Yoga for Performing Artists...and staff! 6 Poses to Keep Stage Crew Bodies Happy

This is the last in a series of articles designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. This article focuses on stage crew. Previous articles have been written for marchers, dancers, and instrumentalists (not marching).

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Lifting Belt Controversy: Should You Use One?

This is the fourth article in a series examining low back pain in the performing arts. Previous articles examined the causes of low back pain, rules for safe lifting, and proper lifting techniques in the performing arts. This article discusses a commonly-used piece of safety equipment: the lifting belt.

There are many types of lifting belts, also occasionally referred to as “back belts.” The lifting belts most commonly encountered in the performing arts and athletic worlds are specifically designed for athletic use. These belts are designed to support the lower back while minimizing the extent to which they interfere with body movement. Conversely, some back belts are intended for people with specific back injuries or for manual laborers to wear at work. These belts may have suspender-like supports or may be made of inflexible materials, like hard plastic, which make it harder to perform athletic movements while wearing these belts.

Industrial Lifting Belt

Yoga for Performing Artists: 6 Relaxing Yoga Positions for Instrumentalists

This is the third article in a series designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. This article focuses on instrumentalists (not including marchers). The previous two articles were for marching band members and dancers. Check back for the series’ final article, focusing on stage crew.

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, improve aesthetic qualities of performance and movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Yoga for Performing Artists: 7 Ideal Poses for Dancers

This is the second article in a series designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. The first article was for marching band members.  This article focuses on dancers.  Check back for future articles for instrumentalists (not marching) and stage crew.

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, improve aesthetic qualities of performance and movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Yoga for Performing Artists: 9 Fantastic Daily Yoga Poses for Marchers

This is the first in a series of articles designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. This article focuses on marchers. Check back for future articles for dancers, instrumentalists (not marching), and stage crew.

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, improve aesthetic qualities of performance and movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Clothes that Burn Calories?

Some companies that sell exercise clothes make a lot of claims about the abilities of these clothes nowadays. According to ads, these clothes soak up sweat, keep you cool, improve your body’s functioning, and now, help you burn more calories.  With all these "specialized" clothes, shopping for exercise clothes can be overwhelming and confusing.

Not only are many of these claims unproven, but not all of the “perks” advertised by these companies are actually desirable for exercise clothes (or even good for you). If you are considering purchasing one or more of these types of special exercise clothes, make sure you research how the clothes go about achieving their claim-to-fame (if they do). Some clothes actually end up interfering with your body’s natural cooling processes, which can put you at risk of overheating while exercising.

Exercising Doesn't Have to Hurt! Dealing with Muscle Soreness

Anyone who has exercised or participated in physical activity likely has experienced soreness associated with these activities at one point. Colloquially, “soreness” may be rather vague and used to describe a variety of sensations and conditions. So the physical fitness and medical fields use the term delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) to describe the residual muscular pain or discomfort following unusual or excessive muscle use. As the name indicates, the soreness usually sets in anywhere from 1-5 days after exercise.

Resting from Activity

Many injuries need time off from physical activity to heal. However, this does not always mean completely stopping all activities and losing conditioning simply due to an injury.

Workouts at the Pool

Pool workouts are a great way to cross-train. But what do you do during a “pool workout”? Much like land-based workouts at the gym, you can do practically whatever you’d like. Exercising in the pool can improve your endurance, your sprinting ability (from a cardiovascular standpoint), your sprint endurance, or even your muscular strength and tone.

Fitness in Dance

Despite the fact that dance requires just as much athletic ability and effort as most sports, dancers are not as physically fit or healthy as most athletes of a comparable age and skill level. (This is even supported by dance research.) For the most part, dancers have a lower level of fitness because they do not overtax their system (essential for building muscle and improving cardiovascular conditioning) during class and most rehearsals. A dancer who does not exercise outside of class and rehearsal will not be adequately prepared for the physical demands of performance.

Four Great Reasons to do Pool Workouts

Performers often struggle with finding new and/or different ways to exercise without increasing their risk of developing an overuse injury.  Pool workouts offer an excellent alternative to working out in a gym with cardio equipment and weight training.

