Strength Training for Dancers: A Case Study

We’ve written a lot about the benefits of strength training for dancers, so in today’s post I wanted to give you a little insight into what the process actually looks like in our studio. Anna Shearer, a yoga teacher, personal trainer, and overall movement and breath specialist at Present Tense Fitness captured what a month of training looked like for one of her clients.

Devin Baker dances for the Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, a world-class historically Black company right here in our hometown. Already a beautiful, expressive dancer (with a big, loving personality to go along), Devin came to us wanting to get stronger and to learn more about his body and how he could maximize its athleticism and strength for his art.

I interviewed Anna about what she saw with Devin from day one.

Jason Harrison: What did you know about him as a dancer?

Anna Shearer: As a person and dancer I could see that Devin was always connecting the dots between the work we were doing and his knowledge and training of dance. We were able to draw many parallels with verbiage used in dance and his approach is a great example of marrying the intellectualizing of the movement with the tangible and physical action of the movement.

Jason: What did you see in the initial assessment?

Anna: In his assessment his squat pattern was more of a hinge than an actual squat, which is one of the most common things we see in both dance populations and general populations alike. He broke at his hips first and set his seat back first. The lower he needed to get the more he would drop his seat under, round his sternum down, and send his upper body forward to counter balance his hips. This told me that we needed to work on pelvis and ribcage positioning. I also hasten to add that there’s nothing inherently “wrong;” this is just one way the body compensates to get the job done. Our job is to help him access more movement options—ones that will serve him better because they are more effective, efficient, and thus ultimately safer for him.

After one month of training versus before training.

Jason: What was your approach for reorienting his squat?

Anna: The approach was to begin focusing on components that would steer the new relationship between the pelvis and the ribcage. Work where we focused on finding the stack of the ribs over the pelvis, the more upright orientation. Heavy hitters in this were recruiting his hamstrings and adductors in supine positions with very intentional breathing. Exercises that focused on the serratus anterior muscle were also a focus—shoulder blades coming forward is essentially the ribcage moving back into the stack. Some of the most successful tools were to add special constraints such as the wall or doorway, and other tools such as exercise ball, bands, and heel elevation. Setting the body in a position where it has to work against the constraint to find the more optimal outcome.

After one month of training versus before training.

Jason: How has this new squat pattern helped you in the gym?

Anna: This gives us such a solid reference to refer to for a vast majority of exercises we’d want to implement but primarily I see this playing its biggest role with overhead pressing. He’s learned how to stay tall without excessive flexion or extension—a still frame of a beautiful overhead press will point to the stack of the ribcage over the pelvis.

Jason: Is he feeling the squats differently in his legs?

Anna: Yes. What I refer to as “that sizzle” is happening sooner and in a more potent way. We now have the outcome matching the intention—this knee dominant movement pattern now prioritizes the front side of his body. This will also build him a stronger backside because he’ll have better support coming from his front side as he mindfully practices loading his hip hinging.

There are so many great things Anna talks about here, but I wanted to highlight two things. First, by fixing Devin’s squat pattern, Anna unlocked the key to several other exercises that are fundamental to strength and conditioning. His overhead pressing got better—contemporary dancers never know when they’re going to be called upon to do a complicated overhead lift. And by distinguishing his squatting pattern from his hip hinging pattern, Devin was better able to internalize the hip hinge, which also made that movement better.

We view all of the relationships we have with the dancers we work with as collaborations, and on any given day when Anna is working with Devin you’ll hear them chopping it up on any range of issues around strength, athleticism, and artistic performance. This intangible part of the coaching relationship is really as important as the more technical stuff I wrote about above.