In-Season Training Considerations
Build your in-season training during the off season
We wrote about this a few weeks ago on the blog, but maybe the most important point you need to consider when you think about in-season strength and conditioning is that the process begins early in the off season. You can’t address deficiencies during the season because the time-strapped dancer is trying to survive. During the season you need to be filling the buckets that aren’t filled while continuing to try to make the dancers in your care stronger.
The other reason early off-season training is important is the skill development that pays dividends in the form of shorter sessions during the season. Early in the off season, when a dancer might still be recovering from performances, you’re teaching her (or maybe even reteaching) her how to do a landmine press properly. Maybe the classical ballet posture has her scapulae hugging medially toward her spine. Instead of loading her with weight she can’t handle yet, in the first couple off-season weeks you’re reteaching her how to access her serratus anterior to get the scapulae up and around her ribcage.
Once you’ve accomplished this, as long as you pay close attention to form, she should have these movements down by the time the season starts. Then, when she’s faced with a busy Nutcracker season, you can truncate her workouts so she can get in, get out, and get home to rest and eat. But if you’re still having to work a lot of form, the sessions can be longer than necessary in season.
Have a plan, but be flexible
One of our most important arguments regarding strength and conditioning for dancers is that what they do in the gym should not be random. “Dancers should do cross training” isn’t enough. “Dancers should lift weights” isn’t enough. “Lift weights two days per week” isn’t enough. Dancers should know exactly what they’re doing and why they’re doing it in every single session they do. It’s simply required for a professional athlete.
And yet.
While a strength training program is critical for long-term success, flexibility is often what can make programs sustainable. There are myriad factors that can impact training load, volume, and intensity in season:
Menstrual cycles
New choreography
Injuries
General fatigue
Stress
Personal life/side hustles
As a strength coach I ought to have a plan for when a dancer arrives in the studio, but I also begin every session by asking:
How the dancer feels right now
What the dancer’s week has been like
What’s yet to come in the dancer’s week
If for some reason new choreography has a dancer feeling unusually run down, I might change her program on the fly to accommodate for this reality. Because what matters isn’t getting in two quality workouts during the week, it’s getting in hundreds of quality workouts during the year.
Continue to train during injuries
Athletes and dancers at the professional level will inevitably deal with injuries big or small or both. They must continue to train hard. You don't want dancers fading as the season progresses (when a lot of injuries happen), and you don’t want them regressing unnecessarily on, say, upper body strength and mobility if they suffer a lower extremity injury. You can always keep something strong when a dancer faces an injury, and it’s your job as their coach to help them figure out how to do that.
We wrote about this last week, and it’s such an important point that I want to emphasize it again.
Maybe it’s obvious that you want to give a dancer progressive confidence in her injured ankle in the training space. You wouldn’t throw her right into single leg plyometric work over hurdles. But what might not be as obvious is even in the early stages of her ankle recovery, you want to give her challenges that make her feel STRONG. Does that mean loading the ankle? No. But it might mean an 8-rep max landmine press from a half-kneeling position (to avoid stressing the ankle). It might mean something fun and challenging like a hollow body hold in which she has to resist rocking as the coach pushes her legs or hands. It might mean prioritizing interval work on a HIIT-style bike. The point is to give the dancer something genuinely difficult to overcome that you’re confident they can do, then coach them and support them as they do it.
Don’t ignore the emotional component
Professional athletes and dancers live in a state of insecurity for the most part. Some people handle it better or differently than others, but if only at a subconscious level, people who use their bodies for a living know that there is always a danger of being replaced, fired, or retired due to injury. I think it’s critical that dancers know the training space is one in which they can talk openly about these insecurities.
When we first started thinking about focusing on dance and dancers in our studio space, our initial inclination was to try to form some sort of partnership with a specific dance company. Over time what we’ve realized is there is a comfort in knowing that we are a separate entity altogether. There can be dancers from multiple companies working out in our space. There can be young dancers from different dance studios. The connective tissue for all of them will be that they’re in our space to get better—all the while they’re allowed and encouraged to share with us their vulnerabilities, knowing that they won’t be held against them.
One of the best ways I’ve found of encouraging this free flow of information is transparency about what I might be thinking through or not sure about from my perspective.
Share your own story
Candidly, this is probably the least universal of the pieces of advice I have to offer in this post. But I can tell you that it’s undeniably an important aspect of how I’ve worked to gain dancers’ trust. I tell them what my thought process is, and maybe most importantly, I tell them where I have doubts about myself or my decisions. This approach probably isn’t popular in the strength and conditioning world, but I think it’s critical that athletes know that I don’t have all the answers and that I’m not pretending to have all the answers.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no theoretical or scientific underpinning to what we’re doing. It just means that inasmuch as the coach can remain a person to the dancer with whom they’re working, that can serve to solidify the relationship and it leaves the door open to a collaboration—which ultimately is what a strength coach/dancer interaction should be. Eric Cressey’s interview with Corey Kluber has had a big influence on how I approach working with professional dancers. Kluber is one of Cressey’s high-profile clients, and it’s clear from listening to their conversation that they are collaborators. Kluber knows what he wants his body to feel like, and he’s open to giving feedback about how Cressey’s training programs affect that. This is critically important during the performance season, so it’s essential for me as a coach to make sure the dancer knows I’m open to collaboration and feedback.
Bottom Line
There are a lot of different ways of approaching strength training for dancers. Some expert’s programs will look different than my programs. But my guess is you’ll see a lot of simliarities among coaches who have a good track record for building strong dancers and keeping them healthy. What I’ve tried to do in this post is distill some of that for you.