Here are 4 benefits to exercising in the pool:

Anaerobic and Aerobic Metabolism and Exercise

There are two types of metabolic systems used within the body to create energy for muscle contractions: anaerobic metabolism and aerobic metabolism. These metabolic systems are used to identify types of conditioning exercises, basing the classification of the exercise on the metabolic pathway supplying the majority amount of energy.

The most important difference between these two systems is the need for and use of oxygen to create energy. Anaerobic metabolism creates and uses energy without oxygen while aerobic metabolism, which converts glucose and fats into energy, must use oxygen.

My 6 Favorite Stretches for Dancers

Stretching can be used to achieve several different goals and at various points in a workout. As you read through the following list, remember to always follow the 10 Rules of Stretching! Here are my 6 favorite stretches for dancers.

10 Rules of Stretching

Stretching, both static stretching and dynamic movement, can be very helpful for a variety of reasons, as long as it is done properly. To ensure that you’re correctly performing static stretching to improve overall flexibility in the long-term, here are the 10 rules of stretching.

Cross-Training for Dancers

So far, you’ve read about the myths of working out, the most common misconceptions about exercising for dancers, and why you should stop believing those who say that running is bad for dancers. All of these articles discuss the varied beliefs surrounding cross-training for dancers. But what exactly is cross-training?

Cross-training is a term that has been around since the mid-80s and it simply refers to training in more than one sport or physical activity. The concept of cross-training came about as a way to address the shortcomings of sport-specific training, like muscular imbalances and an increased risk of developing overuse injuries. Cross-training is designed to improve the body’s physical fitness (cardiovascular fitness, muscle strength or endurance, flexibility, etc.) while reducing the negative effects of sport-specific training. Properly-selected cross-training routines can also fill in the gaps in functional ability that sport-specific training can have.

Static Stretching or Dynamic Movement?

You know that you should warm-up before you stretch, but how do you make sense of all of the conflicting information out there about static and dynamic stretching?

For decades, sports medicine practitioners and researchers have debated the effects of static and dynamic stretching. Unfortunately, it seems that every time new stretching-related research is published, its findings contradict the study that was published before it. The most important thing to remember when perusing the findings of all of these studies is that many of them are examining different outcomes: one study will compare static and dynamic stretching for improvement in flexibility while another study compares the two looking for any changes (improvement or decline) in athletic performance immediately after the stretch. Since studies are examining very specific effects from static and dynamic stretching, it is not always a good idea to compare these results to each other. However, the news media often does just that when they are reporting the most recent study’s findings, which leads to confusion.

Please, stop believing (and saying) that running is bad for dancers!

Dancers, especially those who take ballet, often hear that they should NEVER run as a form of exercise because it will do many horrible things to the body from a dance perspective. While injures can happen when you run, they can also happen while swimming, biking, dancing, riding in a car, walking in a shopping mall, getting out of bed, showering, or going up or down the stairs.

Most of the “reasons” why running is bad for you as a dancer have no basis of truth and some of them, quite frankly, just don’t make any sense. The vehemence with which dance teachers and some dancers argue against running is baffling.

Warm-up Before You Stretch

Most people know that you should warm-up before physical activity. But what you might not know is why. Keeping in mind that using a heating pad is not a substitute for warming up, a proper warm-up does not have to take very long or use much space or equipment for most performers, especially dancers. Dance classes are designed to start out with a warm-up-like component and gradually increase in difficulty as the class progresses. However, time and space are often limited in dance class, so dancers may not be able to perform a complete warm-up solely by taking class. Taking yourself through your own personal warm-up routine allows you to make sure that you’re ready to start physical activity, regardless of what that activity is and where you are.

Yes, dancers, you actually can (and should) exercise outside of dance!

The most common misconceptions about exercise for dancers and why they’re wrong

Dancers – raise your hand if you’ve heard someone say that exercising outside of dance is bad for you as a dancer. (Ok, now put your hand down because everyone who can see you right now is trying to figure out what you’re doing.)

No single article can cover all of the misconceptions and flat-out lies that surround exercising for dancers, but this article will attempt to debunk the most heinous ones that rear their ugly heads most often.

Debunking the Myths of Working Out

There are a myriad of myths and half-truths surrounding exercising and you’ve likely heard many of them – possibly even coming out of a friend or family member’s mouth. What follows is a list of the five most persistent misconceptions about exercising. You might be surprised by the physiology that challenges some of these beliefs.