I will be honest. Dance Stronger started as a healing process for me. This book, and the program accompanying it, are selfish ventures. They are the result of my need to understand the human body, and, more specifically, my own body and the many things I believed were “wrong” with it. It began as an accidental discovery- that strength training had positive benefits on my own dance performance, and that this (cross-training for dance) was something I was put on Earth to share with other dancers. I knew that it didn’t need to be an either/or choice: To dance but live day-to-day in pain, or to not dance at all. I knew dancers could have both, and I was set on figuring out how. This was something worth dedicating my life to, something that energized me and made me want to get out of bed every morning. At a pivotal point in my career it became clear that performing dance professionally was not for me, but I also I refused to let this get me down and prevent me

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from living another day less than wholeheartedly, as Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly, would say. Dance Stronger, became my new obsession and source of joy. As the Buddhist saying goes, “Live in just a happy frame of mind”. Dance Stronger is rooted in my experience in my own body, inspired by the clients I’ve worked with, and supported by evidence from several fields of study, not limited to the dance sciences, including strength and conditioning, neuroscience, the physiology and mechanics of breathing and respiration, physical therapy and injury rehabilitation, pain science, mindfulness and meditation, human behavior, human movement and biomechanics, and athletic development. It is time to stop looking at the world dance through the one, same, traditional, lens we’ve always used that limits us and our potential. Dance Stronger aims to take a multidisciplinary approach, considering the training and education of a dancer from many points of view, and at many levels. A well-rounded dancer requires a well- rounded approach to their training. Dance-only is dead. This book was written for the dancers who are tired of being injured. The dancers who are frustrated that they push themselves to their limits to improve yet still feel as if they are spinning their wheels, stuck at a plateau. And this book is for the dancers who want to reduce their risk of preventable injuries while performing at their highest level of dance, whatever that means for them. If you are reading this book, then my guess is that you will fit into at least one of these types of people:

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1) You are a dancer and, while you haven’t had any severe injuries yet, you’re curious about how you can use cross-training to improve your dance technique, strength, and efficiency of movement while preventing future injuries. You want to learn about the theory and philosophy of strength training for dance and to reduce daily aches and pains so you can experience the joy of dance to the fullest.

2) You are one of the many dancers who, sadly, has already experience a plethora of injuries, and you’ve finally decided you want to end the cycle. You want to overcome the adaptations created by these past injuries, regain the strength and movement quality necessary to prevent the same things from happening again, and dance better than ever before, for as long as possible.

3) You don’t really consider yourself a dancer, but you take classes, you love it, and you want to learn how to make your body more resilient so that you can continue to participate in this beautiful movement practice sustainably and at your optimum potential and for as long as you like.

4) You are a dance teacher and you want to share with other dancers, your students, your children, your friends, or your colleagues a more sustainable way to train for dance. You want to set a good example for what the future of dance training could look like, help your students learn safer dance practices, prevent

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injuries and educate yourself on what a strength training program for dancers looks like. Whatever category best describes you, I feel confident wagering that the keystone is that you are curious about how strength training can make you a smarter, safer, and stronger dancer. This book and the accompanying program were designed to enhance how your body moves and feels, however, this is just the beginning of what I hope becomes a life-long journey. A process of your own. And, as with any exercise program, everything works, but nothing works forever. The only certainty in life is change, and you will need to find new things to challenge yourself. This program may be just that- a change and a challenge, but don’t restrict yourself only to this resource. I encourage you, upon completion, to continue to experiment, to seek guidance from a trusted movement or therapy professional. Continue to use the exercises from this program that work for you and leave behind the ones that don’t challenge you and don’t change you. If you plan to participate in the training program, bear in mind that, whenever possible, I’ve done my best to include variations, regressions, and progressions for exercises in the training program, but this is not a customized program tailored to your individual needs. It is a general program for a specific population- dancers, but all dancers are individuals, and no program claiming to work for one population, such as dancers, swimmers, or mountain unicyclists, is telling the truth with such a claim. Nothing beats a custom-tailored

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program based on an initial assessment done in person by a qualified individual. This book was written on the fundamental premise that you were a human being before you became a dancer. Human motion is our birthright, but to dance is a privilege we must earn. It is my genuine hope that this program helps ignite in you a desire similar to my own- to take back your right to human movement and enhance your dance practice. Dance Stronger is a multi-media guide aiming to share a philosophy, perhaps one that is slightly different than the norm in the dance world, for developing strength that will support your dancing, help you to develop a greater tolerance to factors that can cause injuries, and help you dance sustainably at the level you desire.

If you are reading this it means you’re ready to take taken an important step that will help add years of healthy dancing to your life. Whether you are a complete beginner, or already have been dancing for decades, you’ll find that Dance Stronger will shine light on an alternative way to overcome limitations and plateaus that simply dancing more cannot help you with.

If you are like me, you’re eager to get cracking as soon as possible on this program, because you wanted to be stronger yesterday, but please, exercise your patience and read through the book before you start the first exercise in the program. The method- the training, means nothing without the philosophy to support it. Dance Stronger is

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an experiential learning tool to both change how you think about training for dance as well as give you the exercises to help you apply what you are learning from the reading. To paraphrase another Buddhist saying, as soon as you find yourself becoming attached to a method, drop it. The method is simply a finger pointing to the moon, not to be confused with the moon itself.

Keep an open mind as you read on. Put what you think you know about conditioning for dance aside for the time being. You can always come back to it when you have finished this book.

HOW TO USE THE DANCE STRONGER PROGRAM

From this book you’ll get my philosophy for successful supplementary training for dance. This philosophy applies to any type of movement form or physical activity you already participate in, including dance. While the Dance Stronger program was designed to be an efficient delivery system for embodying this philosophy, it is not necessary to participate in it if you already have a cross-training practice- Applying the philosophy from this book will be enough. If you are planning to participate in the Dance Stronger program (as I hope you will), I encourage you to go through this check-list before starting the physical execution of the program to make sure you don’t miss a thing:

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Dance Stronger Check-List for Success □ Read the book. I feel that without reading the concepts I’ve described in the written portion of Dance Stronger, you won’t have anything to apply to the physical execution. You won’t know why you are doing the exercises. Understanding the reasoning behind each exercise is incredibly important for your success. Please take the time to read through everything before you officially start the four week program. Read through, debate the rationale and only then, execute the moves.

□ Get an “okay”, if you’re injured, to participate in an exercise program. As you’ll read in the concepts chapter, you must not put a fitness solution on a medical problem. If you are in pain or injured, get a doctor or therapist’s opinion on whether training is a good idea for you at this time.

□ Log/sign-up at www.dancestronger.com. Browse around and check out some of the program modules. This is where you will find all the exercise tutorials mentioned in the book, as well as other tools and bonuses.

□ Get a feel for the structure and flow of the program. Take the time you need to review the next few chapters and make sure you understand what this program is and what it isn’t. Again, I strongly recommend you read through everything before starting any of Dance Stronger exercises.

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Here is a skeleton of the program’s physical execution (not including reading time):

Week 1 and 2: Explore Phase: You will learn more about Explore Phase, the physical preparation phase of the training program, in chapter 8. You will be using these two weeks to prime your system for the program, explore your body through honest movement, and establish a daily movement practice and start to journal about your experiences. You may also choose to re-read the chapters where you feel clarification is needed.

Weeks 3-6: You will perform three training sessions each week as outlined.

Yes, with the two weeks of Explore Phase, this ends up being a six week program.

□ Join the Facebook group forum. You can use the group forum to ask questions about the program and to share your own experiences working through the program. Having group support is key to keeping accountable to your goals and actually completing the four weeks of the program. If I don’t get to your question in the forum, chances are one of the program’s “alumni” can help. You can find the link to join the group in the member area of www.dancestronger.com.

□ Understand the “Outcome Measures” section of Dance Stronger. Choosing and tracking outcome measures is a part of Explore Phase

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(you will read about in Chapters 6 and 8). You will be selecting and monitoring one or two outcome measures before you start the program, guided by the Explore Phase structure. There will be more information on outcome measures in the coming chapters.

□ Get familiar with the breathing, and warm-up and movement preparation section. This is also part of the Explore Phase. Before you start Week One, Session One, it is a good idea to understand the exercises and structure of the warm-up. You will be working on these exercises during throughout Explore Phase and these are also the suggested warm-ups for every session of the program.

□ Complete the “priorities and goal setting” worksheet. Explore Phase also includes exploring your values and goals- an important part of the training program which will help you stick with it through the full course. You can find this worksheet in the appendix and at www.dancestronger.com when you log into your account. Take the time to sit with and write out the answers honestly.

□ Make sure you have the equipment and space you need. Do this before your first session so there are no surprises. Decide whether you want to do this program at home or at the gym.

Equipment you will need for the HOME program:

• Yoga/exercise mat

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• Kettle bell OR dumbbell OR sandbag OR creatively improvised weighted-contraption (between 15-45 lbs likely, depending on your experience and the exercise) • Balloons • Resistance bands (medium, likely) • Enough open space to roll around on the floor safely • Foam roller (optional) Equipment you will need for the GYM program:

• Barbells • Weight plates • Dumbbells/kettlebells • Resistance bands (medium, likely) • Enough open space to roll around on the floor safely • Foam roller (optional) • Balloons • Yoga/exercise mat

□ Plan your schedule. Set your training days in advance. Commitment will set you free. What’s the biggest reason people fail to reach their goals? Sadly enough, the answer is lack of consistency. Don’t let that be you. There are only twelve, 60 minute (+/-) sessions to schedule. You can do it. Book them as appointments with yourself. You wouldn’t cancel on an important client because you would rather watch TV, right? You are your most important client.

□ Before each training session, review the necessary videos. You can find the videos online when you log into your account. There is also a

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video reference sheet located at the end of this book in the appendix. It lists all the exercises in the program with key points for their execution. I encourage you to make notes in your own words, or pictures too.

□ Use the “Workout Tracking” sheets to record your progress as you go, or immediately following each session (these are available at www.dancestronger.com when you log into your account).

□ Complete the “Week in Review” sheet after each training week to reflect on how things feel. These weekly reflections help you to get the most out of the program. This is also a great time to log into The Dance Stronger group forum on Facebook (with close to 250 other dancers, at last count) to check in, encourage others and also to get feedback from members of the community. This review sheet is found at www.dancestronger.com when you log into your account.

□ Have fun, listen to your body, and enjoy taking care of yourself Which, of course, is the most important part.

If you have any questions please email me, post on the Facebook group forum, or hit me up on Twitter @monikavolkmar. I’d also love to hear how things go for you. Send me your #DanceStronger moments of glory. These fantastic moments will happen with your consistent, deep practice.

Here are some “ah-a!” moments from some program participants:

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“After finishing I felt great, I could feel that I worked, but no aches or weird pains anywhere.. I figured it would probably take a week or so to start feeling the effects, but I did ballet about an hour later (so it was like an extended warm-up for class) and man, I could not believe how much difference it made. I felt more 'secure' in my trunk, and it was easier to translate my teachers' corrections into my body. Next to that, I was able to BREATHE and watch my tongue, and it made a big difference in relaxing my arms. It felt like I had more time for everything, somehow.” ~Kim B.

“A month ago, I was lucky to land a decent double pirouette. Yesterday, I was miraculously pulling off QUADS to the right (I've only managed that once before). I'm not conscious of having changed anything really in the way that I'm turning, so I think it must be that I'm getting stronger and holding myself better!” ~Caroline B.

“Had a really big breakthrough today! I can actually get into planks and pushups the right way! I can still only do one pushup without having to reset, but it’s a start! I've always struggled with core activation, but with the warm ups and the breathing exercises, it’s starting to fall into place!” ~Samantha K.

“I feel honestly amazing. I'll be on the road this week, so I'm packing up my resistance bands and going to rock the home program out in hotel rooms. This breathing practice is one of the most remarkable things, though. I usually have such trouble sleeping through the night, but on days when I take the time to really sink into the breathing I am certain

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I sleep better. Maybe my resting state is just waaaaay too fight-or- flight! Working hard to make this a long term habit.” ~Adrienne R.

“I am having such a great time with this and I too hope to keep this going for a long time. My right hip was awesome yesterday in class/rehearsal. No tightness or pain! Feeling stronger!” ~Christina W. “Week 3: VOLUNTARILY doing multiple turns during an improv class. (I appreciate this means little to anyone who doesn't know me.) Loving feeling stable and strong. Also no longer carrying a tube of Deep Heat wherever I go, because my back isn't hurting any more” ~Elizabeth C. “I can say for sure that this week's positions have made a noticeable difference in my SI joint and TFL spasms… I can finally get my TFL to stop seizing up and my lower back no longer gets super stiff by the end of practice. In fact, I notice I can now finally do down dog without fear and loathing. Plus the best part is I finally feel all the feels in my lower back that yoga instructors have been trying to get me to feel for years. Wow what a difference. Overall I find I am getting more compression and extension in my muscles for rotational movement which gives me lovely expressiveness in my dance style. I can't wait to see what comes next!” ~Holly M.

My Story

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Before you start this program, or decide that it’s in your best interest to follow any of my advice, you may wish to know a bit more about me and how my journey started. Like any kid, I had a lot of crazy ideas about what I wanted to be when I grew up. First, I planned to be a forensic scientist, then a veterinarian, and even a rock-star (don’t remind me of the embarrassing attempts at song writing, I’m trying to forget them). Later, I remember more seriously considering careers in massage therapy, physiotherapy, and fitness, but, I also remember my parents saying, (and I don’t blame you, Mom and Dad), “being a physiotherapist is a lot of work. You probably wouldn’t want to do it”. As if being a dancer would be any easier. I find it funny, looking back now, that my parents, bless them, had a relatively backwards way of guiding me on my path compared to my friends’ parents. In fact, they were complete opposite: They encouraged me to get a dance degree (unlikely to help me become financially stable), and discouraged me from entering the exercise science world (well, maybe not discouraged, but they were quick to point out all the hard work it would require), which would be considered by many peoples’ standards to be much more lucrative. They even told me not to worry about getting a job while I was studying, just to focus all my energy and time on my dancing. I thank them, even today as I pay off my student loans, for their open- mindedness and support.

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Is majoring in dance easier than physiotherapy school? I could tell you all about how tough the dance world can be to succeed in (and I will), but I am foremost grateful that my parents encouraged me to choose dance as a career path. If I had gone to school to become a physiotherapist, I can say, without a doubt, that I wouldn’t have written this book, sharing with you now my own transformative experiences with rehabilitation, movement, and strength training. People need challenges in their lives to live their their true potential, but it is so easy to feel down when things aren’t going well, and so difficult not to become attached to those moments we feel on top of the world. We only realize in hindsight that difficult times serve a purpose, and that the “bad” stuff doesn’t last forever. The truth is that that there is no “good” or “bad”, everything simply is what it is now. Our perception can become our fate, and there is immense value in becoming aware of how we are thinking about our lives and our struggles so that we can dream the lives we truly desire into being. Rewrite the script. My journey, and my struggle, started when I was fourteen. I made a few conscious decisions that changed my life. First, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career as a professional dancer, which my parents fully supported. I wanted to be a ballet dancer, specifically, yet I realized that I didn’t have the ideal body of a professional ballet dancer, and I was already “too old” (having started ballet at 12). But I was determined. I was a hard worker and must have had some talent as I often did quite well at competitions and moved up to the top ranks of my school just a few years after starting.

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This led me to the second life changing decision I made that same year. I decided that food was bad, and that I needed to stop eating. In hindsight, my anorexia was a textbook case. It was the combination of the right social triggers and a type-A personality with an aesthetic career choice- a perfect formula for disordered eating. My dance teacher, though she was wonderful at teaching ballet, encouraged us to follow unhealthy practices. She told us to skip meals. She discouraged cross-training or participating in other activities and sports to avoid gaining “too much muscle” and interfering with our technical training, and she instilled in us a no-pain-no-gain, purist attitude towards ballet. She was always quick to point out if someone had gained or lost weight, and I was terrified of being singled out. I became insecure and hypercritical, judgmental of myself and others. I am sure my many of my classmates felt the same way that I did. I came to believe that my body would be the ideal ballet body if I lost 10 pounds or more, which I tracked obsessively. I believed that being thinner would somehow make my arms and legs look longer, and my muscles become more flexible. I wasn’t fat, or even close to being overweight. I was considered to be quite thin, actually. And then I hit puberty. Becoming a woman, I started gaining a normal amount of weight and I freaked out. I didn’t realize that anorexia is considered one of the deadliest mental illnesses, with nearly half of those experiencing it not ever fully recovering and with a mortality rate higher than most people realize. I thought it would be like an on/off switch and when I had lost enough weight I could go back to

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eating normally anytime. Was I ever wrong. Some people find it difficult to limit their food volume intake, but it took a lot more effort and practice to teach myself to eat regularly again than it ever took to decide stop. There is an incredible amount of talk backstage at competitions and shows about how thinner dancers have an advantage, and being young and impressionable, I believed it all. These beliefs included that that thinner dancers are more flexible, their limbs look longer, and the skinnier you are the better you can turnout (since there is less “stuff” in the way). Essentially, the thinner you are, the better dancer you were. It was as if we believed that by losing ten pounds our legs would grow longer, and our technique would instantly improve. Later, I learned all of this is was complete b*****t. As a young, naïve dancer, I came to believe that skinny meant successful so my dance conditioning became “anything to lose weight”. This is not a time in my life that I am proud of or particularly enjoy talking about, but it shaped who I am today, and I am not ashamed, but thankful for the experience and all that I learned. There were many downs, but no one would have guessed what I was going through because I was performing well in technique class, winning competitions, and doing well in school. I didn’t talk about it and I didn’t ask for help. I remember one day I got out of bed and immediately blacked out and fell back down. It was only for a moment, but I had lost most of my vision and was terrified. I went through breakfast half-blind, pretending everything was ok. Don’t ask me how I pulled off pouring my measly bowl of cornflakes in front of

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my family without being able to see one foot in front of me. I stayed home sick from school that day, saying I had a fever. I was scared, but at the same time proud of my commitment, sure that my dance teacher would be proud of me, too. Another time, after just competing, and winning gold at a local competition (a beautiful moment in which my brother was also on stage with me, playing guitar while I performed), I should have been happy, but I had a breakdown afterwards in a guitar lesson, bursting into tears for no apparent reason, leaving my my guitar teacher bewildered and uncomfortable. I had no energy. Instead of celebrating, I was crying from physical exhaustion, pressure, and the need to be perfect. I was only sixteen. I remember sitting in a class at school, zoned out, wishing someone would ask me what was wrong, tell me that I was thin enough, good enough, and smart enough, but I was too scared and too proud to ask for help. My hands were always shaking. I was constantly worried that my stomach would growl too loudly and would give away my condition in the quiet classroom. I dreaded lunch-hour, and worried about running out of excuses for not eating. I didn’t tell a soul what I was going through. My parents, bless their souls, had their suspicions, but I didn’t tell them, and they didn’t interfere. They let me live my life and make my mistakes, a choice I thank them for now. I remember that while I wasn’t suicidal, I had lost the desire to live. I would hope, as my mom drove me to and from dance classes, honestly hope, that we would get in a car accident so that I could

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finally rest and stop fighting with myself. I wished that I would not have to worry about being perfect anymore. I didn’t really want to die, I just wanted a way out of my situation. I wanted help, and an excuse to get away from dance for a while, but I didn’t know how to ask for that. Later, at age 22, I got what I wanted. Let’s skip through the rest of my daze that was high school and fast- forward a few years to when I entered Ryerson University’s dance program, still pursuing “the dream”. I was just starting to make some progress in overcoming my eating and body image issues. Though I was eating regularly I was still very unhealthy and had even more insecurities about my body after having gained back a lot of the weight I’d lost through disordered eating. In my first year, I wasn’t enjoying my time at Ryerson. It was my dream to go there, so I thought, but something wasn’t right. It wasn’t that the program was bad, it was an amazing experience and the quality of training was incredible, but I wasn’t happy. I needed love. I needed energy. I needed options. And what I needed most was a break from dance and all the crazy things it made me feel. I needed to be free from all the perfectionism, criticism, and competition of dance. And, in truth, the program wasn’t for me. I sometimes thought that perhaps I should have listened to the nagging feeling and desire to quit, but at the time didn’t want to face the truth or let my parents down. I realize now that while my intuition was correct about the program, sticking it out was a very important part of my process.

