Dance specific or sport specific doesn’t mean you mimic the activity of the sport on the training floor. It means you identify strengths and weaknesses endemic to a certain activity and you try to make sure you round out an athlete’s abilities while enhancing what they need to perform at a high level. It doesn’t mean you make a dancer dance with a barbell, but it might mean understanding that dancers typically have trouble hinging properly, so you’ll work on glutes and hamstrings. It might mean for a female ballet dancer you recognize that she might have trouble “finding” her serratus anterior, so you include activation drills in her warmup before pressing movements. These are the things that make strength training dance specific.

Read More