WINDMILLS Sit down on the floor with your torso and your RIGHT leg at a 90 degree angle with your LEFT leg bent at the knee so your left knee points straight up and your left foot is flat on the floor. Now place your right palm on the floor to the right of you and slightly behind you and lean and twist your upper body to the right, going towards the floor (bending your right arm altogether) to where your right shoulder and right/front of your face are almost touching the ground. Your right leg should still be straight, and your left leg bent. Now, a CRUCIAL move, you are going to "stab" your LEFT elbow into your stomach, between your navel and your left hip-bone, closer to your hip-bone. This is SO important, because your left arm is going to support all your weight. Now, twisting and leaning, stabbing your elbow, put your LEFT palm flat on the floor with your fingers pointing to your left. At this point you can visualize how your left arm will support your weight.
Next, the one, two, three kick. At this point you should be leaning to your right, with the frontal part of your upper body ALMOST facing the floor, and very close to the floor, with yor left arm ready to catch all your weight. ( Elbow in belly!) O.K. Your LEFT leg, which is still bent, is going to be kick ONE, your RIGHT leg kick TWO and your LEFT leg kick THREE. During this sequence, your body weight goes to your left arm. Now kind of finish turning your lower body over to where you are practically horizontal to the floor while KICKING your LEFT (bent) leg up into the sky (about 4 feet or so if you're average size) while pushing off HARD with your RIGHT foot (your STRAIGHT leg) (LEFT elbow in belly) Kick two-Kick your RIGHT leg (outstretched) HARD to your RIGHT (your legs will be OPENING)At this point(in full motion!) you should be facing the floor with your legs open and your bodyweight on your LEFT arm (elbow in belly!).
Kick THREE-this is where you develop your first bruises!-During kick three, a lot of things happen at the same time. KICK your LEFT leg HARD to your RIGHT, going UNDER your right leg. Your legs should still be open, with your right leg "circling" (imagine your legs are a drawing compass and your pelvis the pivot) AT THE SAME TIME of this kick, your entire body needs to roll onto your LEFT side, BUT your left upper body only should touch the floor (not your hips or legs!)This means, on kick three, your LEFT shoulder should touch (Hit?) the ground right about where your LEFT fingers are (I crushed mine several times) Now you should be rolling onto your back, of course your left arm no l onger supporting your weight. At this point, I STRONGLY urge you to pull your legs in and do a BACKSPIN. Many veteran will tell you the same. The reason being you should be able to do what I've already described with relative ease before moving on. But when you're ready...
O.K. Once you've got the previous down, do the following:
After kick THREE, you roll onto your UPPER back and quickly roll over your RIGHT shoulder to where you are going to face the floor again. At the same time, though, your RIGHT leg will be KICKING "Backwards and to your right". Just remember the pivot and the compass thing. As you are turning to face the floor, quickly STAB your LEFT elbow into your belly, just as before, because your left hand will have to support you. ( You know the routine). You are now at the most difficult phase of this deal. Linking them, when you stab your elbow put all your weight into it. As your legs come around, you will most likely hit your LEFT foot on the floor and get pissed because you can't get past there. Never to fear! Learn by "PAUSING" your windmills. When your left foot hits, just use it (LEFT FOOT) to push upward and OH!, you're back to KICK ONE with that push upward! Proceed to kick two and three and so forth, and when you come around again and your left foot hits the floor, well...do it again! And keep doing it that way. Trust me, one day you'll shock yourself and put three together without hitting your left foot on the floor! Once you get this style down, you can move on to STOP stabbing your elbow. It might take a while, but you'll get there. I know this is a long post, but I tried to be as detailed as possible so you guys can learn.
TURTLES You should begin by learning only how to balance. Don't even try moving until you can hold a turtle pretty much forever. When you first start doing this, you'll find out it's much harder than it looks. In order to start learning how to balance, try doing it on a sofa. Place both your hands on the sofa seat (the part your back reclines on, not where your butt reclines on) and hoist your body onto your elbows. This is a good place to practise because if you fall backwards (you will) you'll land on your feet. If you were trying this on a hardwood floor you'd land on your knees and beleive me, that HURTS! Also, if you fall forward you will end up eating a soft, fluffy sofa cushion, and not the hard, unforgiving floor. Once you can easily hold this turtle position, it's time to move to the floor.
