6 Exercise Types Every Dancer Should Include in Their Dancer Workout Routine
Develop Your Dancer Workout Plan
Dance is a physically demanding activity. It’s great exercise, but to perform well it’s important to maintain a healthy body. When you’re in top physical condition, you’re able to perform at your best.
As well as getting the right amount of rest and relaxation and eating healthily, the exercise you do to prepare and retain your physical fitness is crucial. By incorporating the correct types of exercise in your dancer workout plan, you’ll help maintain your health in the long term.
In this article, we describe which types of exercises dancers should do every day in a dancer's workout routine.
Key targets of workouts for dancers
When developing your workouts, it’s critical that you train to boost the key physical attributes required to perform. You need strength and endurance, agility, and balance.
Basing your dancing workouts around these goals provides the clues needed when developing the exercises that deliver maximum benefits to you as a dancer. These exercises fit into one of six categories of everyday exercises for dancers:
1. Strength exercises
Dance is an activity that requires a lot of movement, which can lead to muscular imbalances and injuries if the body is not strong enough to withstand the range of movement undertaken. And muscles in the body are used differently when dancers are performing different styles of dance. The twisting, turning and jumping that a dancer does can be hard on the body.
Strength exercises help to:
Increase vertical jump height.
Improve jumping endurance.
Improve strength and endurance without increased muscle size, preserving dance aesthetic. With the correct exercises, you won’t need to fear ‘bulking up’.
Improved body strength also helps to prevent the most common dancing injuries, such as muscle strains, ligament pulls, and overuse injuries.
When starting out with a dancer's workout routine, it’s best to use your body weight during exercise. Typical exercises may include push-ups and heel raises. As your body gains in strength, you can then add weights into your routine to ensure correct muscle toning and strength development.
2. Core exercises
The core muscles are the foundation of our bodies. They are responsible for stabilizing and supporting the spine, pelvis, and torso. Core muscles also help to connect the upper and lower body so that they work together as one unit during movement.
Core training improves your posture, balance, coordination, and flexibility. It also helps you to avoid injuries by strengthening your back, hips, and abdominal muscles by:
Helping to control the spine dynamically throughout the movement
Improving coordination of the muscles that control your trunk, not just your abs
Building a stable base off which to move the limbs
Stabilizing the mid-section to allow smooth and effective transfer of force through the body
Great exercises for all levels include planks and beast (similar to the plank, but with bended knees).
3. Balance exercises
As a dancer, you spend a lot of time on your feet. You need to maintain position, equilibrium, and footing with stability. You’ll be performing high-energy moves that require you to transition quickly from one position to another. Balance exercises help dancers improve their sense of equilibrium and prevent injury while performing these types of moves.
Improving your balance helps:
Prevent falls
Develop better posture
Improve coordination
Faster recovery from injury
There are many exercises that build better balance. Two of the best are tightrope split squat holds and the tandem stance.
4. Flexibility exercises
Flexibility refers to the range of motion a person has in their joints and muscles. The more flexible you are, the more freely you can express yourself in dance. Four ways in which flexibility exercises can help improve your dancing are:
Increasing your speed in movement
Keeping your joints healthy
Enabling you to perform more demanding movements
Reducing the risk of injuries
Two great exercises to include in workout routines that specifically target flexibility are the forward fold and the 90/90 hip stretch.
5. Aerobic fitness exercises
Dancing is physically demanding, using the whole body and all your muscles. To work efficiently, those muscles need oxygen. Aerobic exercise strengthens the heart and lungs. It also improves stamina, flexibility, and weight control. Aerobic exercises also help the body get rid of toxins and waste products that build up in the muscles and tissues over time. Effective aerobic training helps to:
Strengthen your whole body
Tone your muscles
Improve your energy levels and power available for movement
Improve your blood circulation
Aerobic exercises are done for a long period of time at a low-intensity level and include jogging and jumping rope.
6. Energy storage and release
As a dancer, you rely on the explosive energy and endurability of your tendons. If you have ever suffered an Achilles tendon injury, you’ll understand exactly how crucial tendon strength is to your ability to dance. Energy storage and release exercises:
Strengthen your tendons
Improve the tendon’s capacity to act as a spring ─ storing and releasing energy explosively
Among the best exercises to improve your energy storage and release capabilities are pogo hops and skips for height.
Workout routine personalization is the key to a perfect dancing physique
As a dancer, you must be in good shape to perform well. You must be agile and strong enough to dance for long hours. You must be flexible and possess good balance. And you need to be able to explode from one pose to another, through a range of movements that might cripple non-dancers.
Your dancer workout routines have a lot of work to do. They should build your strength, endurance, and aerobic capacity. They should be designed to develop your body at a pace that suits you, helping you develop your desired body tone and improve stamina so that you can recover quickly.
Sorry to have disappointed you if you expected a detailed dancer workout routine in this article. But there is a reason for this. It would be irresponsible for us to publish one. Because no two dancers are the same.
All dancers must build in exercises in each of the six categories above, but the actual exercises that are correct for one dancer may not be correct for you. And there’s more.
Selecting the right exercises is only part of the equation. The dosage (the weight, reps, sets) of exercise must also be calculated, monitored, and revised as you progress and your body develops toward your goals.
When we work with you, you’ll benefit from a personalized dancer workout plan that has been developed to accelerate you toward your personal goals. We put your progress under a microscope at every session and review our recommended exercises and dosages.
Workout personalization starts with our comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation. Many of our clients who are dancers take advantage of this evaluation bi-annually. Other clients benefit from it before they start a new physical venture, to ensure they are fully prepared.
Take the first step. Book an appointment for your comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation today.
