A Dancer's Guide to Stronger Hips

Although most people don't consider hips to be an essential part of strength for athletics, they are one of the most important. Your hips are the center of your body and are what support the upper and lower half. Any injury to the hips can lead to back pain and knee pain. Coming from personal experience, any time you work out, make sure to work out your hips. Being a dancer, I know that my hips are one of most used part of my body while dancing. To have alignment, posture, balance and technique, my hips must be strong. There are many hip strengthening exercises that I use. The most popular one, is clam shells. The point of this exercise is to open and close your legs to work on your hip rotation and hip flexors.

To complete this exercise, lay down on your side. To achieve the correct position, "Bend your knees to a 45-degree angle, legs and hips stacked" (ATI 18). Keeping your feet together, life your upper knee towards the sky, then back down, and repeat. While doing this exercise, your hips should be in line with your back to keep posture and alignment (ATI 18). An example of this exercise is shown below.

What do you think the result is of overuse in your hips?
ATI, PT. Strengthening Exercises.

A Dancer's Guide to a Stronger Back

Just like many other athletic activities, back strength is very important to a dancer. Back strength helps with balance and alignment. In a lot of dance moves, you have to bend your back or keep it completely straight. If your back is weak, it can become very difficult to keep perfect posture without being very sore and in pain. Pretty much every more in dance requires good alignment to look professional and not sloppy. In addition, balance comes a lot from your back and to complete moves like turns, you need very good balance. The better balance and strength you have, the more turns that you can do.

One exercise I use to strengthen my back is called "Bridges" (ATI 22). For this exercise, you need to lay on a hard, flat surface on your back. Bend your knees up like you would to complete a sit-up. Have your hands flat on the ground by your sides. Keeping your pelvis in line with your back, lift your pelvis up to the ceiling. until your core makes a diagonal line with your legs (ATI 22). Hold this position for 10 seconds, then go back down. Repeat this as many times as you would like. I repeat this 10 times. You should feel this exercise in your back, core, and hips. An example of this is shown below.

How do you think back strength effects your everyday life?
ATI, PT. Strengthening Exercises.

A Dancer's Guide to Stronger Feet

Dancing doesn't only involve straight arms and legs, and good posture. A major part of dance is pointed toes. They key to any move in dance, looking professional and proper is pointing your toes. Now, when doing a style like hip hop or when a move is purposely made to have flexed feet, then it's okay. If flexed feet are intentional, it can add style and emotional to a move or routine. But, normally, dancers always are to point their toes. Someone who isn't a dancer wouldn't think that your feet must be strong and flexible; they do. A perfect point is one where the foot is in line with your leg, and you can feel and see all the muscles through your leg engaging along with your foot.

This exercise is a very simple but very effective foot strengthening exercise. It stretches as well as strengthens your foot, to get that perfect point. First, sit down on a flat, surface. Have your legs straight and extended out in front of you. Flex your feet up and high as you can (ATI 24). The goal is to get your heels as far off the ground as possible. Hold this for as long as you need. I normally do 5 seconds. Then, point your toes down to the ground. Pointing your toes and curling your toes are very different. To achieve this, "Try to get your toes to touch the ground and arch your foot as much as possible (ATI 24). Hold this for as long as you need. Again, I normally do this for 5 seconds. Next, flex your feet again. Go back and forth until you feel your feet are stretched and warmed up. This exercise is shown below.

Is strength in your feet essential to any other sports?
ATI, PT. Strengthening Exercises.

A Dancer's Guide to Stronger Glutes

In order to execute dance moves well, dancers need strength in all parts of their body. Strength in your glutes is an essential part in being able to complete certain technique moves, like turns and leaps. When completing these moves, you need to tighten your butt muscles to hep with balance and stability. If you don't have enough strength in this part of your body, the move you're trying to complete won't work as well.

The following exercise is another one I learned in physical therapy. It is called a "Bent leg glute raise" (ATI, 12). To do this exercise, first you need to get on your hands and knees, making sure that you're keeping your head aligned with your back and your hips square. Next, lift one of your legs up towards the side wall. While doing this, your leg should be bent (ATI, 12). Look below for an example. This exercise has helped me improve my ability to do more turns and get higher in my leaps.

In order to do this exercise correctly, “Make sure you are on a hard, flat surface” (ATI, 12). This will help you keep your body even to get the most out of it. Make sure to keep the correct form to prevent injury.

Why do you think glute muscles help with stability and balance?
ATI, PT. Strengthening Exercises.

A Dancer's Guide to a Stronger Core

One of the most contributing factors of dancing is strength. Most people see dancing as just moving your body to beats. However, dancing goes a lot deeper than that. There are technical moves such as turns that are apart of routines that dancers learn. In order to execute these moves well, you need to have strength coming from your core. I always heard about this but I never really considered doing workouts to gain the strength that is needed. Not having the amount of muscle I needed was holding me back from improving my technique. I started going to physical therapy for my hips, knees and back, in eighth grade and just recently got out. While I was going, I received a packet full of exercises to help strengthen my back. 

The following exercise is one I learned from my physical therapist that helps me work on my core. "This exercise is called the crunch (shown below)" (ATI, 3). To do this workout, you first need to lay down on your back on a flat surface. Then, bend your knees and either have your arms crossed across your chest or behind your head. Lift your shoulder blades off the ground and "crunch" your abdomen upwards, hold, then go back down. Repeat this until you feel like you've gotten the workout you need (ATI, 3). This exercise has helped me gain strength in my core, so I can improve my turning ability. 

Do you think that core strength has an impact on dancing?

ATI, PT. Strengthening Exercises.