It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but I’d argue that the younger the dancer, the more important it is to have access to weights. Mature dancers or professionals are strong enough to do advanced bodyweight exercise variations that will still challenge them. But younger dancers often lack the strength needed to even complete 10 perfectly executed pushups, so for them it’s helpful to be able to develop shoulder and chest strength with lighter dumbbells that get progressively heavier.
Read MoreThe dancers come in and work, and then they leave to go home and cook and eat and sleep and talk to loved ones and watch Netflix and go to bed on time so they can wake up the next morning and make breakfast and prepare for work and learn new choreography and meet with the costume designers and go to the post office.
Read MoreMaybe 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.
Read MoreParents 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.
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