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In my third year I suffered my first real injury, and I say “real” because it was the first time I acknowledged that I needed help with rehabilitation, and that I shouldn’t dance through it. I had been injured severely enough before to have had to take time off from dance, but It is interesting how easy it was to dismiss their severity and forget about them in hindsight. I had experienced injuries and chronic pain prior to this injury, but it is funny that I never considered that to be “wrong”. It was completely normal. I once had a dance teacher who even told us “to be a dancer is to wake up every day and be in pain”. She made it seem that you should be proud of each injury since injuries are a sign of hard work. During my early anorexic days, I started having hip pain that visibly affected the way I walked. In fact, I couldn’t walk properly because of this hip pain, and I thought it was okay. I learned that as long as I walked with a funny leg circumduction to avoid the painful range of motion it didn’t hurt as much. I could convince myself it was not serious and could get on with my dancing. I argued with myself saying that I didn’t need physiotherapy, I just needed to avoid feeling it. Of course I couldn’t have realized that this choice to limp rather than rehabilitate would still affect me ten years later, preventing me from weight bearing on my right leg without hip, knee and sacroiliac joint, and lower back pain. No one told me that an old injury sticks around until it is treated and faced head on. I had also had a bad fall in which I simultaneously landed hard on my tailbone and gave myself whiplash. It hurt just to breathe and move my arms for a few weeks, but still, I

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didn’t consider this to be an injury that needed attention and soon forgot about it until many years later. My physiotherapist wasn’t helpful for that first “real” back injury. I had simply chosen the clinic that I walked by on the way to class out of convenience. I didn’t know anything about what made a clinician effective, and kept coming back to him. I stuck with him because he was convenient and kind. I enjoyed going to see him, I trusted him to fix me, and, if I’m being honest, a part of me just enjoyed getting some attention and feeling cared for. He was a physiotherapist, chiropractor, and registered massage therapist. I perceived all his certificates and qualifications to be a good thing, and it wasn’t until later that I wondered, “Why didn’t he just focus on one thing, and do that one thing really well?” His treatment strategy was the same every time I saw him- he would massage me, ultrasound me, put me in the traction machine, use an electro-stimulation machine that made me giggle uncontrollably, all the passive modalities available. I even remember him saying something along the lines of, “I’m not really sure why you’re not getting better, so we’re just going to throw everything at it and hope it helps”. Only knowing what I did at the time, I felt positively towards this approach- It made me feel special, that my injuries were special and unfixable, and made it easy to take the responsibility of healing off of me. If he can’t fix me, I must be unfixable. Permanently injured, in pain every day, just like I was taught a successful dancer should be.

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My parents, ever the voice of reason, insisted that I should be doing exercises, not just passive therapies, but when I asked for exercises to help me strengthen my back, he always replied that I didn’t need any and just to keep coming back for more of the same treatment. He never tried to help me move better or how to help myself. He didn’t try to educate me on how to prevent future injuries in the future. But, because he was a nice guy, I trusted him to fix me and he let me down. Sadly, I see many other people going through rehabilitation being let down in a similar way, having worked for a time at a large sports medicine clinic with this same passive, disempowering treatment approach. It saddens me to hear frequently that this still happens to dancers. And we, as artists, often don’t know better, and are unable to advocate for our own health. Later on that year, I had a neck injury (a sternocleidomastoid strain) on the opening night of a show in which my choreography was to be featured. I couldn’t move my neck in one direction for three or four days. The most ridiculous thing about this injury was that it happened in bed, while half asleep. That this injury happened while I was relaxing, should have been an important message to me. I went to the chiropractor referred to by none other than a dance professor at Ryerson. I trusted my professor, and so, implicitly, I trusted the chiropractor. My experience with this chiropractor, however, was terrible, and his treatment made things worse. I paid for the treatment out of my own pocket, with no more health care coverage to use, and too guilty to ask my parents for more money for rehabilitation that wasn’t working.

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I gave up on getting treatment for my neck, rested another day, and then went back to dance, even though I still couldn’t move my neck. Add this to my funky hip and lower back, and I was learning a whole new vocabulary of movement strategies with the primary goal being to move around pain and ignore it when it hurt. Naturally, things got worse, not better. In my fourth year at Ryerson, I had two more back injuries. One time, I was stuck lying on the floor in vocal class because I couldn’t sit or stand. No one asked if I was okay, or offered to help me until the end of class when someone finally realized I couldn’t stand up on my own. I was still too afraid to ask for help. Someone drove me home, and the next day I went back to the same old physiotherapist. Unsurprisingly, nothing got better. I went back to dance the next day, performing full out, pretending I was fine. Then, near the end of my fourth year, I had a hamstring injury that I couldn’t dance through. I limped back to the same physiotherapist. Guess what? It didn’t get better. You’d think I’d have learned, but I didn’t know what else to do, and I didn’t know how to ask for help. This was the injury that both ended things and started things. I’d finally had enough of this cycle. To rewind this story, concurrently while dancing at Ryerson, I started “working out”, something I hadn’t done before. I’ll admit my goals were not to become better at dance. They were much more vain than that. I worked out for the same reason as why most people exercise- I

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just wanted to look better. There is no shame in that, but I was still dealing with some heavy body image issues, however, and now that I wasn’t starving myself, I used exercise in an obsessive, excessive way as an attempt to control my body-weight.

When you have an eating disorder, it sticks with you for a long time. Maybe forever. Eventually, the rational part of your mind recognizes that starvation doesn’t work as a long-term strategy. The illogical voices get quieter, but they still speak to you, sometimes in a whisper or sometimes a shout. It gets easier to observe what they are saying without reacting, but in times of high stress and low energy, it is so much easier to do what they tell you to do rather than think for yourself. Starting to strength train was a tipping point in my recovery. In my third year at Ryerson I began working at a gym in a customer service position, and was inspired to get over my fears of the weight room and try lifting weights. Discovering what it felt like to develop strength after years spent deliberately making myself weaker was incredible. I couldn’t believe the difference. Celebrating what my body could do and not how it looked was a paradigm shift for me. I learned that it was ok to become more- increase the weight I was lifting, try to do more repetitions, and build muscle, rather than trying to become less. Training to become stronger taught me how to eat in a way that nourished me. If I wanted to become stronger, I needed to eat regularly, and be more aware of the types of foods I ate. Until then, I had only done cardio, and excessively, with little to show for it than sore knees. I was so intimidated by the muscle-bound men

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in the weight room that it literally took a few months just to talk myself into stepping in there. But when I did, there was no turning back. I had done a little research on how to lift weights, and I started a pretty standard routine; albeit, I was doing an exercise regime which I would consider far from optimal. I didn’t do squats or deadlifts because I had read somewhere that women shouldn’t do heavy lower body lifts, and that they should stick with sprints on the treadmill to avoid building too much muscle. This was a mistake. Not having great sprinting technique, this is likely to be a contributing factor in my hamstring injury. Then, I became good friends with a trainer who started to help me. He became a casual mentor to me and showed me that when creating a weight training routine, it was important to address some imbalances in your structure. He repeatedly instructed me to pay attention to my alignment while I was lifting. Things I thought I knew, but that I relearned in a more fundamentally human, and less dancer-like, way. What I didn’t expect to happen was that after about a month of training the way he was showing me, my dance technique began to improve, and everyone was noticing. I could turn better, balance better and even jump higher. I felt more grounded. Teachers noticed, too. They asked me what I was doing to improve so much in the past few months. I had to be careful answering this question, because my ballet professor at Ryerson was still of an “old-school” mindset, and so were some of the other teachers there (former professional ballet dancers). I didn’t know if it would be a good idea to tell them I was

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lifting heavy weights. In the mind of many dancers from older generations, “squats” is a bad word, and so I felt it was safer not to reveal anything. “I guess I’m just starting to understand my body better”, I told my ballet professor, which was true. “Good,” she said, “Keep doing what you’re doing.”.I did. That conversation is what planted the early seed for The Dance Training Project in my mind before I recognized what it would become. I imagined what could happen if I actually learned how to train effectively for optimizing my quality of movement for dancing, and my passion for learning about strength and conditioning for athletic performance grew. I also knew that I needed to share this information- all dancers should know how good being strong feels, how empowering it is, and how it will help support their dancing. So while I was unable to dance because of my hamstring injury that was not healing, I realized I had an important choice. Feeling helpless was a choice. Self-pity was a choice. I distinctly remember writing the words, “This time, I will not let an injury defeat me. This time, things will be different”. I was inspired, even if I had no idea what “different” looked like. Inspired, in fourth year, I started working towards getting certified as a personal trainer. Unfortunately, the personal training course that I needed was a disappointment. I had spent $500 to learn that the bicep machine targeted the biceps. I wanted more. But at least I was legal to work with people. I took more courses and read as much as I could to learn about the body, functional anatomy, and how an athlete should train to perform better and prevent injuries. One thing I

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do thank my physiotherapist for was that he lent me a textbook that ignited a passion for learning about optimizing physical performance: Lower Back Fitness and Performance, by Stuart McGill. As I mentioned, the physiotherapist truly was an amazing person. He knew I had an interest in learning how to heal my body; he just wasn’t able to facilitate it. At the gym, the management didn’t take my interest in becoming a personal trainer seriously, despite becoming certified to work and taking their required training courses. To this day I don’t know why they didn’t choose to let me work as a personal trainer, telling me that if I wanted to be a trainer I’d need to go do more continuing education and just to get another part time job until I was ready, and then, the following week, hiring several new trainers who were not yet certified, with no experience. It was a slap in the face. So, angry with my work at the gym, and with encouragement from my boyfriend at the time, I did what seemed to be the only logical thing. I quit my job at the gym to start my own business.

And just like that, The Dance Training Project was born. Unable to dance, I spent the last three months of my final semester at Ryerson learning about the body, observing my peers, planning my business, scoping out gyms in which I could train future clients, and then, the day after our final day of classes I started the first Dance Training Project summer training program. I still don’t know why people actually trusted me and signed up, but I am still working with some of the dancers that started with me that first summer.

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So here I am, a little self-conscious because I admit that I am largely self-taught. The “fraud police” is a term I first heard coined by Amanda Palmer in her beautiful book, The Art of Asking. (I highly recommended this book if you’re like me and find it difficult to ask for help). The “fraud police” describes feeling such as “you don’t deserve to be doing what you’re doing”, “you should get a real job”, “you’re not qualified enough”. The “fraud police” will find you. But these feelings of insufficiency can be transformed into inspiration to keep learning. . Despite the negative experiences I had in my dance training, I have no regrets, and am extremely thankful that my parents encouraged me to follow my dreams of being a dancer and lovingly helped me pay my way through those disastrous and beautiful years. For a long time while in school, I had intense, chronic feelings of guilt. I was starting to realize how harsh the world of professional dance was and that I was just too sensitive to be in it. I wanted to get out but I didn’t want to let my parents down, as I felt quitting would do. They had invested so much time and money in me. The guilt was destroying me, but so was dancing at the time. Eventually, I did get what I wanted, but it was forced on me because I refused to make the choice to leave dance out of my own will.

I often wonder to myself if the guilt, the self-hate, the depression, the anxiety, and fear were as much contributing factors for my injuries as the physical factors: Overuse, poor nutrition, and lack of recovery

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time. It all needs to be considered, mind and body, in dance training. A holistic, biopsychosocial view, as they say. It wasn’t dance that hurt me. It was me that hurt me. My choices. The way I allowed myself to react to the challenges that everyone goes through. I see my guilt differently now. I see the other side of the coin, on one side guilt, and on the other an overwhelming gratitude for all the lessons and experiences. Dance Stronger is the result of transforming the guilt I felt for years into a tremendous gratitude. So, while I didn’t go to physiotherapy school, I learned something equally valuable. I experienced first-hand the degradation the body can undergo from a dance career based largely on neglect to care for myself. And I learned how use these experiences to heal, move forward, and serve others. I told myself, after my hamstring injury, that I would never take having two legs for granted again. Being able to walk is a beautiful thing, it makes us human. If I can’t walk, I feel like I am a less complete human, and human-me is more important than dancer-me. To do the splits and show off with back-bends... I care less for that now. You are a human being first, and a dancer second. To recognize this will keep you alive in the dance industry. This is an important distinction in priorities. After the lower back injuries and then the hamstring injury I went through a crisis that I’m sure most dancers eventually do: If I have to take a few months or years off dance, or have to stop for good, am I still a dancer? And if I’m not a dancer, who am I? Even if you take seven years off, you are still a dancer. It’s difficult to remember this. It

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is a practice of non-attachment to the identity of being a dancer. All dancers will have to face this eventually, and to do it while still healthy and dancing is preferable. Now you understand my reasons for wanting to dance stronger. I think that you, too, have your reasons for wanting to read this book. Please take a few moments to write down your reasons before you continue reading and starting the training program. What’s your “why”? What is it that has ignited you to want to learn more about strength training to support your dancing? What is inspiring your desire to become the best dancer you can be? Whatever your reasons, I encourage you to set your intention to gratitude now, and before and after each session. Each time you dance, thank your body for its capacity to move. Thank your legs. Don’t take any body part for granted. Thank all. But don’t get too attached to your pointy feet, either. Whatever you do next, I hope you will make a commitment to take care of yourself and #DanceStronger.

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CHAPTER 1

Rants As you will remember from my story in the previous chapter, years ago, the universe conspired to teach me a great lesson in self-respect and I became quite bitter about the dance industry and my experiences with it. Well, time has soothed that bitterness, and I remain passionate about connecting dancers, teachers, and therapists with information about strength training for optimal dance performance. Information I needed but didn’t get in time. There is this gap in the world of dance between what is the truth about how our bodies were designed to function, and what we are told to do with them. Within this gap is information that links the athlete with the artist; the dual identity a dancer must have. There is a black hole that exists where there should be an appreciation for a dancer’s fundamental physical needs, and a vast chasm that separates what we

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understand about the nervous system and how it copes with stress, and how a dancer’s training is structured. It is my personal mission to fill these gaps- ones that I have tripped over and fallen into one too many times. While I am no longer bitter, I do feel these gaps are worth ranting about. Partially for my pleasure in unloading, in part for your entertainment, and in part- for those of you for whom this is completely new- to begin to fill in the gaps by drawing your awareness to the need for change. We can’t blame teachers because much of what dancers need to learn is beyond the scope of practice of a dance teacher who’s role and education- if they had one beyond performing- is to ignite in their students the love of dance, convey technique and artistry, and coach the dancers through choreography. There needs to be more than this to a well-rounded dancer’s education. Again, we can’t blame the dance teachers for an entire system that is flawed. With the dance training system currently in place, the misinformation, unsound beliefs, and unsafe but normal practices, it almost seems as if a dancer needs a team of people behind him or her just to survive. This faulty system is just one of the gaps, but because of gaps like these in a dancer’s education- unless they are very fortunate- it is inevitable that some aspects of their training may not go smoothly. Injuries happen. Burnout happens. Careers end earlier than they would have otherwise. The joy is sucked out of what used to be a healing, pleasurable, fulfilling form of movement and expression.

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What seems to be quite common is that a dancer might have all the artistic potential and physical foundation to become great, but lacks confidence and a sense of who they are. Often, dancers are not challenged to develop personally and spiritually, or to have physical education or movement variability beyond technique. These missing links can lead to plateaus in training, confusion, and injuries. The way the dance industry currently operates frustrates me enough to write an entire chapter dedicated just to rant about the way dancers are trained. I am very optimistic about the future of dance education and it is not my intention to convey bitterness. I rant to bring light to the things we can change. I feel that I have permission to rant because, as you will read, I have much more to contribute that I do to complain about. The rule: Ranting is not warranted unless you have something actionable and productive to follow up with. I hope you will see these as my (and hopefully your) motivation to create change, not perpetuate pessimism. It is my hope that my ideas resonate with you, and that you don’t take offense. As dancers and educators who work with dancers, we need to understand these issues and do our best to guide dancers through them. As part of the Dance Stronger teacher training seminar, we discuss these rants in more depth, and bring their solutions to life. Einstein said, “Dancers are athletes of god”. The level of physical, mental, and spiritual ability and commitment they need to succeed is beyond any athlete I know; unworldly (good genetics help, too). So why are there so many gaps in the training of dancers?

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Let’s dive in.

RANT 1: “Remember to breathe!” Ah, breathing. We (dancers and teachers) know that it is important. We know we can’t live without breathing, and anyone who has performed knows what it feels like to come off stage gasping for breath with the realization that we’ve had been holding our breath for nearly the entire time. Beyond these obvious realities, little emphasis is ever placed on the “why” or the “how” of breathing in a dancer’s training. This shows how far behind the world of dance is in adopting what is the most fundamental concept in training, rehab, and general health. The medical and strength and conditioning teams of certain major league baseball, football, and basketball teams, for example, are being increasingly guided by the neurology, biomechanics, and physiology of breath, and include training the breath in their athletes’ performance and therapy programs. They know the important correlation respiratory function has with nervous system regulation, recovery, and physical performance. In dance, far behind as we are, the most instruction we’re likely to receive is: “Don’t forget to breathe!!” Often stated urgently. Dancers are rarely trained how to unravel breathing discord that could be keeping them in an injurious cycle, how to breathe for enhanced performance, or how to breathe to recover and optimize nervous system function. In my mind, this is a mistake.

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The instruction to breathe is not the same as experiencing how to breathe.

RANT 2: Develop long lean muscles and don’t bulk up. I will lead into this rant with a quote from Misty Copeland’s biography, Life in Motion, in which she describes being perceived as too big to be a ballerina: “Finally, the ABT staff called me in to tell me that I needed to lose weight, though those were not the words they used. Telling already thin women to slim down might have caused legal problems. Instead, the more polite word, ubiquitous in ballet, was lengthening”. I have worked with some university dancers who have been told explicitly that they should not do exercises like squats because they create “unsightly bulk”. This same bulk-fearing dance teacher often tells students that if they are working “incorrectly” in class their muscles will get undesirably big, and that the reason professional dancers are “long and lean”, particularly with reference to their quads and other leg muscles, is because they are working more correctly. This to many uniformed dance teachers, often means that they are somehow not using their quads at all (which is rant #3). To set the record straight, to make a muscle longer requires that the bone also become longer, stretching won’t accomplish this. To make a muscle “leaner” requires wasting of the tissues through disuse and

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caloric deficit, a particular style of exercise can’t do this, no matter what the claim may be. To make a muscle bulky requires intentionally training with high repetitions, high volume, and moderate intensity (like a body-builder would choose), while eating heaps of protein and carbohydrates to create a caloric surplus (more in than out). In dance the stimulus to the muscles is not at all sufficient to create extreme hypertrophy (aka “bulk”), but it is enough to create hypertonicity. If ballet does make ballet dancers bulky, then we would probably see more bulky ballerinas. Whether a dancer develops larger muscles is influenced strongly by genetics, and other forms of training they have done prior to, or in conjunction with their dancing. Misinforming dancers these truths often does more harm than good and can lead to feelings of shame which, along with other negative emotional experiences, research is correlating with injury risk and inability to cope with injury.

