Warm-up

My, was I aching today. I had only one dancer last night, R, who is a star and hasn't missed a single lesson. She wants to be pushed a bit harder; in her own words, "I don't just want to do the steps, I want to do them properly." So with only one dancer (who wanted to work hard), I then had to work hard too, and coincidentally enough I'd arrived at the venue a full hour early to get some solo practice in as well. Oops.

I ran through my traditionals and the rhythm wasn't so bad. I actually am quite thankful for them as I can feel it will help with my open sets and general heavy dancing, so I refuse to complain about any of them any more. I then tried to fix my old jig lead, which was done in the days when you could go right-right and also includes a ridiculous three full clicks on each foot. Six! It's a killer and some of them need to go, but my brain wasn't working so I moved on to reel and have come up with a new step for me to do at the exam. It's not what you'd expect today's champions to be doing in their light round - maybe a prelim dancer. I hope it will be enough, and maybe when I'm fitter I'll push myself to something more difficult.

To link this whole post together (was aching today/need to get fitter) - I could do with some advice, please. What does your warm-up routine consist of? I usually just go straight into things dancing at half-effort and work my way up. I know I should definitely be doing ankle and arch exercises as these are the areas that play me up most, and I know my class need to do a full warm-up as well. With me branching into two classes a week, it's only going to get tougher on the old legs. I'm just kind of not sure what to do?

Back in the day we would start off by walking briskly round the room, getting a bit faster and swinging our arms to loosen the upper body, then break into a bit of a jog with some star jumps thrown in, back to a brisk walk with some arm exercises (bicep curls, shoulder presses etc with no weights), then finish with the light jig or baby reel. Following that it'd be some non-specific leg stretches which I don't think we were doing correctly having seen gym trainers do them differently.

So...what's new in warming up? Any advice?