Pilates for Dancers …

Pilates can have powerful results in both, improving technique and in recovering from injury.

For most dancers, the greatest benefit Pilates brings is core strength.  The core is what connects your upper body to your lower body, keeps you balanced in your pirouettes, and allows you to move with ease and flow across the floor and through transitions.  It’s essential to ballet technique, and yet typically underdeveloped by the ballet class.  If the core is weak, other muscles, typically the hip flexors and lower back extensors, take over.  While it’s possible to dance like this, you’ll feel like you’re fighting yourself to get your extensions up, balance becomes harder to achieve, and you may be setting yourself up for injury later on.

A good Pilates especially with a dancing background (See Piloga’s Teacher Monica) instructor can help you find the right muscles and so, even if it’s only occasionally, I really recommend taking a class.  The difference between the right muscles and the wrong ones is subtle and powerful and will benefit your dancing to no end.

Here are some of the movements that you will experience in a Pilates class that will improve your dancing technique:

The Pilates Bridge: A great exercise to open the hip flexors and engage the hamstrings with core support.

The Roll Down/Roll Up: Sitting with your feet on the floor, arms out in front of you, exhale and roll your spine down to the floor.  Think of your spine as a string of pearls and try to place one vertebra down at a time, beginning at the lower back, through the middle back, upper back, and finally laying the head down on the floor.  Inhale to bring the arms up to the ceiling.  Exhale to lower the arms, reach through the fingertips, and peel yourself off the floor, one bone at a time.

Rolling Like a Ball:  Where your core does the work, not the back. Once you can do Rolling Like a Ball, add Open Leg Rocker.

Side Leg Kicks:  Once you have found that core with your roll ups and rolling exercises, then used it to stabilize your spine with the clam, here’s a fun series that will further strengthen the hips and train your core to be active while you move your legs.

Single Leg Kick (6-8 each leg): A great exercise for the upper back extensors and hamstrings.

Joseph Pilates has this famous quote – “In 10 sessions you’ll feel the difference, in 20 you’ll see the difference, and in 30 you’ll have a whole new body.”  If you do these 3 times a week for 10 weeks and you notice a difference in your dancing!