever it is that creates the stress, yeah you're gonna need that at some point because there's going to be some unforeseen situation that creates stress or a new stadium creates stress or 10,000 people in the stands we've never seen before create stress. So stamina.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah and I tell you what it's uh you know uh referring back to marching man directors band we did the rose parade thing but uh in order to self-induce stress onto my body what I would do is I would have I took all my music and I put it on you know the iPad and so I would go to the gym and I would put the iPad up on the I'll do the stair climber. I mean get my heart rate up to 160 beats a minute but I had memorized the and I'd go through and I would play the recording through my headphones and then I'd get on the stairmaster and do that and then I would finger along and after a while I would turn the iPad off and then I would do it by memorization and I'd just do the fingerings. People probably thought I was crazy. But I would do that and even on the treadmill you know people would look at me because I I do some weird exercise stuff. You know I would I'd literally have my horns up in triangle my hands up in triangle and do the treadmill for three and a half miles because the parade was five and a half miles. So I figured if I can do three and a half miles with my arms up then I can I can survive the parade. But I'd put myself and it was amazing to me that at home I could play national emblem. We had this March Melody trio thing it was Stars and Stripes Forever and National Emblem and it was really a cool arrangement by the way but at home I could sit in my little studio office and I could play it note for note. I mean every dynamic everything you put me on that stairmaster and I'm sitting there trying to do the fingerings my brain would it freaked out in the first three minutes. You know it's like I can't even think my right you're back to breathing and option deprivation I can't do this. But you know what? By the time I did that for about two and a half months I could do it. I could do every fingering I could do everything I could breathe in the right places with my heart rate at 160 beats a minute and so even at in my 60s so you've got to do that for your kids because they will not do that to themselves unless they're like some kind of all stator and they're just really really into it. But most of your band kids are they're just in band because you know they want to find a date you know right and you know they're in band the kids are in band for different things.

SPEAKER_01 36:49

You know the human condition is to gravitate to comfort.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yeah so you've got to make you got to push them outside their comfort zone on that. So you know when we talk about posture and alignment standing with great posture and I I don't want to back away from this great posture is the most important thing we can do. It's more important than anything we do on the field. If you don't have great posture nothing else matters. Okay it's just like tone quality when you play your instrument if you have a really crappy sound it doesn't matter how high you can play how loud you can play how fast you can play how uh melodic you can play if it's a crappy sound nothing else matters. Right. No one wants to hear you. But if you have a beautiful sound and only know three notes on your clarinet someone might want to listen to you.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

Yeah tone is job one.

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Yeah tone is job one. So for marching band posture is job one but we've all seen so many marching bands that come out and they have a show learned and they've got their drill learned, they've got their guard work figured out and they just don't even they just look terrible standing there. And it's like they've ignored job one to learn all the other stuff thinking well we'll just make up for it here. There's no uh there's no substitute for that okay um so just some things to think about and there's lots of different ways of doing this. I'm just giving you the way I've learned how to do it. You know begin standing with your feet in parallel with a small space between them. Make sure your weight is centered between your feet. Okay so as we do band fundamentals that's not how we stand at attention but we get it set up. Imagine that the weight is distributed across three points of balance on your feet the toe ball area that area right behind your big toe the heel and the outside of the ball area. Okay be careful not to roll your weight to the outside of your foot where your toes are weaker because your big toe is the strongest toe. We don't want to roll all the way out to the side in this position the arch of your foot it'll be supported and the ankles will be prevented from rolling in or out you know you gain strength that way. And as you begin to move think about two points in motion the heel and the ball of the foot heel ball of the foot and then we've put them together now we put our feet together so some some bands are toes apart which I'm a I agree with toes apart. I did toes together for a long time in today's world if you're going to do a lot of body movement it's really hard to do with toes together because you got to figure out a way to get your toes apart to start doing your body movement. So I I think the the easiest way is to just go ahead and teach them toes apart. And I know there's some guys out there and ladies who go that's crazy because it's hard to clean it is but it's harder to but it's also a better balance position. It is better balance you're exactly correct correct on that yeah because uh you know especially our West Texas area where we have 70 mile an hour winds you know uh but you know keep the ankles and the knees soft but straight meaning don't lock them don't do not lock your knees your pelvis needs to be what I like to call a neutral position which means sitting perfectly aligned and flat to the ground. You roll your pelvis under your body slightly for balance and strength because those kids will do all kinds of weird funky things. You know if they're holding a baritone in front of their body they'll lean back and stick their pelvis forward or they'll sit there and stick the rear end out and lean forward the little cantor with their upper body. So it's a matter of just making sure that you roll your pelvis under and the pelvis is right underneath your shoulders. You got to make that happen okay abdominal muscles should be active and braced in other words there has to be a certain amount of tension which is really hard to to get kids to do because in concert band we really don't do that. Yeah we don't we're kind of teaching them a skill uh to move their body you know which because it means kind of sucking in your stomach a little bit and you try to press your belly button to the back towards your spine. So you kind of get all those muscles active down here. And that kind of is counterintuitive to trying to breathe deeply isn't it you know what I mean but it's it's that weird compromise balance of where we can't just let all this be loose and breathe so deep that we can't have a control of our abs because now we can't move or conversely if you get it way too tight now you can't breathe. So the kids they they figure it out you know I'm making too big a deal about it I think right now but you know I don't know because you're saying this stuff breathe deep firm tummy muscles.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Right I'm doing this with you as you talk about it. Yeah and as I shove a considerable amount of travel area between my belly button and my spine but but the whole diaphragm and those absantly you feel them.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

