Our approach
Present Tense Fitness isn’t just a name. It’s an approach that represents how we value each of our clients as multifaceted individuals with their own backstories, relationships to exercise and training, and injury histories. We think that being present with each person is both the humane way to treat clients and also the most effective way to help people achieve their goals.
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Whether we’re working one-on-one, two-on-one, or in small groups, we believe in writing individualized programming for each of our clients. This centers individual client goals, of course, but from an exercise science standpoint, not every exercise is the best choice for every individual. And, especially for dancers, athletes, or individuals with complex injury or illness histories, individualizing programming is the only acceptable best practice in our minds.
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There are a lot of unhealthy ways to simply be skinny or engage with diet culture. But, if someone wants to be strong and healthy for the long term, then we must approach training and exercise holistically. And no, we’re not talking about supplements here—we’re talking about things like sleep, eating enough, managing stress, and a training program that allows for and encourages proper recovery.
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We’re not physical therapists, but we borrow heavily from the physical therapy and postpartum rehabilitation worlds to inform our exercise selection. This approach to both dance and sports performance training as well as personal training to general population clients is why we’re sought after for people dealing with injuries and recovering from illness. We believe that training for performance need not be mutually exclusive with recovery, as long as the programming, coaching, and exercise selection are thoughtful, attentive, and rigorous.
Private Personal Training
Whether you’re in New York City or our Dayton flagship location, we approach personal training with an eye toward teaching and learning with your body as the template. Personal training is about, well, training, but it’s also about learning. When do I increase the weight? By how much? Why should I do this exercise instead of that one for my body and circumstances?
Group Training
We’re proud at Present Tense Fitness that people have formed friendships and made important connections in our spaces. The atmosphere we try to create—free from judgment of others or self—lends itself to community-building with fitness and hard work and personal achievement as the backdrop. You’ll still have a personalized training program while also benefiting from the support of peers.
Our dancer-specific approach
At Present Tense Fitness, we believe that dance-specific training isn’t enough. Our view is that training and programming needs to be danc(er)-specific to maximize effectiveness, create longevity, and mitigate injury risk. The days of dancers buying off-the-shelf programs or following random YouTube videos for exercise are, we hope, drawing to a close as exercise science, sports performance best practices, and dance medicine research converge to create a new era of dancer care and preparation.
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Are you in-season? Off-season? Dancing in the corps de ballet for a large company? Performing for a smaller, contemporary company in which every artist may dance every role? Competing at the college level for a dance team? Dance-specific isn’t enough to account for all the countless iterations of what it means to be a dancer. We write and coach programs specific to individual needs.
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Progressive overload is one of the most important concepts in strength and conditioning, and, until relatively recently, it has been mostly absent in the cross training that most dancers do. Progressive overload means that dancers should be looking to add weight to the bar, dumbbell, or kettlebell on any given exercise week-over-week and month-over-month. We can help you find the sweet spot between making an exercise more difficult while avoiding the cumulative stress that leads to injury and burnout.
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When many people talk about strength and conditioning and cross training for dance, often what comes to mind is how hard a dancer can work in the gym in order to maximize their athleticism, jumping power, and stamina. Those are definitely attributes we help dancers work to develop, but maybe the most important part of our job as coaches is to help you achieve these adaptations without needlessly wearing you down. We will help you develop strategies for getting strong and staying strong while also finding opportunities for the rest and recovery that are the lifeblood of longevity.
Our work with the dance population
We aim to bridge the unnecessary and harmful gap between team sports strength and conditioning on the one hand, and dance medicine on the other. Our work at Present Tense Fitness with dancers takes a “both/and” approach to these fields, benefiting from the decades of peer-reviewed and competition-tested exercise science literature and from the specificity of learning about the physical and mental demands of dancing.
Why this work is important to us
Working with dancers inspires us and calls us to be better at our jobs every single day. The artists who work with us are trusting us with their livelihood, their instruments in the form of their bodies. We both accept and take this responsibility seriously and see this work as the highest honor a coach can receive. We got into the world of dance because we deeply respect what artists do to illuminate, to challenge, and to inspire.
