Conditioning and Cross Training for Dancers
All is well. Mostly.
We are approaching mid-semester at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia. Students in the New York City Ballet Workout are seeing improvements in posture, body awareness and their ability to get up those steep marble stairs and still be able to take class. The fitness classes are going just beautifully. Students come in early to warm-up, and then begin the fitness program they have come to design for themselves. The ballet dancers are also warming up, but in a sane way now with Jan's neuromuscular warm ups instead of sitting in straddles and frog positions for too long. I am noticing improved strength and decreased pain in my knees and arms. Formerly frail arms have a shape and formerly creaky knees burn less. Life is good.
And my workouts have an added attraction – some TCC faculty and staff are joining me at my invitation.
I've much work to do on the back still. Since no one wants to operate on a patient my age (that kind of operation is one I'd prefer to avoid anyway), my choices may seem small until I realize how much better things are than last Christmas. Workouts work. I never thought I'd exercise with dumbbells and tubing as faithfully as I once did plies but I am more and more grateful to Jan for taking me under her wing and finding a place for me in her packed schedule. All dancers should try to find a personal trainer, physical therapist or someone in that field that they trust to help them strengthen their instruments. It is worth the extra time and effort.
Students and faculty have noticed a difference in one area most dancers long for – a slimmer torso. And yes, less weight, too. Jan had noted that I was eating too little trying to keep off the pounds from increased age and decreased (at the time) activity. The result was increased fat as the body was trying to protect itself from what it interpreted as starvation. After an assessment of my diet and fitness, or lack thereof, I promised her I'd use my dancer's discipline, working at both daily until I saw her again, and I have.
At this writing, I've not seen Jan nor worked under her in almost two months. It will be interesting to see what bad habits I may have slipped back into without regular supervision or if she sees improvements.
The trainer's viewpoint: As time goes on I see the effects of long term repetitive motion. There are structural changes brought on by years of chronic stretching, (something I see repeatedly in dancers) and pervasive motor programs that are exhibited outside of the theater. Realizing that dance requires greater than average flexibility and weight bearing activity in positions designed for joint mobility not stability, there is also a thought that it is not necessary to carry those patterns outside the realm of the experience itself. This is in no way a value judgment about dance. It is simply an observation about the practice itself. Where the challenges actually begin is a great question, as we cannot look into the joints of a child and know whether he or she is destined to become a world class dancer. In much the same thought process, it is not possible to know at what point injuries such as those our dance writer experiences began. Was she hyper mobile all along or was the chronic stretching what brought it on? I only know that at this point in her life she experiences more pain than she should. Where the injuries are exacerbated is in the practice of those strange movement patterns on an everyday basis off the dance studio floor.
Dancers practice the second position walk and the tucked under pelvis for their normal position in life. These are poor positions to walk and stand from in day to day life. As we look into the body of evidence we can begin to see that the neurological system begins to rewrite the programs that say that the position of the body is neutral when in fact it is anything but neutral. If a dancer would return to normal position when he or she was not dancing, there could be less injury and more time to heal. They could rewrite the path of their future to include more years of dance in their lifetime. There may be many benefits to this though-filled practice of normal movement. A tucked under pelvis is a position that carries with it increased stress to the lumbar spine and hip joint. Since dancers experience greater than average hip replacement before forty, it would seem that extreme flexibility in the hip joint, there may be even more reason to return to normal. How many professional dancers are still doing so much later in life? Please consider the pros and cons of what you practice outside and in the gym. Your body will appreciate it.