You feel them yeah yeah you feel them and in a certain way I said we don't do this in concert band not as severe but we do kind of do that because how many times do we tell our concert band kids to you know take a deep breath and keep your tummy muscles firm you know support the air support the air so that's kind of what we're doing but kind of uh on uh steroids you know what I mean it's like sure we're gonna make this really work but it's the same concept when you say you got to sit on the front two thirds of your chair don't don't lean back that's right keep your keep your posture right because if you slouch down you just can't do this. Yeah we have all those winger chairs they have that bump on the front so we always tell the kids always giggle at it say get your rump on the hump so they they'll scoop forward all the little kids like oh yeah is get your rump on the hump and then I'll scoot forward in the chair and then to really emphasize it like from the beginning trumpet class or trombone class I'll get up on the chairs and I'll walk between their back of the chair and I'll walk back and forth while I'm teaching. So I'll just teach from the backs of their chairs. I just kind of put them in a circle and just kind of keep walking all the way around and they like it too because it's like you know hopefully he'll fall and break his neck or something the excitement the excitement of seeing Mr. Lenny fall you know it's happened. I haven't broken my neck but yeah I've I've tripped and it's like whoa boom and that's uh I'm the topic of everyone's dinner that night you know you shouldn't see Mr. Lenny faceplant in the triple class you know so yeah you got to keep all that going all right um so as we keep all that the upper body should be centered over the abs okay so we don't want to lean our shoulders back we don't want to hunch our shoulders forward we want to stretch away from your hips in other words there needs to be a lot of space and I tell them to touch their bottom rib and then I say now touch the the hip bone that you I always tell them so you know that if you're laying on the floor watching TV and your hip falls asleep because you've been laying on that bone right there that's that's the bone right there. Right. And then you're then I tell them to take your like well we're big Texas Tech fans around here sorry but say get your guns up you know what I mean say now put your fingertip on the hip bone and put your thumb on the bottom rib and spread like that. You know push it apart. And there should be a lot of distance as much distance as you can have between your hip and your bottom rib. So we don't want to kind of tuck down like that. And all that kind of fits in together okay um you see Center your shoulders by slightly pulling them back and up. We kind of roll them forward, roll them up, and then we put them down in socket. Think about that. So, you know, we just literally do that. You know, uh to have them because that way they don't have any extra tension in their shoulders. Okay. And uh then exercise on the there's one exercise you can do on the floor or if you're outside on the on the field to help find position. You can lie on your back with your legs straight and relaxed, remove any tension from the large muscles in your legs and let your feet just hang naturally with the heels together, you know, like you're laying on this in the sand on the beach. Okay. Place one hand on your tummy, one hand between your lower back and the ground, and notice the arch in the spine. Now pull your hand out from between your lower back and the ground and press your lower back to the floor, thinking about squeezing your belly button to your spine. Okay. So the kids they really get into that. Or you can do it up against a wall. We do it up against a wall too. We'll get in the hallways of the high school and do that during summer ban because it's air conditioned. Okay. But you we try to stay relaxed, especially in your upper body. And you got to keep reminding them, keep breathing because they'll they'll forget to breathe. You know, they'll they'll they'll start worrying about what they're doing and they'll start hyperventilating us.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Shoulder breath, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Yeah, and so keep your chin lifted. You know, you should be able to move your head back and forth. Okay. And like I said, you can do this against a wall. It's it's the students, they just need to be aware of their posture, and that helps them. And you can use your section leaders to uh to help each other, help the kids in their section to say, hey, no, no, your shoulders are way forward. Can you pull your shoulders back? Can you roll your pelvis underneath here? You know, your your knees are locked. You're gonna pass out. Don't do that, you know. Um, so you know, you can use the all your teachers that you have in your organization because those drum majors know what they're