RANT 3: “Don’t use your quads!” It feels like I have this conversation with every dancer in the beginning of our work. In dance, the quads are such a misunderstood muscle group. I’m not expecting every single dance teacher to understand the anatomy of movement, but one does not need to be a biomechanist to appreciate in one’s own body that to dance without using your quads is impossible. What I am referring to is the common cue to “lift the leg from underneath, using the hamstring”, not the quad.

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Try it right now. Lift your leg up to the front with a straight knee. What do you feel lengthening? What’s shortening? I hope you have come to the conclusion that the hamstring must lengthen as you lift the leg. This is not opinion, this is how the human body operates. This idea that the quads must not work to lift the leg must have been a cue lost in translation. Indeed, when one has a certain feel for the movement, it seems as if the leg is being supported from underneath as it lifts, and I believe that this feeling is the origin of this cue. But a feeling and an image should not be confused with the reality of how the body actually functions. I understand that quads (and other superficial hip flexors) are easily over-recruited as part of a movement strategy for many dancers. However, this is an issue with the timing of the movement, not that the muscle itself is to blame for doing its function a little too well. Unfortunately, being told that we use our quads too much and need to stop using them in favor of muscles that cannot possibly perform their same anatomical function can be confusing and incredibly disheartening, let alone impossible. Instead of demonizing a muscle group, we need to give dancers more movement options in their training which will retrain patterns of moving to improve the timing of how they use their quads (but not just the quads) in relation to other muscle groups. The quads are a very helpful muscle when they are working correctly for us, not one that we should wish we could make disappear, waste away, or surgically remove.

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RANT 4: The Static Stretching “Warm-up” I find it ironic that several of my injuries occurred during warm-up, entirely defeating the purpose of warming-up. The quality of the warm- up is a useful measure to ascertain the quality of a dance class, and this is why I find it so difficult to attend many drop in dance classes beyond a select few. Teachers and dancers alike are guilty of warming up ineffectively. In the warm-up and movement preparation chapter I’ll go into more detail on this, but for now suffice it to say that static stretching is not warming up. Despite an enormous amount of evidence stating this, the world of dance seems to be slow to adapt. Even if a dancer comes to class early to perform their own, intelligent, dynamic warm-up, if the class starts with stretching exercises and the body is allowed to cool off, the effects of warming-up can be undone. When the warm-up is too laden with long duration stretching this can lead to reduced performance, injuries, and is a waste of everyone’s time.

RANT 5: Exercising to the beat of the music To their credit, some dance teachers do make an attempt to include strength exercises in their classes, however, good intentions alone do not produce results, and can sometimes cause harm. We are not aiming to turn our dance technique lessons into dance fitness classes. Dance fitness is not the same thing as fitness for dance. What I am referring to

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are silly things like asking dancers to perform push-ups, crunches, and other exercises done with no regard to quality, to the beat of the music (and throwing them into a warm-up that, up to that point, had been predominantly stretching-based, as in rant 4). I conduct a movement screen with all the dancers I work with. There are only several that stand out in my memory as being able to successfully perform the FMS (Functional Movement Screen) trunk stability push-up assessment, which requires the screenee to perform a push-up from a deadstop position on the floor. If a dancer cannot do one decent push-up (which is described in detail with progressions and regressions in the Dance Stronger training program), then how can we expect a dancer to do 16 push-ups with good technique to the beat of a song that is too fast? This shows great neglect and disrespects the reality of the dancers’ current abilities. And we wonder why the dancers aren’t getting better at push-ups despite the fact they do them in class all the time. For any strength exercises we bring into a dance class, as a teacher we need to: a) understand how to perform them ourselves b) describe proper technique c) offer appropriate regressions and progressions when needed, and d) allow the dancers to work towards a goal number of repetitions at their own tempo without pressure to keep to the music.

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If these are not possible or sound unreasonable then, as a teacher, consider not giving strength training exercises to your dancers. Stick to your scope of practice. As a dancer, you have the right to choose to participate, modify, and ask questions about what you are being asked to do.

RANT 6: Being shouted at to relax Being aggressively told to relax is like getting a massage from a therapist with long nails, or who uses pressure that is too deep. While the soft tissue work might be beneficial for us, the sensory input is nociceptive (relating to sensing pain and danger), triggering us to tense up to protect ourselves. These cues to relax that are delivered in a shrill, sometimes aggressive tone, and that bring our flaws to the forefront of the class, tend to make us tighten up in a defensive response despite our best efforts. What may be even more important than the cue itself (“relax your shoulders”, for example), is the tone and context in which it is conveyed, the choice of words to convey it, and the appreciation that this tension might be serving the student, and is something that might require more than a cue to relax. Perhaps some work outside of class. Perhaps some breath-work before class. Perhaps three extra hours of sleep every night. Visualize yourself at the barre, standing in first position. Your teacher notices you have your shoulders up to your ears as you attempt to plie, doing your best not to stick out your butt or your stomach, and without falling on your face to boot. As she walks past you, she urges, “Relax

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your neck! Get your shoulders down and stand up straight. You look like a hunch-back. And don’t forget to breathe!”. I once received an email from a dancer who told me she had received the cue to drop her shoulders so many times that she dislocated a rib from repeatedly trying so hard to pull them down. I was often given the cues: “Relax your face! Don’t look so weird”. All these accomplished were to make me feel self-conscious. Consider that a dancer’s enactment of your cue speaks directly to the efficacy of the cue itself. If a cue for a dancer to relax her shoulders and pull them down creates so much tension in her system that she injures herself, then we need to deliver those cues differently. If your cueing makes a dancer feel bad about herself, her abilities, or her physical appearance, this is crossing a line. The difference between coaching and adding undue stress to someone’s system may be just one word.

RANT 7: Thinking that going to physio just once is enough Dancers often feel invincible; particularly when preparing for or during a performance, they have the ability to completely dissociate and disregard the severity of their pain. Many of you will know exactly what I’m talking about: To be on stage and completely forget about being injured because of the adrenaline rush and endorphins, the desire to perform and to not let down the other dancers, the choreographer, or yourself. Because of this dancers will often avoid seeking care until the last moment, until things hurt too much, and they have run out of options. At this point, the therapist might recommend rest for a period

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of time to allow recovery which is often not heeded. Many times the dancer will not return for another visit for fear of facing this truth, which would mean not making technical progress and being left behind their classmates while they recover. Denial- a reaction to the devastating suggestion that they might need to stop dancing, even if only temporarily– is a major reason many dancers fail to follow through with treatment, which often leads to incomplete recovery from injuries. It seems like the mindset of many dancers is that the act of going to the appointment is the important part, not what happens in or after the therapy session. Sometimes in life, just showing up is what matters, but not when it comes to rehabilitation or changing the way you move. This is misguided and foolish thinking. Rehabilitation should be treated as deep practice, not a passive experience, and not a practice that you can master after one or two tries. What if overcoming an injury was a skill, and you dedicated 10000 hours to mastery? Take the story of a dancer I had in a class once who went to physio twice, received manual therapy, some passive modalities (possibly a complete waste of time) and a few exercises (which she didn’t do), and considered herself “good to go” simply because she showed up to therapy appointments. She still has knee pain, but because she went through two physio sessions, she’s done “all she can”. While showing up is important, actively engaging in the process and learning to unwind patterns and create change in the body and mind are the point of therapy, a point she completely missed.

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It is sad that many dancers miss this key point. With the studio and stage calling, and the fear of their peers dancing without them, many dancers do not see their treatment through to the end. Don’t just show up to rehab, actively participate and see it through to the end. See becoming pain-free as a skill to master, a skill that takes deep practice, and take ownership of the process.

RANT 8: Being told “suck in your stomach”, or “don’t stick your butt out” It is a shame that, in an industry known to place a strong emphasis on aesthetics, many dance teachers use cues that can make their students feel physically inadequate. To be told to suck in one’s stomach can make an already self-conscious dancer feel fat, and to be told not to stick out their butt can make them feel like their behind is too large. Neither of these cues provide useful input for creating the change in movement the teacher wants to see. Rather, these well-intentioned corrections are more likely to make the dancer feel judged, ashamed of their body, and to stiffen up, shut down, and lose the flow state which is required for them to be learning, growing, and moving without self- consciousness. Cues such as these can also encourage patterns of moving that can become problematic over time, such as paradoxical breathing (discussed further in chapter four), or excessively tucking the pelvis, both resulting in holding excess tension. What we’d like a cue to accomplish is to allow the dancer to be completely present with a

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feeling or a concept, without distracting thoughts of self-judgement, or the creation of a compensatory movement pattern that may cause other problems. To observe their body non-judgmentally is the only way to open the possibility of making a change. Cues to “suck it in”, and “tuck it under” do not fit the bill, and, as teachers and educators of dancers, we need to be aware of alternatives that serve our students. We can do much better.

RANT 9: “You have a weak core” I have yet to work with a dancer who has, him or herself, claimed to be strong. At some point in their training, despite their incredible physical capabilities, many dancers learn that they are “weak”, often because a teacher has told them so. As an industry, I feel strongly that we need to find an equivalent word to replace “weak” in our vocabularies, and follow up with that observation in a constructive way.

Many dancers, in an initial conversation, will express what is a common thread in countless other interactions I’ve had with dancers: They feel they are “weak” because a teacher has told them so. More specifically, that their “core is weak”. So they do core exercises recommended by teachers, they do crunches and planks and bicycles, and they work harder in class. Some classes even incorporate “core” work into the warm-up. So then why are they still weak? And perhaps a more important question, why do they believe that they are weak?

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When a dancer hears the “w”-word, it becomes their reality and, if this belief persists, part of their identity. “I am weak” becomes a self- limiting mantra that a dance teacher rarely has a remedy for. Being told you are weak is not motivating and, being told you are weak without being given a plan of action, a referral, or guidance can fix you in a mindset that your permanent reality is one of weakness, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.

When dancers do truly the lack the physical representation of strength, it is important to tag on “right now” to the end of that sentence, indicating to the dancer that this lack of work capacity is capable of changing if they take action (with what I hope would be the encouragement and guidance of someone qualified). I suppose this is where the role of educators and trainers with missions similar to my own becomes important. I have worked with dancers who are very strong, but have been told they are weak to explain a technical insufficiency or pain symptom. These dancers are often not weak, but are using their strength ineffectively because something’s blocking them: An issue with movement mechanics, a breath holding pattern, or an old injury that hasn’t been treated, for example.

Understand that weakness and a timing issue are not the same thing. Weakness and neuromuscular connectivity are not the same. Weakness and a mobility limitation are not the same. Weakness and the simple need to recover are not the same, though they may be represented in a similar way. Having a “weak core” seems to be the go-to diagnosis

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when a teacher doesn’t know how to guide the dancer more specifically, and I’d like to see this change.

RANT 10: Little emphasis on personal development, growth, and stress management I suppose this is true not only for dancers, but for many athletes, and us as a species: The neglect of personal growth and spiritual development. Our own issues, the things we avoid dealing with, can trickle down into any and all other levels of our lives. We cannot separate the mind and the body. Consider that personal problems become business problems, and, since dance is our business, taking care of our psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs is as important as training our bodies. If we do not know who we are, what is important to us, and have little awareness of what thoughts dominate our minds, we are stagnating our progress as artists and athletes. It amazes me the number of dancers I’ve consulted with that are completely unaware of self-limiting mindsets, and who do not know what is important to them, in their lives and in their dance practice. Their minds are pervaded by negative thoughts- “I doubt whether I can make it as a dancer”, “my body is just stuck this way, I can’t improve it”; they have forgotten why they began dancing in the first place. and they are not even aware that this has happened. We need to encourage dancers to ask the important questions: “who am I?, and, “what is most important to me?”. As they reflect they will learn to dance like themselves without the constant comparison to

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others, understand why dance matters to them, and have a method, such as meditation, to center their minds when the pressures of dance cause them to lose sight of why they started to dance. It will allow them to make appropriate choices, not ones based on negative self-talk or “shoulds”. We all started dance for a similar reason: Because we loved how it felt to be in our bodies, to move and express ourselves without words. Because it made us truly enjoy being ourselves and being in our bodies. Dancers must also be able to feel this without escaping into dance, but while in stillness, and moment to moment everyday of their lives. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of what a dance teacher can provide, and beyond the scope of this book, but just to bring this to your awareness may be a useful starting point.

RANT 11: Unconsciously creating a negative environment through word choice and body language I have been fortunate to have experienced both ends of the spectrum: I’ve had a nociceptive dance teacher who’s very presence instilled a sense of fear, superiority, and condescension. And I’ve had teachers with a sound understanding of neuroscience, functional anatomy, and the impact words have on our subconscious minds. The latter teachers foster a nurturing environment of learning and nonjudgmental development, finding you walking out of class feeling incredible, but are much rarer to find. A dance teacher’s most important job is to create a positive experience in which the dancers can explore movement, learn and grow. A teacher

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who projects cues of danger through their tone of voice, facial expression, body language, choice of words, or, explicitly through condescending, negative comments, will be limiting their students’ abilities to learn and improve. The teacher is inhibiting the students from ever leaving a sympathetic nervous system state, one of “fight or flight”. A teacher who triggers this defensive reaction in the students is not teaching, but intimidating. As teachers, we must be constantly aware of how we project ourselves, speak, and the overall experience we create for our students. Are we allowing them to enter a flow state? Are we creating a positive experience for growth to occur? We must have this awareness, or what we teach will not be absorbed, and we are wasting everyone’s time.

SOLUTIONS WORTH RANTING ABOUT In the rest of this book I hope you will find some clarity and some potential solutions, so that you don’t need to rant about your dance training, like I am. As I mentioned, I don’t believe people have any business ranting unless they have a follow-up for it. This book is my follow-up. It offers tools to not only survive the dance industry (and the misconceptions that create the “dance world”), but to learn to dance stronger, in a more sustainable way, and enjoy every thriving moment of it.

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CHAPTER 2

Unwinding Dance

If I were to describe the philosophy of this book in two words, it would be the title of this chapter: Unwinding dance. Even if you decide not to participate in the Dance Stronger program, if you read this chapter and are able to apply this philosophy to your dance or movement practice, I feel my work is done. This philosophy is the embodied appreciation of how moving honestly in our bodies and exploring natural movement

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can lead to a more sustainable dance practice, whether you want to perform professionally, or simply to experience the utmost joy from your dancing, at whatever level that is. For inspiring this chapter, I must give credit to man I am grateful to have as a teacher, Chris Sritharan of Anatomy in Motion™; a man who never wastes a word. Something he once said, in quite a nonchalant manner, changed the way I work, and stuck in my mind as one of the most important ideas that we, as dancers and athletes, should consider from the beginning and throughout our training and careers: “Human movement is trained, human motion is not… If you’re going to engage in a sport that is not natural human motion, just make sure you have a strategy to unwind it.” ~Chris Sritharan

From that statement, there are three important questions to consider:

Is dance “natural human motion”?

What is “natural human motion”?

What does it mean to have a “strategy to unwind”?

Let’s explore these three questions in more detail. This section will use some technical language that may require you to use an anatomy text or app as a reference if you are not familiar with some of the terms. Dance Stronger is not aiming to teach you anatomy or biomechanics, rather, it is focused on sharing a philosophy on

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supplementary training for dance. I encourage you to look up unfamiliar terms when necessary.

IS DANCE NATURAL HUMAN MOTION? Nearly all dancers, parents, and teachers in a room will laugh and say “no, dance is definitely not natural human motion.” I remember one young dancer going into a rant about how Graham technique is the most unnatural thing one could do with their bodies (although we later discovered in the workshop that there are aspects of Graham technique that are very “human” but that they can become distorted by layering on other more complex ways of moving). Some will say that turnout is not natural, nor that the deep backbends dancers are often asked to do. And certainly, pointing our feet is cannot be natural for our bodies. How is it then that our bodies were designed in a way that allows us to perform them? Are they really unnatural? For example, hip external rotation, turnout, is an essential movement necessary in all but two phases of the gait cycle- The motion itself is completely natural for our bodies. What can make it troublesome for our bodies is the degree of external rotation we demand in some dance forms, like ballet, used out of context with how our bodies are set up to rotate our hips while we walk. This is a subtle, but important distinction. The motions we use in dance in and of themselves are not unnatural to the human body (remember, if they were, no human would be able to perform them). Issues arise due to the extremes to which dance takes these movements, far removed from how our brains understand how to use them for pedestrian locomotion, and the frequency and pride

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with which dancers perform them. That often results in being stuck in a motion as a position–stuck turned out, or stuck with a “banana back”, as I hear it referred to.

WHAT IS NATURAL HUMAN MOTION? Interestingly, dancers seem to be able to describe what natural motion is not, but have no idea what it is or what it should feel like. They may describe natural motion as using parallel rather than turned-out positions. They know that the degree of flexibility they train for is not natural, nor is going on pointe. Two important terms which will be used frequently throughout this book are natural human motion and fundamental movement patterns. For this book’s purposes, natural human motion refers to joint motions that naturally occur in the human gait cycle and in fundamental movement patterns. These are the motions essential for smooth execution of larger movement patterns. Observing human motion is “zooming in” to the individual components of a movement pattern. For example, the knee bending, the spine extending, and the foot pronating are human motions that are discrete components of the squat pattern, as well as the shock absorption phase of gait when our foot hits the ground. All such motions the human body is capable of performing serve an important purpose and need not be feared or avoided. No human motion can be labeled “bad” or we would not have been designed with the ability to perform it. Embracing all movement with non-judgment allows us to move with a complete map of our bodies. Perhaps foot pronation is the cause of one person’s troubles, but

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pronation is not “wrong”. Often the foot pronation is simply happening at times, in quantities, or for durations, that do not serve the person’s movement patterns. This causes the body to find creative coping strategies that may not feel comfortable or may become problematic over time. What was once a solution to a problem can become a problem itself. Fundamental movement patterns refer to full body patterns of movement, motor control within movement patterns, and competence of basic movements uncomplicated by specific skill. These movements can include squatting, lunging, stepping, bending, rotating, crawling, rolling, and walking. When we look at larger patterns of movement we are “zooming out”. Some of these global movements were described in detail by physical therapist Gray Cook through the creation of the Functional Movement Systems™ screening and assessment tool, and used for evaluating injury risk, limiting factors in performance, and exercise contraindication, Cook’s book Movement explores in further detail the importance of maintaining these movement patterns for optimal performance and health. “The movement specialty should be the goal, not the starting point” ~Gray Cook

WHAT MAKES A STRATEGY TO UNWIND? When I ask for examples of strategies to unwind, very few dancers have a clear idea of what this should be, or how to include one in their busy

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schedules. Only one or two hands raise to show that they actively participate in some form of cross-training or self-care to support their dancing. We can see that there is a problematic gap here. Dancers know intuitively that what they are doing with their bodies needs to be balanced with more fundamental forms of training, but lack the understanding of what that might be and how to go about doing it. Rather than confront this problem, dancers often find it much easier to avoid it, choosing not to think about what could happen should their bodies fail them, particularly if they have never had serious trouble with their bodies before. I asked at a workshop once, “What would it take for you to value cross-training just as highly as your dance training?” The alarming answer was that it would take injury before they started to value the health of their bodies, and even then, I have seen dancers become injured and still not cultivate compassion for their physical state. They don’t yet see the value in supplementary training. Their incredible talents and trained physical control as dancers often create the sense that they can do anything, and withstand any duress. Their passion for dance and the power of their will is all they need to be invincible. This mindset is summarized by Sally Fitt, author of Dance Kinesiology in words that every dancer can relate to, also known as the “indestructo phenomenon”: “Dancers who have never had a serious injury can fall into the trap of assuming their bodies are indestructible, that they can never

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become injured.” ~Sally Fitt Indeed, the power of the mind is incredible, but sheer will and passion can only take dancers so far should their foundations fail them. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to will the body to perform physical feats it is not prepared to do. Performing through injuries can be draining and dangerous, but will and passion make it possible, ironically, traits dancers are also praised for. Choices such as these have repercussions but, too often, dancers power through, living only in the moment. Yes, being “in the now” is important, but it is important to ask the question, is powering through pain and ignoring the body’s signals to get through a performance, truly living in the present moment? Or is it fantasy, avoiding reality, with no awareness of the truth of the situation? An important distinction to make. Some dancers say that for them it is a meditation to dance, but for most of them, dance is more of an escape from reality, which is the complete opposite of meditation.

