Now that competition season is in full swing, it’s a great time to review the importance an effective warm-up can have for keeping your dancer injury-free and performing their best.
Did you know… A good warm-up prepares the muscles, joints, heart, brain, nerves, eyes, AND inner ear. Talk about a full body warm-up!
I often hear dancers talk about their warm-up in terms of stretches – usually sitting or lying on the floor. The thing about a warm-up is that the body should be warm by the end and that happens through movement – not sitting still on the floor. A good warm-up means the body is prepared for what comes next. So, a warm-up for dancing a contemporary routine should look very different than a warm-up for a hip hop number.
Regardless of dance style, all warm-ups should have the same goals: gently mobilize the joints (all of them), dynamic stretching of large muscle groups (dynamic = moving), activation of small stabilizing muscle groups, stimulate and mobilize the nervous system, and increase the heart rate.
If you’d like to learn more about keeping your dancer healthy with an effective warm-up routine, as well as other dance injury management and prevention and performance improvement tips and resources, use this link to subscribe to my monthly newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/t7i2i4.
Cheers to shining on stage this season