You asked for an exercise. This may sound silly but you could try pushing a very heavy wheelbarrow. This will help because the heavy wheelbarrow will make it impossible for you to move in a choppy way. you will get the feeling of your body moving continuously and smoothly forward while you legs and feet work underneath you

Our coaches told me I was "rushing the music" and explained the the idea of "breaking your foot in two pieces" for this. Place your heel, then roll to the ball. This confused the heck out of me at first, but after some practice I find it's easier than I first thought, and can be used effectively to soak up the music so I'm not rushing it as much as I was when I was placing my whole foot.

"Our coaches told me I was "rushing the music" and explained the the idea of "breaking your foot in two pieces" for this. Place your heel, then roll to the ball. This confused the heck out of me at first, but after some practice I find it's easier than I first thought, and can be used effectively to soak up the music so I'm not rushing it as much as I was when I was placing my whole foot."

This advice clearly comes from someone who fundamentally does not understand movement in the standard dances.

When the movement is done properly, the ball of the foot directly follows the heel - you very nearly are placing the whole foot, because the "just heel" time is very short.

If you delay your arrival in the proposed way in order to match the music, then what you are doing is getting your foot out ahead of you while failing to move your body.

Instead, the true secret to staying on time is to make sure to take enough time in the later part of the preceding step. If you rush the conclusion of a step, there is no proper fix that can now be applied to the next - anything you do will be an artifical slowing down.

Instead, take the full amount of time in finishing the previous step, and you will now have the luxury of driving just a touch in order to catch the music on the next one.

Dancing is two people dancing as one. If you roll from the heel to the ball and your partner rolls from the toe to the heel what could be more together than that.

"Dancing is two people dancing as one. If you roll from the heel to the ball and your partner rolls from the toe to the heel what could be more together than that."

Yes, there's two phases in the position of the weight - heel, then ball.

But the placement of the foot is almost whole foot - it's heel, directly followed by the ball of foot contacting the floor, some would even opinion immediately so.

Needless to say this is not symmetric with the backwards action - probably because our knees only bend in one direction.

And the fundamental principle remains: delaying your arrival will not give you the right timing, instead it will just give you an artifical stuck-between-feet interlude. To get the right timing you have to learn to draw out the end of the preceding step, especially when we have a lowering step preceding a heel lead, we have to not finish the lowering step too fast.

Jwlinson. If you roll onto your foot it will be impossible not to flex the knee and have the weight arrive at any other time than the correct time.

"Jwlinson. If you roll onto your foot it will be impossible not to flex the knee and have the weight arrive at any other time than the correct time."

If that were true, leading a heel turn would be extremely difficult.

Come to think of it, many people have a lot of difficulty leading heel turns effectively enough that they can reliably get either a heel turn or a waltz type turn as fits their momentary whim.

Maybe they never learned that a heel turn lead basically consists of greatly reducing the flex of the arriving knee? Wheras you create a waltz-type turn by letting the knee flex normally as you arrive.

As for timing, if you've departed the previous step too early as most do during their beginner and intermediate years, no natural action during the arrival is going to fix that.

With the music count 1 and 2 and 3 and. This is according to Richard Gleave on his tape. Analyse this. Doing it that way we have more time on the first step than we do on the second. In actual fact we have the same amount of time on one as we do on the other two steps. The closing of the foot being on an and count. Leaving all of the third beat to be at the highest and the lowest with the count of three and. John Wood also teaches this way. Who can argue with these two gentlemen.

Serendipady. If we close our feet on twoand we will have to much time left to rise and fall as we are already rising as we close the foot.

"Serendipady. If we close our feet on twoand we will have to much time left to rise and fall as we are already rising as we close the foot."

Closing the foot takes time. It might be proper to say that the closing would start on two and, but it won't finish until just a bit before three, assuming that you want to put weight on the now closed foot right on beat 3.

There's not much point to have a big gap between when the foot arrives closed and when it takes the weight.

And yes, the rise will be contuing througout all of this - the rise ends only after the weight has changed feet, as the foot change is itself part of the rise.