doing. That's how they became drum majors. So you can use them, but always be conscious of how you carry your body. Okay. You should constantly be trying to stretch taller and expand your chest more. The way you stand is a performance and is often the first and last impression people will have of you. Visually, it is our tone quality. It is job one of marching. That is our tone quality. And that's a life skill, isn't it? If I go to a job interview, if I slink into the room with my shoulders hunched, and I just show up and I kind of sit in the chair and just kind of sit there, that I don't really command any presence. If I if I think my band training and I squeeze my belly button back to my spine and I get my shoulders back and I line up my head above my chest, my chest above my hip, even though I'm sitting seated in a chair, there's a certain amount of commanding of presence right there where it makes people watch you. And that's the goal. Okay, that's the goal. So we want to do that, and I try to do that with the band too, by the way, Derek, to tell them these are these are not just band skills. There's gonna come a time in your life, you're gonna win an interview for a scholarship for something, and these use these skills to your advantage, right? Um, so the next thing would be like, you know, talking about core strength with ideal posture, muscles are at their optimal strength to support the weight efficiently. We can support everything that's happening in our body. And the most important part is it takes pressure off the spine because otherwise, kids are back will get sore. It's just it's a tough deal. You know, and with posture, um, it's important, like especially, you know, we talked about the power triangle. We'll get into that later, you know. But every band practices fundamentals when they don't have equipment by having like their hands in front of them and their elbows out and they make like a triangle with their elbows and their hands. Your brass players that hold horns in front of their body will find out physically very quickly if you teach them this, that uh if they if they bend their wrist, like if I hold, I know it's a YouTube thing. If you're listening on radio, I'm I apologize. Okay, if you're uh streaming it audio, but you know, if I bend my wrist on my trumpet and I have it like where the hands are this way, then I'm supporting all the way to the instrument with my biceps. And I'll get tired really quick. And it's interesting, you can get the band to do this, and they'll put it now, make your wrist straight, where it's a line from the top of your knuckle all the way down to your elbow. Where did all that pressure go? And they'll tell you, they'll go, it went to my back. It went to my lats on the back of my body. If I bend my, and I can do I can even feel my hands right here doing this podcast, I can feel it in my biceps. I straighten my wrist, and all that pressure holding my arms up, goes to my back muscles, which your back muscles are huge. Your biceps are not near as strong as your back muscles. So if you're playing a baritone, a marching baritone, um, you've got to do it that way. If your wrists are bent, that's where the kids get the bad horn posture position. Think about that. It's a simple physics thing. You know, so if you explain it to them correctly and they do it, that they'll love it because you've told them a hack. You know, it's a special cheat code of how to hold the ones up. Okay. Um, so with this, we're working to achieve ideal posture. It's important to understand the typical problems and the way people tend to stand, as well as the possibility that posture can be adjusted incorrectly. So you got to be careful with that. There's something about Americans. I I spent seven years as a kid in Europe, uh living in Germany. At the time, we called it West Germany, okay, because there was the Berlin Wall. You know, there's the there's the wall that was still there. We would go look at it, yeah, as like tourists. But uh Americans lean a lot. I don't know if you realize that or not, Derek. You know, if you go to Europe, people people stand up. They really do. They stand, they don't lean on walls, they don't grab chairs and lean on chairs. They they sit in a chair and they sit upright. That's how they do it. Americans, we lean a lot. If you're talking to someone by their car, what do they do? They lean on their car, don't they? That's what I do. Okay. I lean on the car. You know, if the window's open, I stick my elbow on the deal and I lean on the car. I don't know why we do that. We do. Um, and it kind of transfers into marching band if you're not careful, because it's kind of a natural instinct that at any given moment we want to be as relaxed as possible. And it's it's kind of an American thing, you know. So just be careful with that. Be careful with that and kind of really process, have help them process that with their brain. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