On the floor, you have to able to pop into it. That means you must be able to get into a turtle easily. If you struggle too much people won't be impressed and may just decide to shoot you to put you out of your misery. Eventually, you will able to six-step and link turtles into the six-step, or fall to your side to do some NICE freezes. You'll notice that when doing turtles on the floor your face is about 1 inch or less away from the floor. Your feet should be spread wide apart (this helps big-time with balance) and bent at the knees. You can do turtles with your feet straight out but it's very very hard. IF you can do that you'r the man. Doing turtles builds up your abs hardcore. You'll have washboard stomach in no time.
CRICKETS This is the same thing as a turtle, except you HOP. This one requires more strength. The stronger you are, the higher you'll fly. It's not too hard to hop, the hard part is landing in a turtle position. When learning this, you'r gonna land on your face or collapse on your arms because you hit your elbows wrong. Your also gonna get hit hard in the stomach. Try to tense your stomach up so when you land on it it dosent hurt. As you get better at hopping, you'll be able to hop in a circle, or hop in several directions. Hopping in place looks impressive as well.
Linking crickets to a suicide,
If you can hop really jump high, you can turn yourself over in mid-air, and land FLAT ON YO BACK. It looks massivley painful if you do it right, and if you land with your arms spread out and your legs spread out flat you will get mad applause from the audience. Beleive me, it dosent hurt. It uses the same principle as snow-shoes..your feet won't sink into the snow as much because there is so much surface area. Same thing here. You land on the entire surface area of your back so your entire body absorbs the impact and it dosent hurt one bit. I didn't even bruise myself learning this one.
JACKHAMMERS This is like crickets, except you hop with only ONE hand. Your other hand is behind your back or holding your hat, whatever you want to do with it. Before you try this one you better be able to balance with only one hand. (Yes it is posssible)
HANDGLIDES This is like a jackhammer-turtle hybred. You do a turtle except you are primarily balanced on one hand. Instead of having both hands equally under your body one hand is wedged in DEEP, like your right elbow might be almost at yourleft waist. This is just the starting position. With your other hand thats on the floor, you start to push on the floor so you start spinning on your main hand. Most people put on a glove or put their hand under a long-sleeve so that their will be less friction. If you know how to do turtles, you'll know your toes are very close to the floor. Use your toes as well as your hand to spin yourself. When you feel you have enough momentum let go and weeeeeeeeeeeee you are spinning. This is a very common move, most people learn this but don't know how to do trutles.
SIX STEP Ok this is the backbone of breakdancing. THis looks like the person doing it is dancing in a circle on the floor with all four limbs. You start off in a push-up position (dosen't have to start this way it's just easy to describe it from here) and you lift your right arm.(step 1) Place your left foot through where your right arm used to be. (step 2) Now bring your right leg forward and put your right foot into your left leg's joint. (where your leg bends at, like your armpit)(3) Now, quickly kick your left leg high in the air and put it down in front of you for a spilt second, then slide it under your butt so you are sitting on your bent leg. At the same time (step 4) swing your right leg in a wide circle and wrap it around your left leg at the same time putting your right hand down and raising your left hand up to allow for the legs to pass through, so that now your left foot is flat on the floor knee facing up and your right foot is sideways on the floor , the flat part of it facing behind you. Steps 3 and 4 can be changed around in how you link them, but either way they must be done quickley. (Step 5)Now put your LEFT foot back into a push-up position, (step 6) and THEN your right leg. Do steps 5 and 6 in a clear manner. Don't do these steps too quickly. You should be back into a push-up position, just repeat the steps now. (It's really hard to describe this in text but I'll try to add some visual aids later)
Eventually you must learn to link powermoves like windmills and flares into your six-step, and to "tech" the six step, which means adding extra moves or things like spinning on your knees or quickly moving in a counter-clockwise direction then moving back into a clock-wise direction. Things like that.
Up-ROCK This is the dance b-boys and b-girls do before getting down on the ground. It looks like your are skipping around. It's designed to take up ALOT of space so people will back da fuck up and give you space to break. Most people keep their hand loose and limp so they dangle. This dance is too hard to describe here but you can see some examples of it in my video section.
