Go forward all heel leads across the floor counting the paces. Now go backwards. The amount of paces should be the same. Going backwards will most likely be the problem. Keeping the weight over the supporting leg extent back to the toe, move. This can also be done slowly collecting the weight each time before continuing. The more the supporting knee is bent, which, should be forward of the body, the further you will go. If doing this excerise slowly give yourself plenty of time in that balanced position to bend te knee. Check that the body is not nodding to the front. Stay verticle. It is a excellent idea to have another person checking to tell you if the body is breaking or not. By breaking I mean the body leaning forward as the leg is taken back which would mean you are trying to go in two different directions at the same time.

"Go forward all heel leads across the floor counting the paces. Now go backwards. The amount of paces should be the same. Going backwards will most likely be the problem."

No. Unless you reach your feet out in front of you to a degree that would be impossible when dancing in closed hold with a parner, or you have such weak ankles that you cannot roll off your heel, you should be able to take substantially larger backwards action than the forwards action you can create with a partner-compatible form.

Once you commit to doing them with proper form and partner-compatible body alignment, backwards walks are much easier than forwards walks, because you can stay balanced for substantially more of the cycle of a backwards walk than you can for the cycle of a properly sequenced forward one.

Anonymous. You've lost me here. how can I be stepping forward when I'm going backwards

"Anonymous. You've lost me here. how can I be stepping forward when I'm going backwards"

No one said you should be - that would indeed be very silly.

You tried to make some sort of claim about forward and backward actions being equal in size.

I corrected that mistake, by pointing out that on a dancer of at least moderate skill, the size of a backwards action that can be accomplished with good form and comfort will be larger than the size of the forward action that can be accomplish with comparable form and comfort.

On beginners the opposite is true - they think they understand forwards movement, but find backwards unfamiliar and puzzling. Then they learn how to do backwards movement properly. And then they realize that they have been doing the forwards movement improperly. Eventually, they start working on proper forward movement... and discover that it is by far the hardest.

Put simply, if you find large forwards movements easy, you aren't doing them right!

Anonymous. I agree there that's why the lady has to gauge the distance that is going to be covered and not plant the foot to the floor to soon. But having said that if you could see the tape I have where the couple have to do a solo. The camera is side on and every step is clearly seen. They prepare then a Feather Reverse Turn into a Wave. The lady with the rear leg
right to the toe and the man also to the last part of his toe create a picture. If I were to measure from there standing legs to the rear leg their stride would be the same length. But then they practise seven days a week.

"If I were to measure from there standing legs to the rear leg their stride would be the same length. But then they practise seven days a week."

Sure - they choose to match stride lengths.

But that does not over-ride the simple physical fact that they could dance a proper backwards action at a larger stride length than they can dance a proper forwards action.

I wonder has anyone worked out why a DVD in slow motion the strides look colossal. It doesn't affect the height just the length of the steps. But isn't that the way to go if you want to see what is really happening.

"I wonder has anyone worked out why a DVD in slow motion the strides look colossal. It doesn't affect the height just the length of the steps. But isn't that the way to go if you want to see what is really happening."

Perhaps because a dancer being artifically displayed at a slow speed appears to take gravity-defyingly large strides. We could not emulate that size of movement at such a slow speed, because moving slowly we would fall too far and too fast if we spent so much extended time in unbalanced phases.

Be we can learn to create those large movements that the speed at which they were actually danced though. Then we will spend the same amount of time off balance as the dancer on the recording did, and fall a comparable distance and rate. Assumign we are strong enough and have the skill to synchronize our movements the same way that is.