DANCE LIKE A HUMAN What’s missing from a dancer’s training is the reminder that they are first humans before they chose (or the choice was made for them) to become dancers. This needs to be respected. Gary Ward, creator of Anatomy in Motion, in a seminar discussion on how his work can help athletes perform better encouraged us to ask: “Do you need coaching in your skill or to master body mechanics?” Dancers who keep adding more technical, dance-specific, training will cease to improve if they cannot also appreciate the simple beauty and benefit of practicing the

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fundamentals of human movement. The highly complex movement skills learned in dance often disguise imbalances in basic human movement patterns. “Fundamental does not mean lowest level, but of highest importance.” ~Unknown “Unwinding dance” is the philosophy of Dance Stronger. Unwinding means to provide the dancer with options to move in ways that have been forgotten or denied in favor of dance-specific movements. We can reclaim these missing movements and by doing so improve the way we perform technically. Through the practice of fundamentals that enhance body mechanics we reduce the risk of injury. Unwinding does not refer to replacing dance-specific motions with basic, non-dance motions. The goal of unwinding dance is to provide the dancer with a wider movement vocabulary. An expanded movement vocabulary allows the dancer to avoid becoming stuck in one position or limited patterns of moving learned by focusing only on dance specific movements. The practice of unwinding gives dancers access to the full spectrum of movements a human body is capable of executing. These include the ability to compress and decompress joints, fully flex and extend their spines, turn in and turn out their legs. Being able to complete all these actions through the ability to access all available joint motions as needed, makes dance more effortless. In dance, we often are trained to perceive any movement that is not dance-specific to be “bad”, but there are no right or wrong, good or

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bad ways of moving. Movements only become potentially problematic when we get stuck in them, or can’t access them at all. A young aspiring professional dancer asked me in a workshop if back-bending was bad to do, to which I replied, “Only if you can’t get out of it”. Becoming stuck in one pattern or position to a degree that you cannot leave it will increase strain on all your body’s systems. This will reduce your movement options, performance potential, and ability to recover. In this paragraph we have been indirectly discussing a concept called movement variability, an important idea that will be discussed throughout this book.

MOVEMENT VARIABILITY When we strip away the technical skills a dancer possesses, it is common to find that entire movement patterns, and joint motions, and even entire planes of movement seem to have become completely forgotten and inaccessible. This equates to a loss of movement variability, which has been shown to correlate to sub-optimal performance and increased injury risk. Why does this happen? Movement variability refers to an optimal amount of variance within global movements, due to the infinite changing conditions that occur before, during, and after the movement task. Let’s illustrate this with an example we can all relate to. Picture yourself walking down the street. Suddenly, something shiny catches your eye over to the right. With your eyes in the other direction, you don’t see the uneven patch of concrete and you roll over the outside of your ankle. Two outcomes are possible, you either sprain your ankle, or, you come out completely

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unharmed. Some might say that luck was the key factor determining your fate. Maybe, but what is more likely in outcome two in which your ankle does not sprain, is that your body understood how to get out of the ankle roll (inversion) because it had been there before in a more favorable, safe situation, which did not historically result in an ankle sprain. You and your ankle had the option to get out of the inversion moment because that motion was in your body’s present vocabulary and you knew how to use it reactively without thinking. This is an example of possessing movement variability, and using it in real life.

Movement variability is a huge component of movement quality, and means having multiple strategies for joint and segment interaction to accomplish the same movement. This is valuable in case something unexpected happens like the uneven patch of pavement in the ankle sprain example. An optimal level of movement variability requires having access to tri-planar (three dimensional) movement in optimal ranges that can be used instinctively, without thinking, when you want or need it. Optimal movement variability enhances how you perform and keeps you safe while you do it. As described in the article, Human movement variability, nonlinear dynamics, and pathology: is there a connection?, loss of movement variability can:

…result in systems that are less adaptable to perturbations, such as those associated with unhealthy pathological states or absence of skillfulness. ~N Stergiou, LM Decker, 2011

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We can link optimal movement variability with a healthy function of our autonomic nervous system–parasympathetic and sympathetic. This allows us to relax when we need to (parasympathetic dominant) and to mobilize ourselves into action when necessary (sympathetic dominant). (We will discuss the implications of healthy autonomic nervous system function on dancing in the following chapters). Evidence also shows us how higher movement variability reduces risk of injury, or, at the very least, is correlated with non-injured states.

What may seem paradoxical is that dancers are exposed to a high variety of movements in their technical training and through choreography, and one could assume that dance training alone would imply a high level of movement variability. This is not the case. Just because a dancer, or athlete, can make skilled movements look impressive and pleasing aesthetically does not automatically mean they possess the fundamental quality and variability to perform them safely, efficiently, and sustainably, or without extra compensation. I also suspect that in some cases, dancers, particularly those who are hypermobile, often have so much variability they don’t know how to use it. Too many options can be just as troublesome as not having enough. Dancers need to be prepared for infinite movement options because they never know what a choreographer is going to throw at them. A common example is a professional ballet company hiring a contemporary choreographer who may ask the ballet dancers to move in a very different style than their habitual ballet. This can increase the instance of injuries. Despite the technical prowess these dancers possess, they just aren’t prepared for the new physical demands.

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As dance teachers we need to be aware that strong technical skill does not equal adaptability, fundamental movement quality, or general strength. However, adaptability, movement variability, and physical strength create the potential for stronger technical skill. . FACTORS INFLUENCING MOVEMENT QUALITY 1. Early specialization. One cause of the susceptibility in dancers for decreased movement quality and variability could be early specialization, also common for other aesthetic athletes like figure skaters and gymnasts. Sometimes as young as two years of age, dancers (or their parents) may decide the child will focus solely on dance, and exclude other sports or activities. In other athletic populations there is evidence suggesting that early specialization is not necessarily linked with long-term success, and may even be correlated to increased risk of injury. The challenge is that early specialization is appealing and encouraged because dancers want to master their art as early as possible. It is a fact that in dance performance, like gymnastics and other sports, one’s “best” years happen before 35 or 40. However, committing so early in life to a highly specialized way of moving at the expense of other forms of movement does not allow the dancer to develop a foundation of general physical preparedness, or a strong base of functional movement and strength. The performance pyramid, pictured below, is used to represent the way we’d ideally like to see an athlete develop. Beginning with general movement preparation, moving to athletic performance development (strength, endurance, speed, power, etc.), and finally focusing on skills

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and techniques specific to their sport, in this case, dance technique. Contrary to the pyramid recommendations dancers often start their training focusing on specific dance technique skills –pliés and tendus– from day one. In this scenario building a general foundation of movement and the athleticism to support it is neglected.

2. Use it or lose it Looking at early specialization from the perspective of the brain–from which the intention for movement is created–dancers, from a young age, are unlearning natural human movement. This is called “learned nonuse” by neuroscientist Edward Taub. “Use it or lose it” is the simplest way to describe this phenomenon called neuroplasticity. When

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we use our brains in a particular way, we create new neural circuitry, and the more we use these circuits, the better and faster we get at firing them. This also works in reverse: if we stop performing movements, skills, or tasks, these neural circuits become weakened like muscles we stop using. We can call this neural atrophy “learned nonuse”. Therefore every skill– including social engagement, confidence, optimistic thinking, athleticism, strength, and other physical talents– can be learned with practice. When we “unlearn” movements through disuse, motor maps weaken and atrophy, and different areas of the brain begin to reorganize their function. It is not simply that muscles atrophy and weaken when we stop using them, but that the brain itself can unlearn and shrink areas that aren’t being stimulated regularly. The part of the brain that usually would be responsible for coordinating a particular movement can be reassigned to do something else. This plastic property of the brain both serves and disserves us. Neuroplasticity is an incredibly useful feature, as it means we can change our brains and our bodies regardless of how old we are (yes, even if you feel “too old” to learn something new, like dance, or how to heal an old injury, neuroscience proves that you can). There is, however, a critical period when we are very young during which making changes is effortless, and this is why early specialization is coveted in the dance world. However, we also see dancers who have started at a much older age, like Misty Copeland who took her first ballet class at age 13 (considered “old” for a ballet dancer) and began dancing

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professionally soon thereafter. The point I wish to make is that if we can unlearn it, we can relearn it. The brain is hardwired to adapt and change based on the inputs we give it. Everyone can reclaim movements that are missing from their systems. Relearning these fundamental movements can help dancers move more effortlessly, build strength safely, and open them to new options in choreography and performance. 3. Quality vs. quantity of practice An important consideration is that when a dancer hits a plateau in training, the cause and solution may not be related to training quantity. Do we need to add more hours of dance-specific training and rehearsals? Or is evaluating whether or not there is a limitation at another level, such as general physical preparedness or athleticism, preventing them from excelling a more useful course of action? A little known fact is that rest from activity is considered a component of fitness. Many talented dancers fail to see the necessity of recovery. Dancing “harder” isn’t the same as dancing better. No matter how many extra nails you use to hold a house together, if it has no foundation, it won’t stay upright for long. I fondly remember a favourite ballet teacher of mine, Christine Wright, advising our class one day, “If something isn’t working, don’t just do it harder”. When trying harder isn’t helping, additional hours of coaching and practice may not be the solution. Perhaps the dancers lack a foundation of movement and work capacity that should have been formed before

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they started dancing. If this is the case, there is still time to change that now.

COMMON ADAPTIVE CHALLENGES IN DANCE Dancers are incredible adaptors. To dance, we must recognize that our bodies will adapt to accommodate the movements we ask them to perform, for better or worse. We could spend our lives feeling down about our bodies, bitter about the stress we put on them, and regretting the sacrifices we made for the sake of art. However, these adaptations are something to be celebrated, not a cause for negative feelings. Knowing that these adaptations were necessary for highly specialized movement and are simply the result of being stuck in a particular pattern for too long without any strategy to unwind, we can arm ourselves with strategies to interrupt these patterns, making way for new helpful adaptations. Dancers who wish to perform their best would benefit by making use of supplementary strategies, such as the ones described throughout this book and the Dance Stronger training program. Learning to unwind from dance and reclaim missing human motions will allow dancers to unlock the full movement potential they possess. Benefits of this process include less frequent injuries, faster recovery from injuries, and better overall health. The following are some of the primary adaptations and challenges in movement that dancers often experience. We will explore these in more detail in further chapters of this book.

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1) Breathing pattern discord The demands of dance, if left unchecked, can challenge a dancer’s ability to breathe well, something all dancers can appreciate. Breath- holding or over-breathing (breathing an excessive volume of air for the physical demand) are both closely related to optimal function of all the body’s systems, including movement and static posture, nervous system regulation (i.e. stress management), immune system, and endocrine system. Breathing supports homeostasis, the return of the body’s systems to a sense of “center” so it can cope with change and challenge. When the ability to breathe well is disrupted, the potential for performance and recovery is affected. Over time, and without awareness and management, dance training can contribute to breathing discord in the following ways (we will discuss these in further detail in the chapter four): ● Training of very extended postures and movements, such as backbends, that can affect position of the spine and ribs, which directly affects and is affected by how we breathe. ● Using cues like “suck in your stomach”, which encourage dancers to breathe into their chests while sucking in their stomachs, can lead to ineffective breathing patterns. ● The tendency to hold the breath when movements become physically challenging, changes the position and resting tension of the diaphragm, the body’s most important breathing muscle. ● High volumes of work with little recovery time in a dancer’s training schedule can cause an increased rate of breathing (over-

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breathing), keeping the resting heart rate higher, and contributing to muscle tension. ● Forcing turnout can create an even more exaggerated extension posture- lordosis (by anteriorly tilting the pelvis and extending the spine) which creates further breathing discord due to the ineffective position of the pelvis and ribcage. These challenges will tend to affect how dancers use their diaphragms. An important muscle for respiration, the diaphragm also influences rib movement, spinal stabilization, and neuroregulation due to its innervation by the vagus nerve, which helps mediate the state of our autonomic nervous system (ANS). The demands of dance listed above can bias dancers to use the diaphragm less for breathing, and more to stabilize their spines, often through the strategy of breath-holding. When respiratory demands increase and the dancer is not able to use the diaphragm optimally to breathe, they will need to use secondary respiratory muscles, such as neck muscles, creating increased tension at the neck and shoulders. The hips and back will also hold more tension limiting their range of motion. As the diaphragm pulls the spine into a lordosis, this interferes with the resting position of the pelvis, ribcage and skull, and the length of all the muscles attaching to them. This muscle tension cannot be “stretched out” since it is helping the dancers breathe. It cannot be released until the diaphragm is given permission to return to a more useful function. When the dancer is unable to exhale fully, the vagus nerve is rarely stimulated leaving the dancer in a perpetual state of low level chronic

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stress (increased sympathetic nervous system tone). This inhibits the ability to learn and recover effectively, and causes strain on the immune system. We also see many dancers who have inadequate aerobic capacity. However, if their primary muscle of respiration, the diaphragm, is being over-used as a spinal stabilizer, adding supplementary aerobic training alone will rarely be effective. In fact it can feed into their problems creating more tension, more sympathetic tone, and more strain on their systems. We will explore these ideas in more detail in the Breathing chapter (chapter four). Understanding how these limitations hinder dancers’ abilities to perform many fundamental movement patterns, improve elements of fitness, and excel in dance specific skills, we can recognize the importance of providing opportunities to experience proper breathing mechanics as part of technique class. Something as simple as five minutes of breathing practice before class is one of the most useful things we can do to help dancers preserve their physical canvas.

2) Extension bias in many dance styles By “extension bias” I do not mean the ability to lift the leg up (extension being the term dancers attribute to leg height, regardless of lifting it front, side or back). Throughout this book, we will refer to the biomechanical definition of extension, which has little to do with leg height in développés. By extension we mean the global joint motions and resulting muscle reactions that happen together when the spine is extended (into a backbend) in the sagittal plane–our forwards and

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backwards plane of movement. The bias to perform extension in many dance styles can cause dancers to become “stuck extended” at rest. If we don’t have a strategy to unwind this pattern, staying “stuck extended” causes the muscles that act as extensors (most of the muscles on the back our bodies) to hold high resting tonus (become more hard at rest). This can result in losing the ability to do the opposite movement–flexion. Recall the dancer who asked if backbends are bad? Losing an entire plane of motion at the body’s most central structure, the spine, can wreak havoc on the body. In fact, in the human gait cycle, the spine should maintain a relatively flexed state save for one brief moment lasting between 0.6 and 0.8 seconds in which the spine extends to help us absorb shock as the foot hits the ground. Becoming stuck in an extended position at rest poses challenges for basic human movement as well as specialized dance movements. During a two month period in which I held movement screening sessions with a group of university dancers who trained primarily in modern, ballet, and jazz, I did not see one dancer who could posteriorly tilt their pelvis (tuck under) or flex their lumbar spine (round their back) past neutral. Nor could they completely exhale to flex their thorax, moving their ribcage down and in, out of a flared, extended position. In other words, none of them could get out of extension. Even using maximum effort they could not move beyond neutral. Ideally, one should be able to move easily in and out of both flexion and extension (important natural human motions that are in the “fundamental

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movement” tier of the performance pyramid). You will be exploring this in your own body in the movement exploration that is a part of Explore Phase in the Dance Stronger program. Neither extension nor flexion should be a maximum effort event. If it requires maximum effort to move the body into neutral when simply standing, uncomplicated of dance technique, this will manifest when dancing as a high level of resting muscle tension, limited mobility, feeling “tight”, fatiguing quickly, and poor spine segmental control. All the core exercises in the world won’t help if an entire plane of motion is limited as such. The aesthetics of dance are not likely to change anytime soon. The strong bias toward extension-based movements is inherent in dance and has to be respected as a necessary part of the art form. In fact, many dancers love back-bending and it is seen as an asset to choreographers. What is important is that dancers become aware of the challenges this action can create for their bodies and understand how to manage it. While back-bending is actively trained in dance, achieving an equal range of forward-bending, or flexion, is rarely worked on and, over time, dancers can lose access to this motion from disuse. Remember, we have a “use it or lose it” brain ruling our movement potential. To actively train flexion would be one way to unwind this bias for extension. Exhalation couples (happens simultaneously) with spinal flexion and ribs moving down, and so, training the breath is important not just for respiratory fitness, but for movement quality and variability. As an experiment, take a big mouth-breath in, hold it, then

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bend down to touch the floor. Start again, take a breath, but this time exhale completely as you forward bend to the floor. For many of you (unless you are hypermobile), exhaling should have made it smoother to reach the floor, or have increased your range. The inability to exhale fully, as discussed above under breathing pattern discord, contributes to the inability to flex through the trunk and depress the rib cage from its flared and extended position. Recall extension isn’t bad, but can become troublesome when we can’t get out of it or we use it as a strategy to achieve all movement. It is a necessary and coveted movement in dance that does not need to be exiled or feared. However, having just one choice is no choice. All the extension we train needs to be balanced with strategies to reclaim the option to also achieve flexion, unlocking both ends of the spine’s movement spectrum. Extension is useful for dancers and athletes. This was put into greater context for me by physical therapist Michael Mullin who does amazing work with dancers in the United States. Mullin states that extension can be useful because it: ● Creates a sense of stability ● Allows more freedom of movement ● Encourages increased levels of muscle tone ● Builds more confidence While these are excellent qualities for dancers to possess, to rely solely on being in an extended posture to achieve them can interfere with the ability to breathe and use the core effectively, affecting all movements.

