Why I am passionate in conditioning dancers

Currently an adjunct faculty member for Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University, I have the opportunity to work with pre-professional students every day. The unfortunate issue is that when they arrive at the university their bodies are often broken down with muscular imbalances, past injuries, misalignments and compensated movement patterns produced from excessive repetition, faulty habits, or gaps in their technique training. It not that what they have been taught is incorrect training, but when the body only moves one way, i.e. their strengths or set choreography in multiple repetitions, it adapts. The muscles then that aren't being worked, atrophy or weaken and compensation sets in. The bodies muscles groups work in a balanced way. When one muscles fires, the other relaxes. When muscles are not fully activated, alignment becomes faulty, compensation begins and injuries are created. The lack of knowledge and understanding of how to strengthen, fuel and stretch the body is crippling young dancers with back pain, knee pain, ankle sprains, torn ligaments and muscles.

As a dancer I dealt with an eating disorder, fractured tailbone, extreme back pain with scoliosis, ankle impingement, shin splints and multiple sprains all before the age 18. After years of studying dance, health, strength training and nutrition, I know I can help dancers be more informed in how to prevent injuries, work efficiently with their bodies and expand their capacities as an artist and an athlete.

About Artistic Athlete

Artistic Athlete is a series of classes and workshop that teaches young/pre-professional dancers how to reinforce their technique foundation in order to prolong, maintain and enhance their dancing capabilities. A dancer’s body travels through extreme ranges of physical motion that require high levels of ability in a diverse collection of physical capacities: strength, flexibility, endurance,alignment, coordination and relaxation. Lack of proper activation of the core, aerobic endurance, stamina, misalignment and muscle imbalances are the leading causes of dance related injuries.

The workshops focus on:

• increasing strength for power, stability and flexibility
• increasing muscular and aerobic endurance,
• understanding anatomical alignment of the body
• nutrition and fueling the body for training and performance
• proper technique of stretching creating and projecting a healthy body image
• learning how to create a supplemental conditioning program that is cohesive for specific training.

If you have a specific question or topic you would like me to research and talk about, email through the website on the contact page or tweet @ https://twitter.com/art_athlete. Check out theartisticathlete.com for more info

Change your mindset to achieve optimal artistry and athleticism

This blog and website is dedicated to dancers to help them reach their full physical potential. I will share nutrition tips, workouts and anything and everything that will help you achieve optimal artistry and athleticism. This isn't your mom's or the everyday person health blog; it is a blog for the passionate performer, the explorer of movement, the physical risk taker, the athlete that wants to move effectively and efficiently, the artist that wants to move with power, strength, and endurance, and the mover that wants to continue moving. We are dancers. We are not just artist and/ or athletes. We are both. Often, dancers get caught up on the artistry, or the technique of movement and forget that before a masterpiece is created, the tools to create it must be working and functioning properly.

If you are thinking to your self, " I am an artist, not an athlete," then your mindset is abstracted from your body. An athlete is defined as a person who has a natural aptitude for physical activities. Just some of the physical activities of dance include: turning, spinning, spiraling, jumping, hopping, skipping, leaping lunging, dragging, jogging, balancing, kicking, pushing, pulling, slicing, carving, running, walking, swinging, and rolling. Of course you are an athlete, so change your mindset and start treating your body like athletes do! Professional athletes condition and fuel their bodies because they know that it directly affects their performance. Why don't dancers think the same way? Instead most dancers eat and drink whatever they want, forgo sleep and figure that rehearsal or class is enough movement to keep their bodies fit. If this is your mentality you will have a short dance lifespan. You will be rooted with pain and injuries from an early age. Do not be afraid to cross-train, learn how food affects the body and supplement you training. It will not take away from your formal dance technique, but rather enhance it.