Accelerate Dance and Fitness

Dynamic breathing is crucial for proper core support. Too much breath down and not enough up into the torso will leave your pelvic floor too loose and your pelvis a bit unstable, making jumps heavier. Not enough breath down and your pelvic floor will brace. This might leave you feeling like your ankles jam each time they land or you might feel like you’re dancing on top of the floor and not able to use your full plié. You might also hop out of your big jumps instead of being able to go deeper into your plié. Working on breath and core support as a 6D unit that expands and contracts will not only help your jumps, but your flexibility, feet turns, port de bras and so much more!

I just used this cue in a different movement earlier today! Dancers with hypermobility often lack the ability to feel what’s happening in their body. Using the hands to help them feel can help build strength and proprioception. Just watch out for additional accessory muscles engaging in the front (like mine do) or additional tension in the back of the neck as mobilizers and isolated deep neck flexor strengthening may be needed first.

Wanting to make big changes in your dancing this season? Never be afraid to slow down! Backing things up to something simpler, slower, easier, allows you to discover what’s actually going wrong in the harder version. It allows you the time or ease to be able to feel and make changes to grow stronger, so that you can do it in the bigger, faster, more difficult skills. For example, working on your double pirouette? Go back a step to a single and see what you can do to make that better. Find out that you still have the same problem in a single, go back to your balance and see if the same problem exists? If so, back up even more and isolate the challenge until you can do it well, then integrate it into your balance, then single, then double. Don’t be afraid for it to take a while to change your double pirouette if it’s still difficult to do in a single. Stick with the single for a while if it’s where you’re able to make changes, then eventually you will be strong enough to do it in a double and your double will be better than ever before. Best yet, the changes will stick!

Fun fact! Flexing the feet will NOT increase a stretch for everyone. It will only increase the stretch if you have tension in your nervous or fascial systems. Holding stretches with a flexed foot? This can be great if it’s a light pull on the fascia, but if you have neural tension this can actually leave you feeling tighter so it’s important to know the difference!

In today’s class we looked at control in a cambre back. I videoed before and after. Notice how in the first video she hinges from her lower back and there is also a visible loss of the front of her core.

(Side note - this video was taken after she’s had a bit of time off of dance. We’ve worked on this before, but the exercises were really needed today to help her body find support)

After a few exercises focusing on thoracic mobility, core control and breathing in extension, is able to initiate her cambre from the top down, rather than hinging from her lower back.

In this side by side of her transition you can see just how much more lifted she is and how much more open her chest is. You’ll even notice she has less tension in her glutes because her core is more actively supporting her!

Always a pleasure working with this sweet girl! Want to try this out? I still have a few openings left in my summer classes. Come check them out!