Mike Luque
Doing exercises on your feet is essential training for basic life. Most activities of daily living involve being on your feet. What this exercise adds to the standing position is a hip hinge, which is one of the 7 primal movements. Primal movements are the building blocks of how we learn to move naturally as we develop when we're infants and toddlers.
GYROTONIC® training is unique in many ways. One of the most unique, and IMHO best, differences about Gyrotonic training is the focus on all the ranges of motion of almost all the joints of the body. The muscles of the hips joints are strengthened in some way in every exercise system, but a focus on the rotational movement of the hips joints, with resistance, is truly unique.
I've made it a part of the way I train clients that they get on their feet for at least one exercise in every workout. The benefits of a complex exercise that includes squats, like this one, go beyond leg strength and even include benefits for your brain.
This is a fun "level 2" exercise. Level 2 workouts aren't only about more difficult exercises but also how you put them together into long sequences and really uniting the timing and the breathing. I'm not even sure if "mess the hair" is what it's called. But that's one of the cues for the movement, "mess the hair/fix the hair".