Why Everyone Should Take Dance Class
Everyone should take dance class. I know this may seem like a biased comment due to the fact that I started dance at age 3 and continued into a professional career. But look at dry training for many sports that don’t require choreography like hockey and football. Many teams have used various forms of dance genres (ballet, jazz, modern, contemporary) to improve movement quality, control, and finesse. If you are a dancer, then I don’t have to tell you why dance has such value for our health and our bodies. If you are new to dance, or unfamiliar altogether, then read below and learn about all the reasons why dance is so great and how to implement them into your own training.
Although there are many reasons, I’m going to start with single leg stance. Dance does a lot of movement and time training standing on one leg. Not only that, but we rise up and down on one leg, go into a forced arch position (knee flexed, foot at end range plantar flexion), and move our free leg (working leg). By pushing ourselves to do work on one leg we are improving our balance and proprioception as well as ingraining in our bodies landing technique (we will get to this in a minute). Overall the use of one leg movement is so valuable (you even see it in the FIFA 11+ warm up).
The next item of value is the mastering of basics like the plié. A plié is a knee bend while standing. This repetition grooves in such a healthy biomechanical neural pattern. The value here is that when you are landing a jump that didn’t go as planned, you have such a healthy pattern of knee bending that you are more likely to still land properly, reducing wear and tear on your knee and ankle.
Another thing that dancers do is train evenly on both sides. This balance in symmetry helps reduce over training or wearing out your favoured side. As we know with injury and atrophy, having a bilateral muscular imbalance can cause pain and dysfunction. Trying to maintain symmetry with exercise is not always easy, but is so valuable.
Dance has so many components to it. Often with warming up and working out, we skip or rush through warming up, doing end range conditioning, and mobility work. We go straight for strength training, within a shortened range of motion. We do this, because it’s easy and just more common in terms of knowledge of how to workout. However, cardiovascular training is such an important part of overall health. Mobility work and working on end range control allows athletes to maintain joint health and full range of motion. Having a well-rounded workout from the perspective of daily and weekly point of view really helps get the most out of your training schedule.
Another huge component of dance is the social aspect. Dance is often done in a class setting where you have to function as a group. Lining up to go across the floor for an exercise, or getting into groups of four for a combination all takes cooperation and social interaction. Often I see dancers going out for coffee to catch up after a class. You really feel the social aspect when dancing, another huge benefit we can steal and bring into other areas in life.
Creativity is such a huge part of dance class. You get to learn and perform a piece of choreography that includes emotional and story telling aspects. Sometimes there is an improvisational component which allows even deeper creativity where you are not just the athlete in that moment but an artist. Combining a physical activity with a creative element stimulates both the mind and the body, and the performance component helps process emotional feelings. Leaving a dance class can sometimes feel like leaving a personal training session and a therapy session all in one.
One thing I notice a lot of people doing at the gym when strength training with weights is training in one tempo only. What I mean by this is the same speed when moving against weight. Don’t get me wrong, getting out and lifting weights is great, but the thing is we don’t always move the exact same way as we lift weights. When lifting weights we are typically very slow, and very carefully in one direction. The thing is, when we move in real life we don’t follow these ‘protocols’ if you will. When you drop your pencil to pick it up, you twist and grab quickly. This is why it is always good to add variety to your movement not only in direction but also in tempo.
Although there is no perfect workout class or method, variety truly is the spice of life. Change up your workout and try something different if you feel it isn’t serving you functionally in your life or if you feel like you are plateauing in your gains. Take a page from dance and try adding more symmetry, or cardio, or mobility work, or end range control, or even creativity to your workout. Better yet, go and try and dance class. Warning though, there are many different types of classes so use the dentist rule. If you go to a dentist you don’t like, you don’t blame dentistry, you blame the dentist adn try a different one. Good luck and as always, happy dancing!