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It places greater strain on the musculoskeletal system, and encourages excess activity from the sympathetic nervous system, thus reducing ability to recover and perform. Extension must not become the only option. Mullin explains, “The stability perceived is through joint compression. The freedom of movement gained encourages joint torque by bringing areas of the body to end-ranges. The increased levels of tone are muscles and tissue that are doing more than they are supposed to and have difficulty turning off to rest. The confidence gained, while important and valid, exists at the expense of the aforementioned factors.” Neurologically, extension is associated with increased sympathetic tone, as it compresses and puts a brake on the vagus nerve which, when stimulated, helps us achieve a state of health, growth, and restoration (one role of the parasympathetic nervous system). Higher sympathetic tone refers to a fight or flight stress response and dominance of hormones like adrenaline and norepinephrine that mobilize us into action when we sense danger or need to get something done fast. Higher sympathetic tone suppresses the parasympathetic nervous system, making it impossible to relax, recover, and learn optimally. Like extension, the sympathetic state is necessary and useful for high intensity activity, like dancing can be, but it is not beneficial to become stuck in this state. Homeostasis, at every level in the body, is impossible when the body is stuck in an extended posture.

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Attempting to flex the spine should not be a maximum effort event, and maximum flexion of the spine should take the dancer beyond neutral without strain, not merely to neutral, or just shy of it. We can help dancers greatly with their performance and recovery simply by helping them appreciate the need for full spectrum spinal mobility, and by providing strategies for them to reduce over-extension and to experience flexion. We will explore some of these strategies in the Dance Stronger program. 3) Foot and ankle adaptations The ankle and foot are two of the most commonly injured areas of the dancer’s body for reasons we will explore in this section. The average human being is lucky to get through life without spraining an ankle just stepping off a curb, but for dancers, avoiding this injury is somewhat of a miracle (although I personally never had a foot or ankle injury- Either I must be a miracle, or statistics must not be absolute rules). Unfortunately, we are somewhat limited in how we can help dancers with lower leg injuries compared to other athletes. First, the choice of footwear is very limited. Dancers cannot choose to wear “high tech” footwear to better support their needs. No amount of technology will make pointe shoes “good” for one’s feet. Rigid tap shoes, ballet slippers, and other shoes that are often worn too tight and do not allow the feet to move. Or, if they dance barefoot, which is not a bad thing in itself, this can become problematic if the dancers must work on hard, unsprung, or otherwise inadequate flooring, and have insufficient body

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mechanics to absorb shock. One of the worst environments I have been asked to perform in was on gravel in ballet slippers. Second, the dancer’s the foot and ankle must adapt to perform unnatural positions and ranges of motion, like winging, pointing, and rolling over the tops of the feet, particularly in classical forms of dance, creating a functional stiffness that serves them well for dancing, but not for other fundamental movements. The foot has 26 moving bones and 33 joints–the same number of joints as our spines. We can infer from their structure alone, so many movable segments, our feet must designed for movement. We can speculate that the adaptation of the foot to become stiff, moving as one large chunk, a foot bone, rather than 33 articulating segments, is quite useful for dancers for pointing their feet, executing many relevés, or standing on their toes. However, as this chapter is committed to communicating, adapting too far in one direction without strategies to manage and experience another end of the spectrum can cause issues. As with other areas in the body, movements of the foot and ankle are susceptible to learned nonuse, and, unless we had something happen during our development, it is a case of forgetting what we once could do. This can be attributed to several factors common in dance training: ● The belief that pronation is a “bad” movement in dance, and avoidance of this range of motion by constantly pulling up the arches, which does not ever allow the tissues on the bottoms of the feet to lengthen and load.

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● Winging the foot, as commonly asked for in ballet (a motion that that does not occur naturally in gait). ● The desired aesthetic of pointed and high-arched feet, leading dancers to excessively stretch their feet with contraptions like the “foot-stretcher”, while neglecting to train the ability to use the opposite range. ● High volume of work done on demi-pointe, or in pointe shoes. ● Use of elastic bands to train the foot in an open chain environment (off the floor, non-weight bearing), which can contribute to increased stiffness. It is again important to accept that some of these things cannot be avoided as they are, to a certain degree, necessary adaptations and deeply ingrained in the traditions of dance. The reality is we must learn to work with this information more intelligently. By understanding the things about dance that we cannot change, we can gain insight into those that are changeable. Much of what is changeable is in the minds of dancers. For example, in an initial movement screen with a dancer I noticed several things that were limiting her ability to absorb shock through her system. Part of the issue seemed to be that she was avoiding pronating her feet, an important movement that only happens in suspension (or “foot flat”), the shock absorption phase of gait in the Anatomy in Motion model. I asked her, “How does the word pronation make you feel”, and she replied that it made her feel uncomfortable, and like it was something wrong to do with her body, which I assume is something

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she learned in a dance class at some point. In fact, pronation is completely natural. Pronation of the foot is necessary for us to effectively absorb shock with each step we take. It only happens once in the gait cycle, making it a precious movement, one to cherish, not to throw away. This lovely dancer was not allowing herself to use it, thereby limiting her potential. In dance and in life, we must be able to move in and out of pronation at the appropriate times. To see this idea illustrated in a video, go here: www.dancestronger.com/pronation. Sadly, dancers are often taught to avoid pronation altogether, never given the chance to appreciate that their feet have an inherent diverse movement potential. In order to work with the adaptations dance requires, dancers need to be proactive. Choosing to retain a healthy degree of natural foot and ankle movement variability outside of dance training allows dancers to cope with issues of repetitive stress and overuse more effectively and unlock the natural mobility their feet possess, without dangerous overstretching. What is a healthy degree of foot motion? This is difficult to say, as it is quite likely that if we take away too much of the functional stiffness dancers’ feet have created, we may interfere with their dance technique, which is not the intention for supplementary training. There is a sweet spot to be found, and it will be different for everyone. It is also important to appreciate the body holistically when we talk about feet. When we look at a body as a whole we see that a foot cannot move without causing a reaction elsewhere in the body. When

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one part moves, everything else also moves, even if there is the illusion of stillness. As Gary Ward describes this phenomenon, “We can move one thing without moving it, by moving everything else”. Looking globally, it is interesting to note that the foot and core couple together in a particular way as we walk, and when this sequencing is disturbed, we interfere with efficient and effective movement. For example, pronation at the foot should couple with the lumbar and thoracic spine extending and the pelvis anteriorly tilting. Conversely, supination should couple with the opposite movements–lumbar spine flexing and pelvis posteriorly tilting. When these movements are not sequenced together, other areas of the body will attempt to reorganize themselves to keep us balanced on our feet (although this is not an effective long-term strategy). The take-away from this is that the foot’s proper coordination with the spine plays a role in our ability to use our core and other areas of our bodies optimally. On the other end of the spectrum, a lack of sufficient core function can cause the feet to stiffen in an attempt to create a sense of stability. Each movement, or lack thereof, at the foot can impact anything else in the body, from the top down and the bottom up. We must appreciate that the way we train our feet as dancers has an effect on our bodies beyond what’s happening to our feet. Unwinding should not be limited to passive therapies such as massage, adjustments, mobilizations, and rolling out the feet with a hard ball. While these can be beneficial, they do not simultaneously teach the

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body how to put these changes into context with the rest of the body which allows us to use them in motion. Learning and changing how we perform cannot be a passive-therapy-only approach. An active, movement-based strategy, like the movements taught through Anatomy in Motion (some of which we will explore in the Dance Stronger program), allows movement of the foot and ankle to be integrated with the rest of the body with appropriate timing. When dancers are taught how to optimize the function of their feet it can help them perform better and reduce injuries not only of their feet and ankles, but throughout their bodies. 4) Challenges with lateral movement I will remind you again that this section will use some technical language that may require you to reference an anatomy text if you are not familiar with some of the terms. Dance Stronger is not an anatomy or biomechanics reference but is focused on conveying a philosophy for supplementary dance training. I encourage you to look up unfamiliar terms when necessary. Unlike long distance running, or sprinting- activities that use primarily the sagittal plane (forwards and back movement), dance is an activity that requires great proficiency in all three planes of movement, the frontal plane (lateral, or side-to-side movement) in particular, is a plane of movement that is crucial to own, but can get messy quite easily. For example, we need to access the frontal plane with ease to get on one leg to balance or turn, perform quick weight transfers, and to change direction quickly without falling over. These actions are key to the

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technical execution of most dance styles. Ironically, the physical demands of dance and some traditional ways of training tend to challenge dancers’ ability to move laterally, leading to the use of less efficient, potentially problematic strategies when continued over time. At the hip, hip adduction and abduction are crucial frontal plane joint actions for dancers to possess, which must happen whenever we shift our center of mass across our midline, onto one leg (the leg we stand on moves into adduction, as the other leg abducts). This shifting of our center of mass across the midline is what allows us to walk, transferring our weight from one foot to the next. In dance technique, it is fundamental for effortless weight transfers and changes of direction, balancing on one leg, and nearly every aspect of dance you can name. Even standing “still” and centered requires the ability to experience both ends of the spectrum away from center. When we think of hip adduction (bringing the leg across our mid line, closer to us), the first image that comes to mind for many is lying on the floor on our side and lifting the bottom leg towards the ceiling to contract the inner thigh muscles, hoping to make them stronger. This is an open chain adduction–the foot of the adducting leg is off the floor, floating freely in space. We can also adduct the hip in closed chain, with the foot on the floor. A closed chain hip adduction is simply a shift of the center of mass onto one leg, transferring your bodyweight over that side will adduct the hip of the standing leg. This weight shift is required for “getting on your leg”, as dancers refer to it and is crucial for nearly all elements of dance technique. Being able to “shift” is what allows us

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to feel grounded and keep our balance while we change direction quickly or move onto one leg. Unfortunately, in conventional cross- training for dance, we rarely appraise or train to improve our hip adduction in the closed chain, being more focused on the side lying leg lifts and feeling the inner thigh burn, which tone and harden muscles, but don’t necessarily help us to move differently, and can, in many cases, make matters worse. Why do the demands of dance make lateral movements, such as weight transfers and closed chain hip adduction, difficult? There are several factors. First, dancers often repetitively perform movements that place the adductor muscle group in a lengthened position. Repetition of these movements over many years can lock the adductor muscles in a long position at rest. Turnout, and training high extensions of the legs also require the adductors to lengthen. Standard dance training does not regularly offer dancers a way to balance these demands. As a result, the adductors undergo an adaptation similar to a stretched out elastic band, becoming unable to effectively contract from their long state. In this locked-long state, the adductors also fail to perform one of their main functions in gait: decelerating (slowing down to control) lateral movement when weight is shifted to the other leg. Second, dancers perpetuate this over-lengthened resting state of the adductors through over-stretching passively. To achieve high legs dancers sit in the splits and over-splits for long periods of time. This kind of “stretching” often over-stretches ligaments and other passive structures. This can lead to the inability to decelerate lateral

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movement, inability to weight shift, and limited contractile strength of the adductors. Unfortunately, many dancers are not aware that they may be stretching passive structures that are not designed to be stretched as such. A function of ligaments and the joint capsule is to keep joint motion within a safe range and to provide sensory information about where the joint is in space (proprioception). Poor proprioception of a joint is seen by our systems as “unsafe.” The body’s reaction to anything unsafe is to “guard” the joint by tightening muscles around it for protection. This guarding serves the body by attempting to create a sense of position and safety. Trying to stretch muscles that are guarding a joint can end up causing more harm than good. When the hip ligaments become overstretched, the adductors tighten and guard the joint preventing it from going into a “dangerous” range of motion. Adductors that are excessively stretched will get the cue to guard even more, as the stretch is perceived as a “threat”. Naturally, the adductors begin to feel “tight” from this high tension environment. And what do dancers do when things feel tight? They stretch even more. When things feel tight, stretching is rarely the solution. We will explore this concept in Chapter 3. Over time, as an adaptation to this type of training, dancers’ hip joints may sit at rest in a more abducted position. While this is what dancers think they want, more abduction, ie, the potential to lift their legs higher, they often do not realize that being stuck in any joint position limits their ability to access that very position. Being already abducted, they can’t move into that range more because they are already there,

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but neither can they get out it. They become stuck in this no-man’s land in which they appear passively flexible but unable to use this flexibility actively. We must also keep in mind the role other structures in the body play in the ability to shift center of mass laterally through space. We can look at the demands of dance on the spine, feet, ribcage, and skull, and see how these areas can become locked in the frontal plane. For example, becoming stuck in an extended position at the spine and pelvis will also limit the ability to both passively and actively adduct the hip (as the standing leg must do while performing a développé side). In this altered resting position, the femur will actually bump into the pelvis and limit its full range of motion. Pronated feet that cannot resupinate will limit the ability to shift body mass laterally and get “on your leg”. When we can’t shift our mass over to one leg, we may develop strategies such as tilting the head to one side, or hiking the pelvis on one side in order to get more weight over one leg, which may cause trouble over time. And the common ribcage flared posture that results from breathing pattern discord is also a position that makes an effective lateral shift nearly impossible without compensatory strategies. Exercises to concentrically train the adductor group, such as side-lying leg lifts, in which the adductors are squeezed and contracted repetitively, are not the solution to habitual movement issues and other “stuck” resting postures. Dancers have always used stretching as a solution to relieve tightness and achieve the aesthetic demands needed in dance because that’s

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what our teachers did, and what their teachers did. Although we know there are repercussions to these actions, they are seen as a “rite of passage”– just the way it is, the way it will always be, and even something to be proud of. This fixed mindset will not allow the dancers and teachers of the future to be open to alternative strategies that can help dancers achieve the leg height and flexibility they desire without all the physical problems that come with excessive stretching, ligament laxity, and forgotten, denied, disproportionate joint motion. Dancers ignore the long term implications of their habitual way of training because no one has shown them a different way of doing things. None of us can choose a new option if we don’t know it even exists. When observing dancers, or noticing movements of our own bodies, we can see an inability to shift cleanly across the midline compensated for in a number of ways including: ● hiking the pelvis excessively on the side opposite of the stance leg ● flexing or compressing the standing hip ● extending and/or side bending the spine ● rotating the pelvis stance leg ● tilting the head ● raising one or both shoulders ● breath-holding ● forcing turnout ● any combination of the above

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These compensatory strategies create energy leaks, excess tension, torque, and higher than necessary muscle tonus (resting hardness), which further exacerbates challenges when shifting body mass laterally. Before trying to strengthen the adductors or stretch what feels tight, we must consider that the “tightness” and “weakness” we perceive may be the result of an inability to move in the frontal plane (or any other plane of movement). More specifically it is an inability to effectively perform a weight transfer. These are things which can be addressed with awareness and a movement-based approach, We will explore these in the movement preparation and Explore Phase sections of Dance Stronger. 5) General hypermobility or specific acquired ligament laxity NOTE: It is common to refer hypermobility with the additional word, “syndrome”, tacked to the end (benign joint hypermobility syndrome, or, BJHS). I personally feel that this labeling of a person’s natural state of being- greater than average joint motion, as a syndrome or disability can be detrimental to their mental and emotional well- being. While being hypermobile can predispose us to real challenges medically if we dance or play sports, so does having fair skin if we live in a country close to the equator, yet we do not label the trait of fair skin as a syndrome simply for the increased risk of becoming sunburnt. Hypermobility is not a disease. Hypermobility simply is. Labels create limits for our potential. Hypermobility should not be seen as a limitation. It is a challenging reality, but one that can be managed in pleasurable ways, such as strength training and mindful

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movement practices, and become an advantage in many ways for a dancer. That said, there are serious connective tissue disorders, such as Ehlors Danlors, with symptoms that can be very scary to live with and do require medical attention, but this is not the same as being hypermobile and otherwise healthy. This distinction and word choice is important, and needs to be considered. The degree of flexibility that dancers are pressured to achieve aesthetically and that is required for high level dancing comes with the near certainty of developing, or perpetuating an already existing, ligament laxity, or general hypermobility at some or many joints. (Hypermobility: the ability for a joint to move beyond what is considered to be a normal range of motion.) Unmanaged hypermobility can cause trouble for our bodies. Proactively participating in supplemental training is an effective way to enhance performance while minimizing the risks that come with being a very flexible athlete (or trying to become one). The most common and presently accepted method of measuring hypermobility is the Beighton Score, a series of simple mobility assessments which you can read more about in this resource paper: Managing Joint Hypermobility- A Guide for Dance Teachers. Some dancers present with general hypermobility congenitally, an inherited trait, and other dancers acquire specific laxity of only certain joints into particular directions through their training, repetitive ways of moving, or injury. Although we would expect it to be common for many dancers

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to present with general hypermobility due to the large ranges of motion desirous in dance, several studies have found that as little as 2% of dancers in professional companies are congenitally hypermobile. Being hypermobile, in reality, comes with a high cost. Hypermobility appears to be disadvantageous for any athlete, including dancers, impacting their ability to perform sustainably. One reason may be that genetically hypermobile dancers tend to become injured earlier in their careers, and more frequently, preventing them from reaching an elite level. Dancers who earn their flexibility through training are less likely to become injured earlier on, giving them more potential hours of practice to become masters of their art. For all dancers, however, the demands of their art form tend to create a certain degree of unavoidable laxity at specific joints. This is important for dancers to be aware of so they may choose to manage this inherent problem area. In other non-dance populations, hypermobility is linked with quick onset of fatigue and decreased bone density. Hypermobility is also correlated with higher activity of the sympathetic nervous system and increased secretion of stress hormones such as adrenaline. This helps the individual manage the more “unstable”, sluggish, unpredictable state their entire system is in by keeping the body in a more vigilant state as a baseline. Unfortunately, this increased sympathetic activity is also associated with the chronically elevated level of stress required just to cope with the additional challenge of being hypermobile. This can make recovery from training and getting good quality sleep difficult. It can also suppress the immune system. The body can only

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fight with itself for so long before it demands a break, perhaps in the form of injury, burnout, or illness- Things we might see as a negative but are actually serving the body by allowing it to rest. These implications on general fitness and performance, nervous system, and dance specific due to hypermobility emphasize the great benefit cross training (such as strength training) and stress management practices (breathing, forms of meditation, etc.), can have on dancers’ lives and physical performance. Ligaments are largely avascular and once stretched beyond a certain point will not be able to return to their original length. This leaves the body with no choice but to find other strategies sense its position and keep joints from moving into “dangerous” ranges of motion. One such strategy is to rely on passive structures for further support, such as bone. Bone on bone impingement serves us by creating reference in our hypermobile systems, but this is a false sense of stability is not useful for the long-term. The lack of dynamic stability– the ability for muscles to manage joints and decelerate their motion– can lead to compression and “pinching” feelings in particular ranges of motion as bone bumps into bone. These feelings of discomfort can signal the brain to adjust the movement pattern to avoid these unsafe, “pinchy” feelings. In the short-term these altered movement patterns help the dancer avoid acute pain. In the long-term they will create different challenges since the different and inefficient movement patterns are difficult to unlearn unless the root of the issue is also addressed.

