Tag: conditioning

Why Your Students Need to Build Upper-Body Strength

Fitness trainer, professional dancer and cross-training expert Sebastian Grubb weighs in on why it’s essential for dancers to build their upper-body strength. A balanced body is a healthy body. When a dancer maintains equilibrium between her upper and lower halves, she increases her athleticism and physical adaptability. “Most dancers have strong legs and strong balance,” […]

Why Deborah Vogel Recommends the Quadruped Position for Finding Core Stability

“If you don’t have strong abdominal muscles, you sag into your lower back, your pelvis usually tips and you’re hanging out and slumped into your hip joints,” says Deborah Vogel, movement analyst, neuromuscular expert and co-founder of the Center for Dance Medicine in New York City. “It just has this whole chain reaction.” The effects […]

How Tom Welsh Built a Dance Science Program from Scratch

When Florida State University professor Tom Welsh arrived in Tallahassee in 1991, dance science was uncharted territory. “Mostly, it was technique teachers who were looking for ways to keep their dancers dancing,” he says. “It was just a field people imagined could happen.” He immediately set to work building the university’s dance science program from […]

What Dancers Can Learn from CrossFit

Steph Lee, a dancer with Renegade Performance Group in New York City, spent more than 10 years of her dance career fighting recurring injuries. It wasn’t until she added CrossFit—the heavy-lifting, loud-grunting, specialized gym workout that has taken the world by storm—to her cross-training routine of Pilates and yoga that she found some relief. “Nothing […]