If you think of training on a spectrum of rehabilitory work to extreme bodybuilding or powerlifting, what you’ll begin to recognize is that athletic performance training falls somewhere in the middle. Athletes put themselves through movement demands that an untrained 9-5er going through physical therapy never does and also that the powerlifter responsible for only executing three lifts ever does. An athlete needs to be healthy enough to practice and compete consistently but also strong and powerful enough to practice and compete with the required intensity.
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But a person-specific program can’t be downloaded from the web. A person-specific program involves questions like:
“What kind of feedback did you get over the summer?”
“What’s your biggest weakness as a dancer?”
“Do you have any chronic injuries you’ve struggled to keep at bay?”
Dancers are told they need to be skinny. They’re told they need to cross train. They’re told they need to do Pilates. They’re told they need to be in good condition. They’re told they need to be strong. But they’re not told how to do so many of these things in a healthy way. When we first started down this road of helping dancers, we were told that dancers “already had the help they needed.” But we knew this to be a lie—because we had taken the time to do the research and to talk to dancers.
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