By Doctor Nicola Sacchi - Author of the book: Functional training and unconventional tools
Each dance form engages the body in a different, characteristic and unique way. Therefore an athletic training aimed at physical improvement in a particular discipline must study its needs, energy and motor, and create a specific training to improve the skills concerned.
The first thing to consider is that the dancer moves to the beat of the music.
This means that the body of these athletes must move harmoniously to the rhythm of the dance. To achieve these movements you need musical sense and rhythm (which do not affect athletic training), but also coordination and agility.
A coordinated body is certainly able to follow the music better and agility allows even complex technical passages to be made simple and fast.
In the eyes of a jury, if we look at the competitive aspect, a coordinated and agile body performs the passages with greater naturalness and appears more pleasant to look at, consequently obtaining higher scores.
Agility and coordination are physical abilities that can be trained with specific exercises different from what takes place in technical training.
These dances are also characterized by being couple dances, which means that the dancer must coordinate his movements with those of his partner, facilitating his movements and thus making the dance easier.
This statement implies several considerations:
- Coordinate your body with that of your partner,
- Support the partner in his movements,
- To facilitate the partner in his movements,
- Don't be a burden to your partner.
Also in this case, in addition to the rhythmic sense, to move with the partner, it is essential to have a certain degree of strength, as the dancer's body is subject to loads deriving from the movements of the partner, consequently it is subjected to external forces that it must manage. with your own muscle capacity.
Furthermore, supporting and facilitating the partner means having sufficient strength to help him in his movements. In the more acrobatic forms such as rock n "€ ™ roll this becomes a particularly relevant issue. If we even think of break dance it is even clearer how strength plays an even more important role. However, even remaining in the context of standard dances, ability to support the partner obviously derives from the strength possessed by the dancer.
Furthermore, since dance is an activity based on the ability to perform harmonious and aesthetically pleasing movements, it is undeniable to consider how fundamental it is also the fact that the appearance of the dancer must be graceful. This means that the dancer's body must have beautiful shapes, tapered and elegant muscles, therefore a decent muscle mass, certainly not as extreme as for a bodybuilder but certainly it must be clearly visible. This also applies to women. It also needs to have a certain degree of thinness and definition that allows for more highlighted muscles and more pleasing shapes. It is obvious that in the competitive field belly in men and fat and flabby legs in women are not tolerated, therefore muscle strengthening is also essential to have a body objectively suited to the aesthetic rigor desired by the dance.
Organic resistance to lactacid activity is another requirement of the dancer, since the energy system most involved in the dance is the anaerobic lactic acid, as the dances generally last a few minutes. This quality determines the ability of the body to manage the necessary energies, to dispose of the lactic acid produced in the muscles and allows to reduce the breathlessness and the oxygen debt that occur when engaging this energy system. In practice it reduces the breathlessness and the sense of fatigue that is perceived at the end of an intense dance so to speak.
The sports dancer therefore has specific needs, therefore athletic training must guarantee the improvement of the physical condition in a specific way.
SUMMING UP
In dance the athletic skills to train are:
- Agility and coordination,
- Power,
- Muscle trophism,
- Lactacid resistance.
To plan an athletic preparation for these disciplines a period of 3/4 months can be considered necessary, obviously a good dancer will do athletic training all year round, except for the next few days the competitions.
