 the male dancer
written by balletboy             on 19.06. at 02:18:35 - as answer to: Strength Training Question by Andrew atThis may be controversial! With "strength" training you should focus more on cardiovascular health than weight training. Dance is not too aerobic. In most ballet, the danseur performs strenuously for about 90 seconds at the most, the runs off stage to catch his breath while the danseuse does her 90 seconds. In jazz and tap the routines may be longer, but still many dancers don't foucus on their cardiovascular health. Tough to recommend aerobic workouts! Ballet teachers discourage things like running and biking as too stressful on the joints and not good for turnout. I like to recommend swimming laps. You can actually do barre exercises in the pool, too. Weight training is important too, but focus on repetition NOT increasing weight. The more weight you use, the more stress on the muscles. Many of those bodybuilders you see have great looking muscles, but that kind of bulk is often acvhieved while overstressing the muscle fibers with weight, so they kind of break and then scar tissue forms in the muscle. This kind of scar tissue might make the muscles look big, but it limits FLEXIBILITY! As a dancer, you need to have flexible muscles that can contract but also lengthen. I know when you're weight training it's great to say things like "I'm pressing 205 pounds!" but don't get into that trap. It's better to say "I pressed 50 pounds 205 times!" That's my opinion, and I know my friends here will have other advice. Listen to everyone, and take the best for yourself! balletboy >Hi! I'm a 15 year old male. I take 5½ hours of ballet, 5 hours of modern, 2 hours of tap and 1 hour of jazz per week. Recently, my ballet teacher told me I should start a strength training program. I was just wondering what kind of exercises you guys do. Thanks for all you help.>--Andrew Answers to this message:
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