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It is worth noting that even in the genetically hypermobile, not every joint can be hypermobile as it would be impossible for our bodies to function without some sense of “static” reference. By reference we mean the ability of the body to sense itself and its position in space. Hypermobile folks will often have less sense of reference in their bodies because their joints cannot be “trusted”. So they must find other ways to give reference to their body position like looking towards the floor, raising their shoulders to their ears, developing stiff feet, compressing joints, or holding their breath. The last line of defense is to find some “stiffness” in a sloppy, mobile system. When nearly every joint in one’s body presents with higher than average range of motion, there must be at least one segment somewhere that does not move as much; this is the great exchange our bodies make to find a sense of reference. It could be one vertebrae in the neck that doesn’t move, or a foot could become rigid in exchange for a mobile spine. A strategy therefore, for managing a dancers’ hypermobile joints, is to help them find their own reference within their bodies to give permission to these sites of non- moving “stability” to slowly unlock. Show their muscles how to receive joint motion without impinging the bones into themselves at end range. Impinging, increased muscle tone, and other ways of unconscious reference seeking, while it serves hypermobile dancers in the short term, will eventually cause problems in their bodies. A more appropriate long term strategy would be to create internal reference by learning to feel muscles loading and contracting through

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supplementary training. The Postural Restoration Institute refers to this as “ligamentous muscle”- muscles that can take load to manage joint movement where ligaments are not adequately capable. By managing hypermobility through strength and movement training the dancer’s flexibility is not negatively affected, instead, the dancer gains more active access to the range of motion they already possess. We should be proactive with our provision of strategies to train dancers to find reference in their muscles, encouraging them to feel the difference resting into passive tissues and bones, to sense decompression where impingement and compression could become preferred patterns in the absence of ligament support, and encouraging them to do what feels difficult: Learn to trust their bodies. A question that I genuinely do not know the answer to, nor would I wager that anyone truly can state they know with certainty, is whether or not a dancer could achieve the range of motion and flexibility required to dance at the highest levels without performing static stretches. The tradition of static stretching to increase flexibility is so deeply rooted in dance training that stopping a common practice, such as holding the splits for long durations, is hard to imagine. We won’t know the answer to this until active stretching becomes the standard in dance training. Dancers, particularly the hypermobile, should be educated to limit overstretching and long duration static stretching. Unfortunately, this guidance often is not followed. In my experience, certain dancers, no matter how much we discuss the reasons to limit stretching, and their

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claims that they understand the implications, persistently stretch while continuing to complain about tightness that doesn’t go away. Stretching is a reflexive thing to do when we feel tightness, and it is a difficult habit to break. I once worked with a dancer I will call Seth. He had been nurturing a strained hamstring and some lower back issues for a while. For several months we discussed the reasons why he continued to feel tight (protective tension), and how stretching was not constructive for him at this time. His fears, however, kept him stretching. He feared losing flexibility, and didn’t know how to fill the void in his training that stretching filled. Understanding this and being brave enough to try something other than stretching has been a process for Seth. As I write this, he is gradually learning what stimuli helps his body feel better, and what regresses him. I believe we all must make mistakes in our process, it is how we learn. We cannot control what dancers choose do with their bodies. It is their choice. I am reminded of another dancer I assessed last fall. She had been experiencing pain in her calf, so she started to roll it out with a lacrosse ball. She rolled and stretched it so vigorously that she eventually strained the muscle. When completing the movement screen it was clear that she could not bear weight on that leg, nor could she contract the muscle to rise up on her toes without pain. I only was able to see her once due to her financial situation, and I did my best to explain that the rolling and stretching was likely not to be helping at this point. Will stretching out the muscles that feel tight help when the issue lies somewhere in the fact that it feels unsafe to put weight over that leg?

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When I checked in a month later, I learned that she had broken her foot and was taking time off dancing. We must understand that, given the degree of flexibility necessary for high level dance performance, the best we can do is provide strategies for dancers to help them minimize the risks that can come from excess stretching and encourage them to tune in to how their stretching practice is really making their bodies feel. Many dancers don’t realize there are other options, and are surprised to learn when they limit their stretching that their bodies begin to feel less tight, and the range of motion they can use as they dance improves. 6) Asymmetrical movement tendencies and biases In classes, dancers do their best to practice exercises on both sides equally, but this does not always happen while repetitively rehearsing choreography. Dancers often become more proficient at dance technique on one side, and rarely have the need to reverse choreography, as this is not how it would be performed on stage. These asymmetrical biases are related to dance training and habits as well as the natural movement and positional biases all human beings experience in daily life. There is a bias in many dance forms, as well as an individual preference, to turn in one direction, stand on one favorite leg, gesture with one preferred leg, thus developing mobility and flexibility asymmetrically. When learning repertoire, choreography is often only performed on one side, repeated hundreds of times until it becomes ingrained in the dancers’ bodies to the point that they no longer need to think about it.

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It is also important to consider that as human beings we all have natural biases and asymmetrical tendencies that, to a certain degree, we cannot change. One such example that many of us do not consider is that our organs are distributed asymmetrically in our bodies which, believe it or not, has implications for the way we move and our position at rest. The liver sits on the right, our heart and stomach on the left, influencing how we hold ourselves and breathe. Our nervous system lateralization– right and left hemispheres of the brain being used for different primary tasks– also influences our symmetry when moving through life. The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is also lateralized, the parasympathetic aspect of the ANS being more active in the regulation of the heart on the right side. The Postural Restoration Institute teaches how diaphragm asymmetry, our right hemi-diaphragm being much larger than the left, biases us to use the right diaphragm more to breathe, which draws more air into the left lung. Inescapably, the very way we breathe contributes to right and left asymmetries, with each breath having the potential to pull us into a rotational pattern through our torso. Can dancers be expected to perform dance technique and the required ranges of motion with perfect symmetry, right and left? Hardly, unless they arrive to each class neutral- The “holy grail”. Understanding this helps drop the pressure to be perfectly the same on both sides by recognizing that being asymmetrical is normal, not bad. However, it is also important to understand that dancers need to be proactive to ensure that their natural asymmetries do not become unmanageable and cause problems.

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We have several objective tools at our disposal to appraise symmetry and “neutrality”. The Functional Movement Screen™ (FMS) is one of such screens in which a primary red flag is asymmetry, which is understood as a risk factor for injury in athletic populations. The Selective Functional Movement Assessment™ (SFMA) attempts to further break down whether an asymmetry or limitation is due to an issue with tissue extensibility, joint range of motion, or motor control. With the Postural Restoration Institute assessment and treatment the goal is to help restore a “neutral” position (I will speak more about the concept of “neutral” in more detail in later chapters). After restoring “neutral”, the focus is on re-training the individual to move in an alternating, reciprocal fashion, which means to be able to get on and off the right and left sides of the body with equal ease. The simplest example of this is experienced in walking. Someone who walks with a limp clearly has trouble getting on and off both of their legs easily and their system will be under excess strain. In Anatomy in Motion the aim is to “find center” by exploring missing movements to experience both ends of the spectrum, giving us reference to where center rests. Before attempting to start a strengthening or stretching program, it is important to appraise asymmetries in basic movement patterns and in resting position, as well as lateral biases in life and in dance. We must appreciate whether we are working with limitations in soft tissue, or if our restrictions are due to joint position or motor control (situations in which stretching will not necessarily help). It is also important to acknowledge habits, such as carrying a bag over one shoulder, standing

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on one leg more than the other, sitting at poorly set up desk, or in class, only working on one side for turns, adagio, leaps, etc. Making simple changes in these behaviors can go a long way in changing ingrained movement habits. As a colleague of mine once described it, “That band- aid won’t do anything to stop the bleeding until you stop stabbing yourself”. Asymmetries themselves do not indicate that an injury will absolutely occur, but they do have the potential to limit movement options and performance, and will increase torque on the dancer’s body over time. It is important to give dancers the opportunity to participate in movement screening to bring their potential asymmetrical patterns into awareness. Simply giving dancers the opportunity to learn about themselves in this way can be enough to spark them to implementing unwinding strategies. It is empowering to have these simple measures at our disposal to gauge readiness to perform and determine priorities for warming up, cooling down, and training each day. We will explore this idea in more detail in the Outcome Measures chapter. 7) Psychological stress: Judgment, rejection, and shame It would be remiss not to mention some common psychological behavioral traps dancers are likely to encounter in their training. If you remember my story, I tripped and fell through these cracks many times while denying myself support. Although it was available, I did not know how to ask for the help I needed. We cannot speak about optimizing dance performance as a whole without understanding that the mind and emotions require strategies to unwind, too.

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Dancers are subjected almost daily to judgment and rejection. They are rarely shown strategies to cope with this effectively. Dancers are expected to just “get used to it because that’s how the industry is”. Ineffective coping can lead to feelings of shame and perpetuate habitual negative self-talk. This can lead to chronic emotional states that wreak havoc on the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, affecting our physical performance and ability to recover from training. Sometimes, the negative talk is from an external source: harsh words from a teacher, a jealous classmate, an unaware parent, or a therapist careless with their choice of words. Negative emotional states such as shame, as previously discussed, are correlated to a sympathetic autonomic nervous system state, which you will recall is is related to inhibited ability to relax and recover. Mental states that are less at ease (less parasympathetic) are related to systemic inflammation and immune system depression. We must educate dancers about the ways that mental states can directly influence their physical capabilities. These feelings of not being “good enough”, or of not looking a particular way, or feeling badly about body shape, size and natural ability can become dangerous mantras. We often fail to help dancers understand that they have options to turn this negative cycle around, that there is nothing wrong with them but the way they are thinking. It is unfortunate that, in a class setting, space is rarely made for dancers to openly discuss these worries and struggles with each other and their teachers. The irony is that there is not one single dancer who would not

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relate to these challenges with their minds and the expectations they and the industry of dance impose. Such discussions would bring the issues every dancer is experiencing to the surface and could develop a supportive social environment in which to train. Interestingly, positive, safe, social engagement is the most important portal for activation of the parasympathetic system for health, growth, and restoration. (For more information about this see: The Polyvagal Theory, by Dr. Stephen Porges, a neuroscientist who has studied the interactions of the autonomic nervous system in incredible detail.) What can dancers do to help themselves? The most important thing has been shown to be positive social engagement with loved ones. Dr. Porges also recommends neural exercises to enhance the tone of the parasympathetic nervous system to help manage mental and emotional stress. Examples of neural exercise are meditation, breathing exercises, moment to moment mindfulness, playing an instrument (particularly wind instruments), chanting, and therapy (such as Somatic Experiencing® which engage the mind and body). Having a mentor and a positive social network can provide the option to “unload” and feel supported. Supplementary neural exercise, and ensuring dancers have a sufficient social support system should be as much of a component of dance training as physical exercise. This intimate link between psychological and physiological states and performance indicates a need for dancers to understand that their choice to participate in dance comes with a minimum variable load of emotional stress. In order to unwind from the patterns of negative self-

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talk, judgment, and inevitable rejection common in the industry they must proactively participate in neural exercise and have a support system in place.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION AND CHALLENGES How do we reach a group that is so in need of information and services but feel they cannot afford the money or the time to get them? This question challenges my colleagues and I above all and is one of the factors that inspired this book. Serving dancers is a challenge in itself, speaking as a professional trying to make it a viable career. When I first started The Dance Training Project, fresh out of school and still living off student loans, I didn’t consider in my business model that my target market was a population that could not afford what I was selling (personal training). Somehow, I survived, managed to eat and pay rent, and enjoyed every minute of it. Not everyone will choose to do what I did. One former client and now friend of mine went so far as to say that I was surviving on charity work, and I needed to charge more (which even meant that she would no longer be able to afford working with me). Since we cannot expect people to do charity work to reach dancers, how can we make this work available to dancers? The issue is that the dance industry as a whole will require a massive shift in what it considers of highest value in order for professionals like myself to support ourselves, supporting dancers. Using strategies and therapies that will help add years to their careers must be considered a

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necessity, not a luxury. Supplementary training and support for dancers outside the studio must be seen as equally important as the dance training itself by all parties, including dancers, dance schools, teachers, and parents. Often, when we say that we can’t afford something or don’t have the time for something, this is just a way of saying “I don’t value it enough,” or “it’s not a priority.” I recognize that the reality for many dance students and professional artists is that even paying for regular yoga classes, for example, can be outside their budgets. I recall receiving an email from a professional dancer in South Africa who donated $5 for this resource in 2015 and was so apologetic that it was all she could afford, because her company hadn’t paid her for two months. We can’t change the state of a dancers’ training, the rate and severity of injuries, and the time off dance due to injuries until we change the value dancers perceive they will get from proactively participating in strategies to unwind. To consider it an investment, preventative healthcare, and a necessary component of their training as dancers. To quote Gary Ward, “We can’t change the way you move until we can change the value you get from it”. We need to ask better questions to help dancers change their values, and so, I encourage you to take a moment to answer the following six questions to evaluate your current priorities:

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1. On a scale of 1 to 10, what value do you place on your dance training, rehearsing, performing, and career development?

2. On a scale of 1 to 10, what value do you place on taking care of your body: Measures to prevent injuries, injury rehabilitation, and cross-training?

3. If different, what would it take to make your answers to questions one and two the same? What would have to happen in your life to care about cross-training and proactive injury prevention as much as you care about your dancing?

4. What do you think would happen if you placed as much value on your self-care, cross-training, and recovery practices as you did on your dancing?

5. What are the three things that you spend your time on most?

6. What are the three things that you spend your money on most?

One could argue that in a dancer’s schedule there is not the time to make self-care an equal priority to dancing, rehearsing, and performing. However, the equal value I’m referring to has very little to do with the actual time commitment. It is again the idea of quality over quantity, which could simply mean cultivating a deep understanding of their

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bodies. Then, rather than having to begrudgingly find time in their schedules to take care of their needs, this equal value manifests as a moment to moment understanding with which they can make the appropriate daily choices in congruence with this understanding of what will best serve them. It becomes their natural state of being, not something to fit in. Their understanding of their own systems will guide them to choose to spend five minutes before class practicing self-care by checking-in, breathing, and warming-up. Outside of the studio, their self-awareness leads them to choose to make the time for cross- training, and to take time off to rest when necessary. Reflecting on what we spend most of our time and money on also help us to see where our real priorities are at this moment. Making it an equal priority doesn’t have to mean the time commitment is the same as the number of hours a dancer practices and performs in a week, but that every choice is made made with awareness and congruence with becoming the best dancer possible, which can sometimes mean allocating time to something other than dance.

I also encourage you to take some time to sit with and write out the answers to the questions Dr. John Demartini asks in his free value determination questionnaire, which you can find here: https://drdemartini.com/values/ To effect the change we want in the dance industry and make cross- training accessible to dancers, those who are in contact with dancers must give value and priority to these things. Those who have the ability to make the decision to create space in a dancer’s education to include

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this information in their training need to do just that. Space must be created. These are not things that can just be “fit in”. Fitting in implies that these ideas of self knowledge and self care are not valued, that they are just an afterthought, and this is the impression dancers will get. Our field needs teachers who make it explicit that taking care of one’s body is a priority, not a luxury, not something to fit in if we can. Early exposure to healthy cross-training and mindset practices, as well as witnessing these being modeled by individuals they look up to will begin to change the culture of dance. Too many dancers only change their values and habits after serious injury. Reaching dancers after injury is often too late. What if it was common place for a dancer to take care of their human needs before they became injured?

CONCLUSIONS To support the dancer is a mission requiring the interdependent cooperation of many. Teachers, parents, therapists, healthcare professionals, and anyone else in a dancer’s life have important roles in this process. Dancers must be taught to be advocates for themselves and their needs. They need to be encouraged to look closely at their priorities to see if they truly are in line with their goals for excelling in dance–whatever that means for them. It is my hope that through greater understanding of the aspects of dance that we cannot or will not change, as outlined in this chapter, we will have better insight into those that are changeable. By focusing on what is changeable, using and teaching strategies to unwind, the state of dance education will evolve making this art form

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greater and more sustainable. The very least we can do is to provide dancers with strategies to unwind from the demands of their art form by giving them options, support, and information. These are my goal for this book and the Dance Stronger program.

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CHAPTER 3 Key Concepts

Have you had a dance teacher give you vague corrections you didn’t understand and then expected you to incorporate them immediately into your dance style?

“Relax your shoulders” “Get on your leg!” “Engage your core!” “Don’t look so weird!” Or my personal favourite, “Just dance better!”

I have personally received all of these cues from various teachers in various styles. Sure, I tried to apply them. I really did. But if your brain doesn’t understand what these cues mean or how they feel, then they aren’t going to click regardless of repetition. Have you ever been told to relax your neck, but ended up clenching every other muscle in your body, and probably your neck muscles, too, in the process? Unfortunately, the very issue that many corrections attempt to address, particularly the “relax!” cue, often serve only to draw more attention to it, exacerbating it. Often, it’s not the fault of the teacher, who means well, or the fault of the student for not being able to learn quickly enough, it is that the way we teach and learn in dance is stuck in the past: The core philosophies we base our teaching

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and learning on are outdated and not serving us as the dance world evolves.

TRADITION Much of dance is rooted in tradition, and tradition is difficult to change even if it is harmful. An example is stretching excessively before dancing in lieu of a proper warm-up (passive stretching is not warming- up, as we will discuss further along in this book). Educating dancers and teachers on deleterious traditions like this could be replaced with more effective strategies and many injuries could be prevented. Unfortunately, the prevailing mindset is that sprawling out into a full split without warming up is the sign of a superior dancer (it’s not).

Traditionally, dance teachers don’t need a particular certification to begin teaching. Although regulatory organizations and continuing education opportunities do exist for dance teachers, belonging to one is not mandatory. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means that if you have ever danced, this is enough to can become a dance teacher, making it even less regulated than becoming a personal trainer or yoga teacher (you can get a yoga or personal training certification in as little as one weekend in Canada. Consumer beware.). Because of this lack of required qualification, continuing education, and standards, many dance teachers do not feel the need, or see the value in further developing their education in other skill-sets that complement and enhance their abilities to help their students become well-rounded, successful, and healthy dancers. This is one reason why we, my colleague Bizz Varty and I, created our Dance Stronger Teacher Training workshop to bring to life the ideas presented in this book.

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THE GOOD NEWS…

The dance scene is changing, and soon, even as I write this, the way dancers are being trained is being challenged and driven to adapt. As choreography is becoming more physical and athletic, even in ballet companies, and the way dancers are being trained and educated must change to prepare them for anything. The dance sciences are a relatively new realm with more and more research showing us that fitness and strength training for dancers does help them to dance better with fewer injuries. The old-school dance professionals, the ones most resistant to change, because the old way worked for them, (but so did good genetics and hip replacements), are beginning to retire, making room for a new wave of teachers and influencers. Maybe you are one of these new teachers bringing a different set of values, ideas, and change to the dance industry.

While I recognize that dancers have to be able to perform some feats that are not necessarily considered “good” for their bodies’ longevity, I do absolutely believe that balance can be found, dance careers can be lengthened, created, and even resurrected if given the appropriate information and strategies. A friend and talented physical therapist said to me once, “To to be successful, dancers depend on performing with a high degree of pathology, and I find this fascinating”. I find it fascinating, too, but choose not to use the word “pathology”, but as a new “normal”; just useful adaptations, nothing ominous. What If we could encourage dancers, teachers, and therapists to change the lens through which they see these challenges. Instead of fighting and

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resenting their bodies’ challenges, feeling that dance is something “bad” for their bodies, what if we could show them how to work with their new normal, managing the inevitable, predictable adaptations necessary for dance. Dance isn’t the problem itself, it’s how we manage and nurture our dancing bodies. I have met former professional dancers, now in their seventies, that are much healthier and mobile than “regular” folks of the same age. Dance can be a beautiful, healing art form. The problem lies in the choices we make. Choices we don’t realize we are making because they are rooted so deeply in tradition, have become habitual, and because we perceive that there are no alternatives. DARE TO DROP THE DANCER IDENTITY

Dare to be curious that there might be something more effective than what you are doing right now. It is possible that what you perceive to be working might not actually be.