It's crazy. I'd never really thought about that. But if the conversation goes a certain length of time, it's a fairly short length of time. I do. I back up to a wall or I look for something to move over to and lean my shoulder on it.

SPEAKER_00 50:48

Or even as bad as I don't know, I'll do this because I got in trouble with custodians at school because I'll be talking to someone that I'll stick my foot up against the wall. I'll just look at them and kind of stick against the wall in the custodians like it. Right, right, right. Please don't do that. You're scuffing the wall. Yeah, you're scuffing the walls. I'm sorry, sir.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

But it's the same thing. Every band director will relate to this. Why do you think your kids bend the stand top down and lean on it? Or you have to say, get off the timpani, get off the marimbas. Those are musical instruments. Quit putting all your weight on them.

SPEAKER_00 51:18

Yeah. And it it's it's humorous, uh, because it is. Yeah, because we're all that way. I'm kind of the same way. If I get up in the uh on the in the deer blind, I call it the deer blind, you know, when you're rehearsing band. How many times do I catch myself leaning on that rail? Right. Working the band when it's like, I'm making them all stand up. At least I, you know, I think possibly I need to stand up. Maybe I should do something. I should lead by example instead of being up in the up in the deal, just you know, my hand against my forehead going, uh now let's get some energy going.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

So things to think about. We can lead by example on that. But you know, the proper engagement of the abs and the alignment of the hips go hand in hand, pulling the hips back and rolling them slightly under your body, sucking in your stomach and allowing the lower back to open and expand because all that works together. And you know, I've I've done this in perp on purpose in this podcast. It's a cyclical learning where I've gone back and I've cycled back to the same things to reinforce them and affirm them because the fundamentals are not complicated, they just have to be repeated all the time. These core muscles, they're the largest in the body. I think the because it's a grouping of muscles. The largest muscle in the body is our butt. That's why it's the gluteest maximus. It's the biggest glute. It's the biggest muscle, is our gluteest maximus. And for some of us, it's bigger than others. I'm kind of an old man with a flat butt. So, you know, I have to work hard to, you know, my jeans look real saggy, you know. I mean, so but uh, but it is still my biggest muscle, I suppose.

SPEAKER_01 52:53

Besides, preaching to the choir, brother. Preaching to the choir.

SPEAKER_00 52:56

Yeah, my brain's just a muscle too, I guess. I don't know. But those, but they're the foundation of everything we do, those core muscles. And it's gonna make it where they can operate at a habit level, where the back part of our brain that processes habits is engaged, and we don't even think about it. You know, you can relate to this, I guarantee you. When your band director would call you to attention, you didn't think about attention. You didn't use your frontal cortex. The back part of your brain took care of that. It was like band tin hut tin hut snap. Everything went where it was supposed to be. You didn't go chin up, shoulders back, horn in front of my body, put my mouthpiece aligned with my eyeballs, bell parallel to the ground, don't lock my knees, make sure my hips are under here, make sure that okay, toes are apart, no, it's like band tin hut, tin hut, done.

unknown 53:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:56

Because we did have an exercise where they would call out a body part and you would yell back what that body part should be doing.

