You can't prepare for Nutcracker season during Nutcracker season

I’ll use another analogous situation to illustrate my point. One of the more common “injuries” we’ll see with general population clients is among new dads who develop elbow pain on one side of their body. The culprit? Holding onto a newborn with a flexed arm while walking around the house. The anterior muscles—biceps brachii—sit in a flexed position while holding the baby, overwhelming the posterior triceps. An easy remedy is simply to have that dad work his triceps more to even out the asymmetry of strength. Voilà! Elbow pain dissipates. The is a simplified, but real-world example of how working more of the thing that’s being worked can be a bad idea. Imagine if that dad had done a lot more bicep curls at the gym while also holding his baby around the house. He’d only be exacerbating his elbow pain.

Good Strength Training is Good Connective Tissue Training

Parents of young dancers should seriously consider a long-term athletic development program that coincides with dance training so that adolescents build the year-over-year connective tissue strength that will pay off into adulthood. According to a recent widely cited study, “physical activity-associated bone loading both during and after skeletal growth is positively associated with adult bone mass.” Those early dance years are important for honing technique and developing passive flexibility, but these things needn’t be prioritized at the expense of strength or long-term health.

Bone Mineral Density and Dance

Our bodies are a system of pulleys and levers, with muscle acting on bone to execute movement. As our muscles get stronger and increase the mechanical stress on bone, our bodies react by building bone mass and strength in order to handle the increased demands. This increase in bone mineral density is one of the byproducts of well-designed strength training programs.

Ballet: The Case for Strength Training

Our understanding of this dynamic in the sports world is nearly intuitive. If our best players are able to stay on the field longer and miss fewer games because of injury, our team has a better chance of winning. The dance world is no different, except for it relies on an approach that cares for injuries once they’ve happened (with physical therapists and athletic trainers) rather than an approach that simultaneously enhances performance and prevents injury.

Jason HarrisonFebruary 9, 2019Present Tense Fitnessballet, crosstraining, strength, conditioning, periodizationComment