Sunday, October 16, 2011

How to Warm Up and Stretch before Dancing

Hey guys,
Today I'm posting about warming up and stretches for dancers. Stretching and warming up is extremely important for dancers before they even begin to start dancing.  Dancers should stretch and warm up before and after they dance.  This helps their muscles from cramping and makes them nice and warm.  Warming up and stretching should only take up to 30 minutes before you start dancing.  It does not take up that much time, and in the end you will get better results when it comes to dancing. 
You should mostly start warm-ups before you dance, and cool down after with stretches.  Warm ups will decrease your chance of injury and increase your ability to learn "dance" better.
A really good warm up to start with before dancing is a cardio vascular one.  This gets the heart rate up and the blood pumping through the body.  It also helps warm up your body.  If you start dancing with a cold body, your muscles will only start to stiffen up. 
There are 5 different types of warm-ups that are important to dance.  Many times a different style of dance has different warm-ups but here are the 5 major warm-ups for all styles:

5 TOP WAYS TO WARM UP TO DANCE:
  • Neck Isolations- Sowly move your neck left to right or just slowly drop your head and gently swing it side to side.
  • Hip Swings- Move your hips to the right then left without moving any other part of your body.
  • Heel Raises- Stretch your calves and your hamstrings.  Bring your heels off the ground and then slowly bring them back to the ground. Your legs should be straight here, and as a dancer you feet should always be turned out as you're doing any kind of foot or ankle exercises.
  • Leg Swings-Swing  legs back and forth or side by side
  • Lunge Stretch-Used for stretching muscles of your lower body. start with feet together and then lunge one foot behind you.
I also want to talk about some important stretches and warm ups just for ballet, since my blog is mostly about that.
For ballet, stretching on the bar is one of the most important stretches you can do.  To do this, you should place your foot on the highest bar keeping your leg straight. Keep you other leg straight standing on the floor. Your body is turned in, and your leaning into the bar.  You can also try leaning away from the bar if you think you can hold your balance.

Another good ballet stretch is the butterfly.  This is when your feet are touching heel to heel and you lean you're body towards your feet.

There are also these big stretchy rubber-band that when you sit down and keep your legs straight and rest your toes or heels on the rubberband and pull the rubberband towards you with your legs still straight. 
Lastly, another good stretch is when you go through all the 5 dance positions and the hand positions that go with them.

It is extremely important that you warm up and stretch because it decreases injury and makes you more flexible and adjile to move. 

2 comments:

  1. I feel as if these stretches are good no matter what! I do plenty of these before running :)

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  2. yes, a lot of these stretches can be used for any type of exercise, these are the most common warmups and stretches for any type of dance. =)

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