SPEAKER_00 54:03

Yes, and that's the greatest goal to education because think about what they were doing. Now we're gonna get all neuroscience geeky here because we do that on purpose to have the frontal cortex, the front part of the brain, we're feeding information into our trunk. Right. And we do it enough times that the back part of our brain can analyze that because we're the driver in the middle part of our brain. So our Porsche 911 is humming, man. That engine's strong because it's done the going to attention a thousand times during summer band.

unknown 54:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

Think about that for a second. Isn't that cool? Uh uh, and it's the same way we play our instruments, you know. When I play my trumpet, though I can, I can, I hate to say it this way, I can unconsciously play through my full 20-minute warm-up without thinking about a note. I can literally just go through the whole process. And I just my fingers move and I I think of the melodies, I think of where I'm going, but I'm not thinking F sharp, second valve, G open, F natural, first valve, now G open, now lips slow down. I don't think all that because I've done it every day for 50 years. Think about that for a second. The hind part of my brain knows exactly how to warm up on my trumpet. That doesn't mean I don't miss notes, but I don't have to consciously think about it. That way when I get to the music and I'm like learning music for this new big band gig or whatever, then that's hard for me because now my frontal cortex is involved. Now I'm going, how fast does Mr. Bodhi take this piece? Okay. How am I going to do this? I've got to learn this. I got to practice this lick and sing, sing, sing like a thousand times or the in the mood thing. Boom, playing third trumpet instead of first trumpet, I've got to learn a whole new part. Right. So my frontal cortex is involved with that. Okay. So there's things we can do. Uh, we'll get into another podcast with uh how we develop that core muscle strength. But it's there's a thousand ways to do it. So if you just uh find some ways to do it in order for the body movement to look right, then I mentioned it in a previous podcast, but a lot of times bands try to do the body movement and the choreo, but they haven't taken time to develop the core strength. So it's not gonna work, it's not gonna look fluid with them. It's the same thing as if the trumpet player in front of you only knows six notes on their horn and you're asking them to play 15 notes in the show at different pitches. It's they can try all they want to, but you have to somewhere teach them those other notes before you can expect them to play those notes.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

Right. Point taken.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:44

Well I'm just sitting there going back through our neuroscience. It's amazing to realize now that the methodology that was going on of teaching us how to do certain things so we didn't have to think about it. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 57:00

And we just said it was like a skinner band. When you go, okay, trombones, that's a D, that's fourth position. Here's fourth position on your horn. We're loading their trunks.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:10

And every kid's doing it. And then you then you play a D a hundred times in a row in one band period. And then that way they go from a F to a D, an F to a D, an F to a D, first to fourth, first to fourth, first to fourth. And they memorize that. And now we're trying to get all that information from the front of their head to the back of their brain, where it's the brain stem, it's the habitual part of their brain.

SPEAKER_01 57:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:33

So it's it sounds like real fancy neuroscience, but it's it's how we've always taught things. It's how we learned language.

SPEAKER_01 57:39

It's just fancy words for what we do.

SPEAKER_00 57:41

That's right. That's right. And it's also fancy words for things some people don't do.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00 57:47

They scream at the podcast. They just scream at the kids and say, do this. And the kids are going, What? You've never given us the information. I give you the information now, do it right. Well, we haven't done enough reps. The kids don't know how to argue back on it. They just know they're really confused and frustrated right now. And then the director gets mad and the kids get mad, and then mama show up at the band hall and schedules are changed, and it just escalates into stupidity. Man, that escalated quickly. And it does, trust me. It does. If you've got a kid on the field that uh is not paying attention to the what the information we give them at the forefront, and they never make it a habit, then they will get frustrated because they don't like band now. It's not they don't like band, they just never learned what they're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 58:34

Or they're not being given opportunities to be successful, they don't know how to be successful. Yeah. Great stuff.

unknown 58:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 58:43

Solving all the world's problems here, Derek.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

Well, tell me how to develop some of this core strength you speak of. What kind of warm-ups or what what can we do to make that stuff happen?

SPEAKER_00 58:56

Well, one thing we can do is kind of a balanced thing, but I call it the parallel foot swing exercise. It kind of checks balance and core muscle strength. Um we stand with our feet in whatever position we normally stand in. That's different for different bands. I like it 45 degree, you know, kind of toes apart kind of thing. And then we push platform one of our feet, slightly raising it above the other foot. And you have to do that with your hip flexors. So you kind of raise your foot off the ground without um, it's hard to explain on an audio without having to show it, you know, but you just pull your foot up and then you swing your foot back and forth like a pendulum and maintain your balance without that other foot touching the ground.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Because we can also swinging foot does not touch the ground.