“Have a mind that is open to anything, but attached to nothing.” ~Dr. Wayne Dyer It all begins with a mindset shift. What I propose is the opposite of what currently are popular ideas in the dance world. There are so many myths surrounding best practices for dancers, both in technical and cross-training. Suggestions that you need to do exercises to get “long, lean muscles” are misguided. Lifting weights, squats, and deadlifts aren’t bad or dangerous exercises. Strengthening your quads might actually be a good idea and taking rest days are often the best thing you can do for your body (question is, can your ego can handle it?). And

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maybe you don’t need to do thirty repetitions of side-lying clam exercises to the point of cramping in the name of gluteus medius activation to achieve “pelvis stability”. My opinion (and that of many others) is that learning to improve quality of natural human movement will ultimately help you as a dancer in a more profound way than lying on the floor trying to “feel the burn” in isolated muscles. And most importantly, you must know why you’re doing what you are doing, and tune in with how it feels in your body.

Extra stretching, poorly designed dance-conditioning classes, more hours of classes, dancing all summer rather than taking a break- These are the perceived norms. What happens when you stop believing in the efficacy of these traditional methods? Ask yourself, is the way you are currently training as a dancer, the beliefs you hold, are they actually working for you or are you doing them because it’s how you’ve always done it, how you’ve been told it should be done? Have you ever questioned the dogma? Or are you believing in theories and suggestions that you’ve never tested to be true? After all, it’s your body, your career, and your experience on the line.

We all have the right to know if there is a better way of doing things. I encourage you not to just believe everything you are told, but to inquire, experiment, and experience for yourself if there is an alternative way of doing things that serves you better. If you are reading this book, then perhaps you are already on your way.

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IT’S ABOUT HUMAN MOVEMENT, BABY To summarize Dance Stronger philosophy again, in one sentence, but in slightly different words: You were born a human first, and became a dancer second. Are you prioritizing one identity over the other? Are you able to detach from your identity as a dancer, temporarily, to address your human needs? I hope you will begin to change the way you perceive dance training, and make time to practice human movement in an attempt to change the way you perform as a dancer. That is the aim of this book and the accompanying training program.

The following concepts aim to help you think differently about your training as a dancer, to ask questions, and consider if the way you are currently training is serving you to the fullest. The concepts in this chapter will also help you to understand the “why” behind the choice of movements and exercises in the program. These are concepts that I believe should be learned and understood by all dancers as early as possible in their careers. For those who really want to excel, these concepts must be experienced. Embodied.

11 CONCEPTS FOR STRONGER DANCING Not absolutes, but ideas worth considering. Keep an open mind, detached from your dancer-identity as you read these, for they are written for you, the human, first, to support dancer-you as a secondary result.

#1 What if your first breath was your first movement?

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The first and last things we will do in our lives are inhale and exhale, respectively. Everything that happens in between is our choice.

To fully appreciate the wonderful bodies we get to spend our lives living in, I’d like to dedicate this first concept to how our bodies react to us breathing, and how our breathing reacts to us being. Do you consider breathing to be a movement? Breathing requires joints, moves joints, and causes muscles to react. Arguably, it is our most important “functional movement” allowing us to live, and our first movement upon entering the world. My question for you to consider is this: We as dancers are supposed to be movement experts, but if we have issues with this fundamental, life-giving movement called breathing, are we really specialists in our domain? If you were to consider that the act of breathing was your first unconscious movement outside of the womb, would that change your appreciation of it? The following is subjective, more philosophical than physiological, but I do think it is an idea worth considering simply because it completely changes the value of the correction we love, “don’t forget to breathe!”.

Because we breathe, we can never be completely still. It has been shown by force-plate analysis of the movement of one’s center of mass that the body is in a perpetual state of motion. You are never still but constantly shifting around your center of mass, even if imperceptible to the human eye. Imagine your entire existence represented as an infinite line of dominoes. Each individual domino piece does not create its own movement- Each domino is simply reacting to the piece before it. Pushing the one domino into the next allows the second domino to tip, subsequently pushing it into the third domino, etc., if all are spaced

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properly and enough force is applied to the first. Notice how the second and third dominoes do not move themselves, but all are reacting to the first domino.

Consider your first breath to be the initial push to the line of dominoes. As you exited the womb and the air pressure changed, forcing air into your lungs, the diaphragm (your main breathing muscle) would have contracted automatically, without a conscious thought to breathe, and the abdomen would have expanded and stretched as your lungs filled. Some of us enter the world with this first inhalation happening smoothly, and some of us have more difficult births, making this first push to our chain of dominos challenging. Thinking anatomically, your diaphragm was the first muscle to concentrically contract (shorten), and your abdominal muscles were the first muscle group to eccentrically contract (lengthen). To me, it is fascinating to think about breath this way. From our initial inhalation we are in perpetual motion, continuously driven by the breath. It is impossible to stand still, because we need to breathe to stay alive. Interesting, the movement of breath is under both unconscious and conscious control, which means if we have discord with our breathing, and so discord with our movement (maybe discord in our lives) we can change it with some focused awareness.

All this to say, respect your diaphragm and respect the need for your abdomen to expand. These were the first muscle groups to lengthen, contract, and create the living, breathing, movement expert you are today. Perhaps your first breath did not set you up for success, perhaps the dance aesthetic encourages you to “suck in your gut”, and perhaps

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there is discord in your breathing trickling unconsciously into other areas of your movement practice and other levels of you life, and so I encourage you to go back to the beginning and remember that breath is movement, and in order to live, your belly had to first expand.

#2 Understanding neuroregulation: “Cross-training” the parasympathetic nervous system The autonomic nervous system (ANS), which controls involuntary processes like hormone secretion, immune system, and organ function, has two parts- the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight), and the parasympathetic nervous system (health, growth, restoration). More often than not we become stuck in one state (commonly sympathetic), and cannot switch back and forth between states quickly at the appropriate times to match the demands of our environments. This becomes problematic when we need to learn new skills, quickly switch between being loose and adaptable, to being powerful and stiff, and for recovering from training. Inadequate ANS regulation limits our potential for performance and ability to recover, learn, and adapt. We rely on our sympathetic nervous system to help us endure when things feel unsafe, stressful, or uncertain, which is useful in the short term, but cannot remain a long-term strategy without consequence. Commonly dancers (and non-dancers, too) are unable to leave a sympathetic state, our systems flooded with stress hormones like adrenaline, in response to a need for more energy in the presence of threat or need to perform hard physical work. Dancers can become stuck in a chronic sympathetic state due to insufficient recovery (diet, sleep, hydration), dancing through pain, or mental stressors such as a

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lack of confidence in their abilities and constantly being in a judgemental environment. For these reasons it is useful for dancers to include strategies to recruit a parasympathetic state in their cross- training to support homeostasis in their systems. Your body cannot learn and adapt while in a sympathetic state, it can only survive. Your body cannot recover from physical and mental stressors if you cannot leave a sympathetic state. Your body cannot let go of unnecessary protective muscle tension in a sympathetic state. And you will have limited abilities to focus and learn new skills and choreography in a sympathetic state. By tapping into the parasympathetic nervous system you give your body the opportunity to reduce excess sympathetic tone- protective, chronic muscle tension accumulated as a response to a physical or emotional stress. This is the kind of muscle tension that cannot just be stretched away. We often don’t realize we hold so much protective muscle tone because it becomes “normal” to feel tight and sore all the time. Imagine that your body is a bucket of water that is ¾ full, and adding stressors such as dance training, cross-training, and mental or emotional stress is like adding water to the bucket. If you are starting the day at ¾ full, there is only so much more you can add before it over- flows, and you must stop to clean up the mess. Training yourself to enter a resting state that is more parasympathetic slowly empties the bucket. Starting the day with an empty bucket allows you to thrive while facing head on the stressors you encounter throughout the day. For optimal performance we would start each day with an empty bucket, having made the time to empty it. With a ¾ full bucket you

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have fewer options. With an empty bucket, you have full potential to tap into. How full is your bucket now? Do you ever make the time to empty it? And do you know how to do that? Emptying our metaphorical bucket and feeling the shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic first requires an honest appraisal of your current state. If you are bombarded by chronic stressors, either external (work, relationships, training load etc.) or internal (fears, anxieties, negative emotional states, etc.) I encourage you to do the difficult inner work to face these struggles. Be brave enough to face whatever issues are preventing you from relaxing and letting go, and understand that the brain doesn’t differentiate between physical and emotional stressors, they both fill the bucket by influencing autonomics. We can easily see and feel the effects of physical stress on the body, but what we need to do better is appreciate how psychological strain affects physical performance. Your chances of changing your strength, movement quality, or dancing are slim if you live in survival mode, never emptying your bucket. Does this sound like you?

Note also that the sympathetic nervous system serves an important purpose. It is not “bad”. It helps to mobilize us into action and handle challenging and stressful situations, but to be stuck is this state means that neither aspect of the autonomic nervous system is performing optimally. Just as we need full range of motion and options for movement, we need both ends of the spectrum in our nervous system. You wouldn’t want to be given the choice between just one or the other.

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Before each training session in this program, and as a major part of the Explore Phase, I will recommend several strategies to begin to tune in to what your body is indicating to you and begin practices that help the shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic. Perhaps you already have some of these strategies from other movement practices. Do what works for you and experience the difference it makes to get parasympathetic before you move.

#3 Owning the breath = owning the movement

Breath is life. Remember concept number one: Your first breath was perhaps your first “rep of life” that started a chain reaction of perpetual motion. The ability to breathe diaphragmatically (more on what that should feel like later in the breathing chapter) in any given position is a good indicator of how well you own that position or movement. “Own it, don’t rent it”, as Dr. Mark Cheng states in his Rehab Prehab 101 video series. If you can breathe in a particular position or movement, you own that movement. If you can’t, or revert to a “stress-breathing” pattern (more on what that looks and feels like later), you are merely surviving it, or even resisting getting into it. Ask yourself, are you working on your body, or working with it?

Movement shouldn’t be a fight. Yes, to elicit a change in your system you need to be challenged beyond what is comfortable, but you should not be stressing or straining. Breathing allows you to own your movement, and checking in if you can breathe while moving is an indicator of your ownership. Coordination of breath with movement allows you to be more efficient and to use less effort to produce

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stronger, more confident, and aesthetically pleasing movement. You may feel like taking the time to retrain and reincorporate your breathing with movement requires taking several steps back, but this is normal and often necessary. Although it may feel harder at first to move while breathing, realize that it is because you are likely used to holding your breath while moving.

In many movements in this program, I will ask you to check in with your breath by getting you to place your hands on your lower abdomen, lower back, or the sides of your ribcage to check for expansion (breath). If it is difficult to expand in any position or movement, it simply means your nervous system finds it somewhat distressing, and prefers to revert to a more convenient pattern for getting air (chest or mouth breathing, for example) while in this physically challenging position. This allows you to survive, but remember, you should not be content with merely surviving.

Checking in with breath can be challenging for the ego as well as the nervous system and body. It is often difficult to accept that an exercise we’ve done before and found relatively easy becomes much more strenuous by simply tuning in to our breathing patterns. This new challenge can be discouraging, but recognize that sometimes we must regress to progress. It is good that you have identified this difficulty because the change is simple: Breathe. But not “just remember to breathe”, truly feel how you breathe.

If you struggle to reduce tension from your dancing, taking the time to slow down, change your focus, and integrate effective breathing with your movement and strength training will be transformative.

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Understanding, and, more importantly, feeling what it means to own your movement with breath, is fundamental to fluidity, ease, and grace, as well as power, strength, and control in your dancing.

The videos in the “breathing tutorials” section of the program will demonstrate examples of using this “check-in” technique as a practice of moving honesty (a practice you will be cultivating in Explore Phase). In nearly every exercise in this program there is a component of breath, whether specific, “try breathing like this”, or general, “be aware of your breath”. You’ll learn to love it when you feel the difference it can make.

#4 Finding your Zone of Apposition (ZOA)

If you’ve ever been told to not stick your ribs out, this concept is your money.

Zone of Apposition is a term popularized by the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI), referring to the position of your ribcage and how it affects diaphragmatic function and muscular reaction to movement in all areas of the body. The diaphragm and the ribcage must be optimally positioned to make both breathing and core function most effective. This most optimal position is called the Zone of Apposition (ZOA).

By definition from the Postural Restoration Institute, the Zone of Apposition is: “The cylindrical aspect of the diaphragm that apposes the inner aspect of the lower mediastinal (chest) wall.” In other words, the Zone of Apposition is the area where the diaphragm lines the lower portion of the front of the ribcage.

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While lying on your back, maximum ZOA is achieved when a) the ribcage is fully depressed (ribs moving down and in) accomplished via b) a complete exhalation- Two things dancers often find difficult to do. However, with awareness and training, this will become easier and more natural, and eventually unconscious. By practicing ZOA, “Keep your ribs in!” will become something your body is accustomed to, more naturally, without additional effort or by tightening up and restricting movement.

Achieving ZOA is very much the opposite of what dance training, particularly ballet, has us repetitively do with our bodies. Some factors of dance training that affect the ability to achieve ZOA:

• Sucking in the belly resulting in a paradoxical breathing pattern: When the belly is drawn in on inhalation while chest expands, out of fear of the stomach expanding. • Use of extreme extension postures and movements, part of the aesthetic of many dance styles (arabesque and back bends, for example). • Becoming stuck in an anterior pelvic tilt, coupling with rib flare, or excessive lordosis (arching of the lower back) at rest, over- lengthening the abdominals. This keeps the abdominal muscles locked long and unable to activate and contract at the appropriate times due to constant tension. Note however, that some individuals may become stuck in a posterior tilt (tucked under pelvis) at rest, but may still have an exaggerated rib flare as a possible attempt at “balance” in their posture. There are no rules and absolutes.

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• Breath-holding and hyperinflation of lungs (holding in extra air), causing the diaphragm to become stuck partially contracted and shortened in it’s inhalatory position, unable to exhale fully and relax. • Forcing turnout, which can feed into further lumbar extension postures and anterior pelvic tilting, increasing rib flare and exacerbating paradoxical breathing patterns. • Accessory (secondary) respiratory muscle overuse because the diaphragm is not being used effectively: The neck and shoulder muscles, such as the scalenes, sternocleidomastoid, trapezius, pectoralis minor muscles can become hypertonic from being used to constantly pull in air. • Inability to exhale stimulates more of the sympathetic nervous system, reducing ability to recovery from classes and rehearsals. Poor control of ZOA is a sure sign of living in a sympathetic (survival) state, as exhaling is one way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Why is owning your Zone of Apposition (ZOA) important?

1. Optimal function of the diaphragm. In maximum ZOA, the diaphragm is in its most relaxed, domed, state, and therefore it is in the best position to contract from, allowing you to inhale more efficiently, getting air more deeply into your lungs. Ownership of your maximum ZOA also allows you to use the diaphragm for both its respiratory and spinal stabilization functions at the appropriate times (more info on diaphragmatic function in Chapter four). A muscle must be able to relax (stretch) before it can contract, and the diaphragm is no exception to

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this rule. Imagine walking around all day with a bent elbow and contracted, shortened bicep. It is easy to imagine that constant bicep clenching could make your wrist, elbow, and shoulder sore by the end of the day, yet rarely do we consider that it might be uncomfortable walking around with a clenched diaphragm inside your ribcage for days and years on end. 2. Reflexive abdominal activation. The ZOA is maintained by contraction of your transverse abdominis and your internal obliques muscles. This doesn’t mean you should be intentionally clenching your abdominal muscles to squeeze out and exhale and force down your ribs, but that they should naturally activate concentrically at the bottom of your exhalation as air leaves your lungs. You may feel abdominal activation in a maximum ZOA position but, as we will discuss later, muscles react reflexively to joint movement, and you should not always need to consciously activate your abs (see the core training chapter for more on that).

Being able to accessing your ZOA indicates you have a place of rest, or of homeostasis, allowing you to use your abdominal muscles when you need them and your diaphragm when you need it. You have options.

Inhale Exhale

Diaphragm Concentric contraction Eccentric contraction (shortening) (lengthening)

Abs Eccentric contraction Concentric contraction

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(lengthening) (shortening)

You can consider your diaphragm a “core muscle”, or even a back muscle because it also attaches to your spine. When you are working hard physically and your need to breathe increases, you had better hope your diaphragm isn’t the only core muscle stabilizing your spine, because your brain will prioritize the need for oxygen over keeping your spine safe. That’s the hierarchy of survival needs: The need for oxygen trumps the need for spinal stabilization. Remember how breath holding is also indicative of attempting to survive? Not the best state to be in while you dance.

But here’s the thing: You won’t be able to dance while maintaining a maximum Zone of Apposition. And you shouldn’t have to! That would be extremely limiting. Imagine dancing without letting the ribcage ever move up? Boring. Restrictive. Tension-forming. However, you must be able to actually get to your ZOA position, leave it, and come back to it again. ZOA refers to just one end of a movement spectrum (something you will be self-assessing in Explore Phase)- ribcage depression, and, we don’t ever want to demonize or completely eliminate one range of a spectrum. We need both ZOA and rib flaring for a complete movement vocabulary, we just don’t want to get stuck in any one of these ranges or to be using them at an inappropriate time. As a result of training ZOA, your range of motion into spinal extension (back bend) before you lose your ZOA will increase, allowing you to perform deeper backbends more safely and effortlessly, not to mention breathe more easily while

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performing them. Yes, you should be able to breathe freely while holding a back bend. Can you do that? Try it. Most of us can’t unless we work on it outside of the complexity of a dance class.

Another interesting consideration is that it is not only our physiology, a chronically contracted diaphragm or extended spine, for example, that affects physical performance and respiration. Due to the diaphragm’s role in neuroregulation, our emotional state can impact upon our breathing and postural habits, too. Exhalation, being a tool we can use to reach a parasympathetic state, and ZOA coupling with a complete exhalation, the ability to accomplish ZOA can be used as an indicator of nervous system state and tolerance for stress. How do you think would it make you feel to walk around, all day long, perhaps for months and years at a time, with a contracted diaphragm unable to exhale? Anxious, stressed, and unfocused perhaps.

Practicing ZOA is an important part of a cross-training practice, and in this program a priority is placed on finding and taking ownership of your Zone of Apposition.

#5 Muscles must lengthen before they can contract

This is one of Gary Ward’s five big rules of movement. Only in cadavers do muscles contract before they lengthen, by using electricity to stimulate them. This is not how a living, moving body functions, and dance is certainly about living, moving bodies. Remember the idea that the belly had to expand to allow your first inhalation? If we continue with this idea (just an idea) that the first muscles to lengthen as you

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entered this world were the abdominal muscles then you didn’t need to consciously activate your abdominal muscles, they activated as a reaction to being lengthened as you inhaled. This phenomenon, muscles lengthening and loading before contracting, happens at every other joint of your body in movement.

