For the dancer
Why is Pilates so good for dancers? To begin with, when practiced correctly it develops long, strong muscles. It is important for a dancer to be super strong, without bulky, heavy muscles. Pilates focuses on elongating and lengthening muscles as it strengthens them. With Pilates we can also focus on specific muscle groups and areas of the body that need work, so if a dancer has weak inside thigh muscles, we can spend more time on strengthening this area of the body, or if they are lacking upper body strength, then we can shift our focus to strengthening the muscles of the upper body. Pilates is also a wonderful way for dance students to develop and increase their focus; the slow controlled breathing brings the awareness to the centre of the body and the emphasis on isolating muscle groups requires a great deal of concentration. This calm, sustained focus can then be transferred into the dance class. It also increases a young dancers confidence as they begin to understand their body, how muscles work and how this can be applied to their own technique.
Pilates is a tool that continues to grow with the dancer, once learnt and understood the dance student can use the principles throughout their dance career. Pilates exercises range from very basic to super advanced, however, the hardest to execute exercises may not always be the right for the advanced dancer or body – sometime the advanced dancer will gain more from spending 20 minutes working on a very simple exercise such as navel to spine breathing. It will all depend on where the dancer is in his or her technique, and what the focus needs to be for that session. As a dancer, your pilates programme will be forever changing and evolving to keep challenging you in different ways to improve your technique and dancing. For this DVD I have chosen the exercises that I believe are most important for developing dance students. These are exercises that focus on understanding correct breathing, increasing pelvis stability, strengthening postural muscles like the transversus abdominis, adductors, hamstrings and gluteals, muscles of the upper back and intrinsic muscles under the feet. In short, exercises that will develop a dancers strength, control, coordination, balance and focus.
With any pilates exercise, the more you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Focus on exactly what you are tying to achieve with each exercise. Even making small adjustments like increasing your navel to spine connection, lengthening and reaching out more through your heel, lengthening your sit bones away from your torso, feeling the sensation of reaching the tips of your shoulders out away from each other, or allowing the scapulars to melt further down the spine, will make a noted difference to the results you will get from the exercise. Please do the exercises in this programme slowly, practice them with the focus points I have mentioned in the DVD and as you become more proficient with each exercises, challenge yourself to make these connections even stronger.
Pilates 4 Young Dancers is a DVD that provides pilates-based exercises to enable the young dancer to improve their technique. It aims to teach students how to take responsibility for their own technique by showing them how to strengthen good ballet muscles, increase flexibility, coordination, balance and control. Through careful practice and application of the principles to dance class, dance students will improve their technique, allowing them to jump higher, turn better, move faster, improve their balance, access their full turnout and learn how to use their upper back – ultimately they will feel more in control of their technique and dancing.
Pilates for Young Dancers €20 (inc tax)