This is a move from gymnastics, (as are most break moves) from the pommel horse. I put some animated GIFS right here to help you to see what it involves. It's not easy. This involves kicking your feet up in a giant V in front of you, then bringing them around you without them touching the ground. THis is another move that's very hard to describe but you will want to check out the pictures to get an idea.
There is also mini-flares which is a flare from a six-step and back into a six step. It's easier to do than a full flare from a standing position but people seem to get more impressed by the miniflare for some reason.
1990'S AND 2000'S This is a neat move that you do from a handstand. I don't know how to do one but in theory you get on one hand, then put the pther hand down on the floor, and you're in a handstand. You pick up the hand that you put on the ground first, and use it to spin on the other hand. So a 1990 is spinning on one hand while standing on it. The more revolutions you do the phatter it looks. A 2000 is spinning on one hand with the other on top of it. This one is harder to do.
VARIATIONS OF MILLS Nutcrackers: Mills with the b-boy grabbing his nuts (Very hard to do)
Supermans/airplanes: Mills with the arms straight out flat on the ground.
Barrels: Mills with arms out in front of you so it looks like you holding on to invisible barrel
Handcuffs: Mills with hands behind back (yea right)
Confusions: Mills with hands on face, like Mcaauly Culkin face. I have heard rumors that if you do this wrong you will snap your neck and die.
HEADSPINS This is actually not as hard as it would seem. IF you can get on your head in a tripod position (using both your hands to help you keep balanced) you can do this. You must be able to hold this headstand position pretty much forever before you attempt to spin. Try "walking" in a circle using your hands. Do this slowly at first. Once you can do this fast (It helps you keep straight back while spinning, and trains you to keep balance while rotating) you have to twist only your hips and keep your upper body straight. By twisting your hips you are "cocking" yourself, like twisting a rubberband. Then quickly snap your hips in the other direction and let go of the ground with your hands. You'll probably only rotate about half a turn at first. Once you can get a full rotation catch yourself with your hands again. This is called a "tap" People will respect you if you can tap forever.
FREEZES/POSES This is when you are in the middle of a six-step or any other move and you STOP and HOLD the position. The more awkward and broken or stuck in space-time you look the better it looks. You usually do some quick freezes during your six-step as a tech and then you finish your routine with a very difficult pose that you hold for a long time (3-4 seconds is enough) Practise poses this will build up your endurance and muscles.
POPPING This is a method of dancing that makes it look like waves are traveling through your body, or that your are a jerky robot, or you are a puppet. This form of dance comes from mime and it's really amazing to watch a good popper. I can do some popping so I've included an animated GIF that I made on how to make a basic wave travel from one arm to the next. It's not easy to do but when you get it you can then do just about any wave in any direction. Some popping makes it look like your are in a movie but it's skipping frames. A good popper is a sight indeed. Most poppers wear white gloves while they pop to enhance the illusion. You can see some popping in the GAP commercial.
Important thing to remember is that you must control your shoulder. The shoulder must remain nuetral until the "wave" passes through it. Only then do you raise it. It's difficult because your instinct is to raise it right away. I'll create more animated GIFS later.
SUICIDES These moves look like they sound. (some people will say all of breakdancing looks like suicidal and dangerous but this is worst) An example of a suicide is doing a forward flip, no hands and landing on your back with ffeet and arms spread out. (this is done in the USHER video: My Way) I learned to do this suicide by #1 overcoming my fear of flipping my body forward with no hands and #2 practising on a soft surface, like a sandy beach or even over water like at a pool diving board. It's not hard but the hardest part is overcoming the natural fear of doing this move because of your brains pre-programmed survival instincts. Your brain dosen't want you to do this. Once you learn this suicide down pat you can jump high, tuck your feet to your body with your hands and then flip completley and land on your feet again for a general forward flip.
Another good suicide is jumping in the air and landing with your feet in a split position but your body backward over your rear leg and arms spread out. This is done in the RUN/DMC video. My friend Ben does a sideways suicide that I'm not even sure how to do. He like, puts one hand on the floor from a standing position and then flips his whole body sideways ladning on his head and other hand.
So any move that looks like it would massivley hurt is a suicide, usually it involves landing flat on your back or front from a flip, jump or free fall. These moves are weird but usefull to impress people at clubs, or make them wince.
