Difficult stretches of performance necessitate accommodations in strength training programming, but they never mean backing off completely. This simple (A), (B), (C) program can be adapted to any intense dance season.
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…one of the most important things to understand about plyometric training is that it is as much about connective tissue preparation as anything. We’re used to thinking about building strong muscles, but we forget sometimes about building healthy connective tissue. And the important thing to remember about connective tissue is it takes longer to adapt to training than muscle, so it’s critical that we slowly progress training with this idea in mind or else we risk building injury into our training.
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Another way of saying all of this is that we’re trying to help dancers avoid “majoring in the minors.” Big, athletic movements and big, full-body lifts are the majors. Those are the priorities during any given workout. The assistance movements—the “minors” in the coined phrase—are important but shouldn’t be done first when the dancer is freshest because that would limit a dancer’s ability to perform the big movements (the majors).
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The dance world can be close minded and traditionalist—but a lot of other worlds are like that too. Talk to an old school baseball coach some time and see if you don’t walk away asking yourself what year it is. But I know from talking to dancers that they are hungry for a more modern approach to their livelihoods. I also know how much more confident and secure they feel in their bodies when they get stronger. We owe it to them to value their bodies and their time by developing realistic, recoverable, and science-driven strength and conditioning programs that avoid dogma, borrow heavily from any available best practices, and continue to evolve over time.
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