5 Exercises for Dancers to Elevate Their Performance

5 Exercises for Dancers to Elevate Their Performance

Benefits of Specific Targeted Exercises

Although dance itself is a phenomenal full-body exercise, it’s also very challenging. The demands placed on the body to perform movements in sometimes very controlled positions can take a toll on the human body. Especially since many dancers dance EVERY SINGLE DAY! That’s not an easy task. Being mindful of this fact, and taking care of your dancing body is crucial.

Targeted exercises are a way to ensure that you’re addressing any areas that need some TLC. These areas might include:

> muscles that are overused and need some extra stretches or massage, or

> areas that present with imbalances in strength on one side of the body vs the other, or

> areas that don’t get used as often so they are weaker than the opposing muscles (like the front vs the back of your thigh).

Benefits of Physiotherapy “aka Rehab” Exercises

Many people hate physio exercises. They’re often slow. They’re often boring. They are usually REALLY HARD to do well. So then why the heck do we have to do them? And even more importantly we hear the question, “For how loooonnggggg do I have to keep doing these exercises?!”

Ok, so here’s the thing. The reason why physio exercises are so slow, boring, and challenging, is that we are specifically picking exercises that target areas of your body that are weaker or less frequently used in order to restore balance to your body. It wouldn’t be very effective if we just threw out a hundred general exercises for you to do, now would it? Not only would that be a waste of your time (and a waste of our time too…..) but whatever is stronger will continue to stay strong, and whatever is weaker will continue to be weak.

5 Exercises to Elevate Dancers’ Performance

Time to get to the nitty gritty now. We’re able to write this post for dancers in general because we see many similar injuries across different sport groups. For example, soccer players experience lots of groin pulls and hamstring pulls. Baseball players often come with complaints of shoulder tendon injuries. Tennis players, well that’s an easy one, we treat a lot of tennis elbow for tennis players 😀 — Do you see a pattern here? Although these are not the ONLY injuries these athletes experience, they are common because of the positions we put our bodies in when playing these sports. Even so, we always perform a complete assessment on every single client and tailor the treatment to your exact needs.

Let’s talk dance then.

Here are our Top 5 Exercises we find dancers often need. These are by no means a one-size-fits-all prescription, nor is it an exhaustive list. It’s simply a starting point if you’re reading this for the first time and haven’t been assessed by a Physiotherapist yet. Please be mindful that when you book an appointment at WESTPRO, you will undergo a full assessment and history of your specific concerns, after which your Physiotherapist will prescribe the correct exercises for you.

*BONUS* We threw in a massage technique, so it’s not technically an “exercise” per say, but rather a nice little extra to try whenever you feel like your calves are very tight.

Try them out, and let us know what you think! Tag us on your Instagram stories @westprophysio and we can give you feedback!