SPEAKER_00 59:43

Yeah. And then we switch to the other leg and do the same thing. Okay. What that does is as the foot moves, we have to take all those muscles in our core and adjust our body to stay balanced so we don't fall forward or fall back. And it's it's real simple and it doesn't take a lot of strength per se. It takes a lot of balance.

unknown 1:00:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:04

That's two different concepts. Part of the concept here is that we don't allow our side to side to list.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:13

We don't angle our body side to side to facilitate the swinging of the leg.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:18

Yeah, and there's lots of really cool, like uh, for lack of a better term, I just call them half and half drills. Um, but you know, we we'll stand at attention with our feet in proper position. That'd be first position, heels together, toes apart for my band. And then we push down with our left, well, our right platform to push our left foot in front of us, but then we do a what's called a tondu, a toe point, but we don't let our toe touch the ground. We hold it in front of us, hold for four, pull back, stay for four, push out for four. And guess what? That makes you balance again because you're not touching the ground with your toe. Then you transfer to where you do touch the ground with your toe. Then you transfer to where your heel's the one touching. So every time you do that, you're using different muscles. And then we finally half and half is where when your heel touches and your platform of your right foot's on the ground and your heel of your left foot's on the ground, half and half drill means half your body weight's on either foot. So we're not putting all our weight on one foot or the other. And that's that's a hard concept for kids to figure out. So again, you have to do it like a hundred thousand times, you know, to that needs to be part of your warm-up procedure every single day. It's that's more important than learning the drill. If you can't, if you don't have time to do enough fundamental stuff, then it's you really have to do an easier show.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

But again, you said this before. It's not you can multitask this if you're playing your Rimmington. You can for four counts on do, four count, bring it back. Yeah, for counts on do, four count, bring it back. As you, in other words, I know that at first we all have to stop and go, exactly what muscles am I using? How do is my toe pointed? Because a lot of people think they're pointing their toe and they're not, they just stuck their foot out. Right. But once you actually know what that procedure is, then the repetition part of it is or you can incorporate that with a warm-up.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

Which is really a great thing to do because guess what we have to do on the field? We have to play and march at the same time. So it kind of starts to get the brain engaged to, you know, always teasingly say, you know, you guys sound good and you march really good, but we happen to be a marching band. So we've got to put those things together. Let's get it going, boys.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

That's fun. Awesome. With so I think those are it's a kind of a great place to take a break. Because that's a lot to process if you haven't thought about even as we talk about the kids not getting it. As a teacher, as an educator, if we haven't stopped to go, how am I going to teach this to these kids? Then I think this is a great uh chance to stop and just kind of commit that to a thought process of how will I do this. And you've given us examples, that's fantastic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:14

And I'll say this too. It's easy to get caught up, like we're talking in the podcast about the front part of our brain, the back part of our brain. Don't go into all that with your kids. It's a waste of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:24

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:25

There's not enough time in the day. I mean, it would be great if we had 16 hours a week to do marching band. We could talk about neuroscience and frontal cortex and habit and whatever, you know, how the brain can absorb so much because it's folds and all those neurons. There's more neurons. The hind part of your brain is about the size of two eggs, but there's more neurons back there than the rest of your brain all combined.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

Think about that. The habit part of our brain is the strongest part of our brain. It's more concentrated than anything else. So, but don't go into that with your kids because they'll just be rolling their eyes and going, Can we play fight song? What about I the tiger? You know what I mean? Just you need to know it as a teacher and use it to your advantage. You know what you're doing. You know what I mean? But you can manipulate their little brains this way in a good way and have them learn the material quicker. Cool, cool. All right, man. Is that that a good place for us to take a pause? I hope so because that's the end of my podcast notes. Well, don't tell them that. Hey, uh, if I'm anything but honest. I don't have any more notes on this podcast. So we'll we're done, Derek.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:36

Fantastic. But I bet you've got more for next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:39

We do, we do. We have more next week.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

Well, I just want to encourage all of our friends as we gear back up for another fantastic season of uh marching, thinking, and playing all at the same time. Yeah, you can do it, your kids can do it. And the whole purpose of this is to show you here's how you break it down so we can all do it together. So we'll talk again soon. All right, sounds good. Thanks, Derek.