Muscles have an elastic quality. They react to stretch by contracting back to center, and the farther they stretch, the more forcefully they will contract to return to resting length. Imagine a rubber band. Can it contract without first lengthening? Muscles are similar to the elastic band. The farther you lengthen it, the more forceful a contraction the muscle is required to make to return back to resting length. Just like a rubber band, if you pull a muscle too far, too many times, it can experience damage, micro-tearing, and lose its elasticity. An over- lengthened muscle can’t contract as easily, as it stays “locked long” (a term we’ll discuss more later). A muscle that is too long is an issue as it can neither lengthen or contract well, and is a common issues dancers deal with in strength training. If muscles must lengthen to contract, but can’t lengthen further because they are stuck long, how does one ever become stronger?

Another word we can use for “stretch” is “load”. Think of this like stretching a slingshot to load it. If you can’t load it, you can’t explode it. This is one reason why over-stretching can be dangerous. When you are stretching, can you feel your muscles being stretched? Or do you feel a resistance, bones impinging (feels like a restriction, or like the joint is “stuck”), and an inability to go further into a stretch? Be aware. If you can’t feel a stretch in a muscle, it is likely you can’t effectively load, or

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produce force with that muscle either. We will talk more about the difference in quality between passive stretching and eccentric loading later in this book.

To put this into context, consider the common “you need to strengthen your inner thighs” guidance. Dance teachers have it right when they say you need to work on your hip adductors (inner thigh muscles), but what they don’t always understand is why it can be so hard to do. Therefore, many teachers are unable to offer effective exercises to strengthen this area.

When dancing and while executing exercises in the program, I will encourage you to let go of the idea of forcing the activation of a muscle by consciously squeezing and tensing. Don’t worry about squeezing your glutes, or consciously tightening your abdominals. If a muscle can lengthen (and you can feel it loading), then it will be able to activate reflexively, without conscious effort. It becomes a challenge for many dancers to activate muscles, like the inner thighs and abdominals, at the appropriate time because they have become so lengthened that nearly impossible to contract anything reflexively. The dancer has no choice but to use extra conscious effort, adding more tension into their system, tension that we feel, ironically, compelled to stretch out.

In the Dance Stronger program the goal is to make movement effortless, not to use more effort, and this is possible when we feel in our bodies that muscles can reflexively activate, as a reaction to movement, not out of forceful contraction from our sheer will.

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#6 If it feels tight, don’t stretch it Imagine again the slingshot we discussed earlier. How far could you launch a stone on that slingshot with an old, stretched-out elastic? Probably not too far. And how durable would that slingshot be? How many shots does it have left in it before that elastic gives way and becomes useless?

“Locked long” is a term I first came across in the book Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers. Not all “tight” feeling muscles are short and need stretching. Particularly in the case of dancers and other athletes to overstretch, muscles feel “tight” because they are locked long. A good example of this concept in dancers are the hamstrings and hip adductor muscles. Both of these muscle groups are notoriously hard to activate and we also stretch these muscles to oblivion because we need to be flexible for dance. Then we stretch them more because they “feel tight” from over-stretching. Also consider that the word “tight” might not be serving you to best describe your what your body is truly experiencing. “Tight” is just a feeling, yet is insufficient as a descriptive term because it doesn’t provide enough information on what is really happening. Is that muscle short and needing length? Or is it long and craving compression? Is it “tight” because it is protecting an area from an unsafe motion? Is it overworking or underworking? We need the answers to these questions and to understand what the feeling of “tight” is indicating before we slap on the traditional stretching solution.

Before stretching anything, please ask “why does this feel tight?”. If you’ve already been working on stretching a muscle to improve

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flexibility, and it has reached its maximum capacity, it will feel tight because of just that- It has reached its maximum length.

Remember, muscles must first lengthen to contract. A muscle at maximum length wants to contract reflexively to return to center, but you aren’t letting it because you’ve trained for so long to override the stretch reflex in the name of flexibility. It’s okay. I did that, too. Imagine trying to drag a dog along on its leash but it doesn’t want to come. The leash is stretched as far as it can, there is tension on it, there is stress on it, and it feels tight. There is a tug-of-war as you want to bring the dog closer (shorten the leash), and the dog wants to stay where it is (keep the leash long). To relieve the tension on the leash, do you drag the dog harder? No. You move closer to the dog to put some slack in it, and then teach the dog to recognize that tension on the leash means “come!” and not “fight me”.

In the above example, the leash is like a muscle locked long. There is lots of stress and strain. Pulling and stretching the leash (or muscle) further won’t resolve the feeling of tightness (though it often feels productive). Stretching out tightness is a tradition that we often follow without question. Teachers, other students, and even rehabilitation specialists still recommend to stretch what feels tight because it’s what we’ve always done. I encourage you to question practices such as this, because “It’s the way I’ve always done it”, is not a good enough reason to do anything. Dare to try the opposite of what has always been recommended. Dig deeper and search for the root of “why” something feels tight, and you will see that “because I’m not stretching it enough” is rarely the cause of a tight-feeling muscle.

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So what is the solution? Take the tension off the muscle. Just as you readjusted your position to move closer to the dog and take tension off the leash, you can learn to readjust your center of mass (more on that later) and how you move and hold yourself at rest to allow tension to leave the over-lengthened muscle(s). Then, you can retrain muscles to react to stretch and better manage your mass, different from mindless static stretching in which you train your body to ignore the stretch reflex. Teaching muscles to react and load with stretch requires you to consciously move your body into a range of motion, not sit passively in the splits while zoning out watching TV until you can’t feel circulation in your legs anymore. This should be good news to you, if you find static stretching boring and ineffective, and difficult to prioritize.

The Dance Stronger program includes opportunities to explore whether you are feeling muscles load and lengthen, giving them no option but to contract. While there is no static stretching in this program, you just might improve range of motion as you allow muscles to let go of protective tension, and finally experience their full spectrum of motion.

#7 Joints act, muscles react This is a concept that I’ve already alluded to, and I must give credit again to Gary Ward for introducing to me this in his fantastic book, What The Foot, and subsequent Anatomy in Motion seminars.

Recall that the current, mainstream belief is that muscles contract to pull on and move bones, but what if it was the other way around? What if the skeleton moved and our muscle and fascial system reacted to it,

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lengthening and contracting to manage the position of the joints in space? For many people, this view of the body in motion is unfamiliar and initially uncomfortable. However, when we view movement in this way it allows us the possibility to finally let go of excess tension and muscle tone, develop strength, and increase flexibility. To move our bodies effortlessly, one shouldn’t have to actively squeeze or tighten a muscle, but allow it to activate as a result of the intention to move. Feeling a muscle activate is a reaction to the intention for movement, not the intention for clenching a muscle. We could (and often unconsciously do) clench our muscles all day without creating any movement, but just by moving you give your muscles no option but to react to manage it. Imagine the energy conserved not having to worry about what muscles to fire at what time, freeing up mental space to focus on skill you are learning, with less gripping. No more micromanaging your body. While you are training, dancing, or doing any movement practice, I encourage you to try this: Visualize your skeleton moving through space independently and let the muscles come along for the ride, feeling them as they lengthen and contract, but not trying to control them. Allow bones your bones to fall into your tissues, trusting they will be there to catch you. This doesn’t mean you won’t feel muscular effort, that movements won’t be difficult, or that you won’t need to sometimes create stiffness and tension, but it will mean that you won’t need to force muscle contractions. When I hear teachers tell me to tighten my lower abs I can smile and nod, but know that adding tension is not the way to effortless movement. I can appreciate the end goal the teacher has in mind but also I know that squeezing my abs is not the solution.

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Muscles support our bodies, acting as “skeletal managers”, and contract because they have no option but to based on the position we are asking our joints to move through. Muscles do not work in isolation and trying to isolate a muscle is not the way our bodies were meant to function. When one thing moves, everything moves. Walking is a great example of this, and arguably the most natural human movement we perform. With step we take, between roughly 0.6 to 0.8 seconds, each joint in your body will have had the opportunity to move in three dimensions (this is what we map in the Anatomy in Motion Flow Motion Model of gait). For example, at any given moment in each phase in the gait cycle we can map the movement of the neck in three planes (front to back, side to side, and rotation), in relation to what the rest of the body is doing. Funnily, walking often seems to be the hardest part of dancing because we try so hard to make it look a certain way, that it ends up looking unnatural. The point is that to isolate individual body parts and muscles is not natural and is not helpful for trying to overcome pain, move more effortlessly, or improve performance. Sadly, this is currently the way dancers are encouraged to cross train, which is not how the body was naturally set up to perform. In the Dance Stronger program, you will not see exercises that isolate particular muscles, but rather that focus on moving the whole body in three dimensions, re-training patterns, not individual muscles. Muscles will manage joint movement, not the other way around.

#8 Play with your center of mass within your base of support (core mobility)

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Your base of support is the area within which your feet are placed directly beneath you. Your center of mass is located just below belly button level at the depth of your spine. In some movement and spiritual practices such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Kung Fu, Ga Ga technique, and yoga, this space is called Tan Tien, Hara, the sacral chakra, or Luna. Whatever your background, we can appreciate how connecting to this area has a special importance across cultures and movement forms.

When your center of mass is roughly centered within your base of support, minimal muscular effort is required and you are balanced more effortlessly, although complete stillness is impossible. In fact, being completely centered is impossible. Much like the perfection we chase in dance, finding center is the Holy Grail we may never reach, but at least it gives us something meaningful to work towards. You can, if you are perceptive, feel the heaviness of gravity going right through the middle of your body, through the top of your head, your tailbone and between the middle of your feet, in the center of your base of support. A sense of being “grounded”, a feeling many dance teachers spend their careers trying to help us understand. Finding this place of least effort, centered between your feet with equal pressures on the floor right to left, is the Holy Grail, and something you will be checking in with regularly in the program.

In reality, where many of us perceive our center to be is actually slightly off, more over one foot, or more over the balls of the feet, heels, insides or outsides of our feet. Stand up and check in right now. Where do you feel the most weight in your feet? A simple “foot scan” like this is a great practice to make time for daily. The more centered you feel

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on your feet, the larger your accessible base of support will be available for you to move through before you fall over or have to take a step, and it will become easier for your body to return back to “center”. You must know your limits to know what “center” feels like. Although the opposite is also true. To echo the essence of the “core pendulum theory” described by American strength coach and physical therapist Charlie Weingroff in his seminar Training=Rehab, Rehab=Training, you must know your true center to have access to your limits.

So what comes first: Knowing our edges, or knowing our center? Is this a case of chicken or the egg? We may never know, and it is likely that the answer is both. You must train in ways that help you to both know what your center and your limits feel like, and one can only be understood in the context of the other. The are two sides of the same coin. To train center, we train to be stable and prevent excess movement, but how do we train our center of mass to experience the limits of its base of support?

Core mobility

Core mobility is another term I was introduced to by Gary Ward referring to the ability to be confidently mobile within your base of support. The more comfortable you are moving in and out of the boundaries of your base of support, the better you will be able to recognize center and come back to it again, reflexively, without forcing it. Center simply cannot exist without the experience of its limits.

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As a baby learns to walk, it must fall over and learn his limits in order to stand. If it never took the risk of falling, the baby would never learn to walk. By the same token, the more you try to keep rigid in your currently perceived center, being very stable indeed, the easier it is to fall over when forced to move beyond your comfort zone. This can also be called dynamic stability. Think “mobile center of mass”, rather than “stable center of mass”. This has enormous translation to your dancing. Do you stumble and hop when trying to balance? Can you not maintain a stable base while performing free upper body movement? Are you ever told to “dance bigger”? By learning your limits and end ranges of motion you expand your base of support and unlock a new level of movement potential; no longer limited to staying “centered”, “stable”, or “neutral”, but feeling comfortable leaving center, trusting that your body knows how to return safely.

#9 You don’t always need to be in “neutral” I was taught that a neutral spine is the most aesthetically desirous, stable, and correct place to be and, especially in ballet, to try to keep a neutral spine all the time. But do we want to be always neutral and always stable? In fact, it is not realistic to be always in neutral- It is but a moment in time we pass through.

Recall that finding “center” is only possible if you know how to get away from it first, and this applies on every level imaginable, not just in your body. You must leave “center” to dance, to play any sport, and to function as a human being. In human gait, “neutral” at all joints in our bodies is a moment in time that lasts only a fraction of a second. There is another phase in the gait cycle in which we shift our body’s weight

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from one foot to the other as our front heel strikes the ground, and to do this we must willingly leave our base of support, which is only possible if we leave “neutral”. The impossibility of walking, arguably the most fundamental of human movements, while trying to keep perfectly neutral, makes it unrealistic to attempt to dance with such control. Imagine having a rigid pole up your back end and being asked to dance. Sadly, we often translate “engage your core” with “insert pole”. Neutral spine, stability, and good posture are not images that lead us to effortless movement. What is more useful is the understanding that true dynamic stability (core mobility) demands that you trust in your ability to leave center and come back, leave it again, and come back again. It’s not about being perfectly neutral, stable, or controlling your position, but accurately perceiving and reflexively managing your center of mass, or as Gary Ward calls it, “mass management”.

The ability to go to the extremes and back towards center without excess force makes for more efficient movement with less strain. More exciting dancing with less risk of injury. Isn’t it beautiful when you see a dancer throwing him or herself into extreme ranges of motion with exceptional control and continued fluidity into the next movement without faltering? This is core mobility in action. Taking the “leap of faith”- Daring to leave neutral and trusting that your training will bring you reflexively back to center without intellectualizing it.

This makes intuitive sense for dancers and movers who want to learn to move with less tension, but when we become injured, we are often told by rehabilitation professionals that we need to learn neutral spine, neutral foot, neutral knees, neutral everything. Line every joint up

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perfectly to minimize movement that might cause pain. Move less. Control more. It is thought that in order to stay safe and pain-free, you should limit the injured part’s range of motion to a small and stable range. Unfortunately, this is only effective until you need to move, and thus not a useful strategy for an athlete who depends on movement, or an artist who’s body’s unlimited capacity for physical expression is their livelihood.

Our bodies are all unique. There is no “anatomically perfect” body type, and nearly nobody’s skeleton looks exactly like the pictures in medical textbooks. Trauma, individual genetic variation, and the various different inputs (activities, behaviours, stressors, etc) we subject ourselves and are subjected to grind our bones and striate our muscles into the perfectly imperfect expression that makes you “You”. Knee valgus isn’t bad. Anterior pelvic tilt isn’t bad. Lumbar hyperextension isn’t bad. These positions all have their place in the gait cycle. There is even a scoliotic moment in the gait cycle. These non-neutral positions only become problematic when you get stuck in them or can’t get into them at all, but they are natural movements that your body was designed to perform. Is neutral the answer? I don’t think so. Neutral teaches you to be stable in a small range of motion. Wouldn’t you rather have complete control over a large range of motion? Neutral isn’t a solution for someone who values being able to move.

Developing core stability in a neutral position is one strategy for reducing pain, but at the expense of reducing range of motion. Stability in dance really requires embracing core mobility. This is much more useful for a dancer than being stuck in neutral with limited movement

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potential. I realize this goes against the mainstream core training paradigm. Knowing what neutral feels like is necessary, but limiting yourself to only neutral is impossible. Your core wants to move. Let it! This issue will be addressed further in the Core Training chapter.

#10 Work to your “neural edge” Neural edge refers to the point at which you can no longer perform the pattern you’re working on precisely without switching into an old pattern of moving. At neural edge you are still in control, becoming fatigued but not sloppy. Making changes in the way your body moves is only possible when you bring yourself to and build volume (more work) within your ability, at your neural edge.

Daniel Coyle says the following about neural edge in his book, The Talent Code, which explores how people become talented in their chosen field:

"The people inside the talent hotbeds are engaged in an activity that seems, on the face of it, strange and surprising. They are seeking out the slippery hills. They are purposely operating at the edges of their ability, so they will screw up. And somehow screwing up is making them better."

Working at your neural edge might mean that you feel uncomfortable and that you fall over a little bit. This is good. Falling over and getting out of your comfort zone is how your brain learns and finds a new strategy. I love to reward my clients for falling off balance and making

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mistakes because this shows they took a risk. They bravely took themselves into a space that they wouldn’t have ordinarily gone, and this is the only way to make progress. Sometimes habitual ways of moving and fear of failing makes it difficult to get to this sweet spot.

When we become accustomed to pushing through pain, or have been reinforcing the same patterns of moving even if they are not serving us anymore, the only way to unlearn and reinforce a new pattern of movement is to only practice it until you the point when quality is no longer the same as the first rep. Habitually working through low level chronic pain- common for dancers, makes identifying neural edge difficult as we have in the past found it useful to tune out how an exercise feels to get through it. Ironic that dancers, whom we perceive as being the best of the best at tuning into their bodies, often make the choice to partially tune out of their physical experience to perform through daily aches and pains. This survival strategy can only last for so long, and points us again to the importance of concept number two: Having a strategies to get parasympathetic as ANS cross-training. You can’t perceive neural edge in a sympathetic state.

A professional contemporary dancer, who we’ll call Molly, came to see me to find a solution to save her dance career having been performing through chronic lower back and SI joint pain for three years. She had come to realize that she needed to retrain how her body moved. She recognized that the current way her body was organizing itself to move was no longer serving her to avoid pain, as it had done before, and was exacerbating her symptoms. She was out of options, could no longer dance, and needed help to unravel these patterns and rebuild. Because

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she had been dancing through pain for over three years, she had found many strategies for moving around her pain which were now causing more trouble for her body. She made the difficult decision to stop dancing to take the time to get to the root of what was causing her troubles. This was perhaps one of the largest challenges of her life, but she recognized that if she didn’t stop out of her free will, then she would be forced to stop, as I was. This decision required she drop her identity as a dancer momentarily and work with her body as a human, trusting that even though she wasn’t dancing, she was still a dancer, and the work we were doing was to help her get back to dancing again. It meant tuning in with how her body felt, not dissociating from and moving around pain. And it meant that some exercises and new movements we worked on fatigued her in just three repetitions.

While this could have been discouraging for a dancer like her- known for her powerful, strong movement and used to pushing to and often past her limits, she understood it was a necessary part of the process to honestly appreciate that three reps was all she could do well and that three reps was enough. She eventually built up work capacity while maintaining the same quality, and within several months was back to dance classes with a better understanding of her body, its limits, and what to do when she felt her symptoms resurface. With this new information, she also realized that she could not dance the same way that she used to, but this did not mean she would not dance as well, and in fact, she could find dancing more fulfilling and meaningful with her new appreciation of her body and ability to move more honestly. She sees her injuries as gifts that gave her the opportunity to get back in touch with her body, and is grateful for the time off dancing that she

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used to practice honest movement and build strength. Working at her neural edge, moving honestly, and getting out of her comfort zone are what allowed Molly to make the changes she did and return to dancing. Not only that, she committed to practicing daily, fully trusted the process, and made it her priority.

I’ve worked with clients who are not in the same, honest place as Molly. They could keep going for 20+ repetitions on some exercises, but only because they were surviving through, not truly experiencing them. Surviving means breath-holding, jaw clenching, doing whatever subconscious cheats it takes to tune out and get through it. For these dancers, the first part of their training is often to bring these strategies to their awareness so that they can be unlearned. Stripped of their survival strategies, they may last only six repetitions. This can either be a massive awakening, or blow to the ego- What matters is how you perceive it. Which do you think is better? Are 20 repetitions that you mindlessly plod through more effective than six well connected ones? No. Six honest reps to the edge of your abilities will always be superior to 20 stress-reps that reinforce your habitual movement patterns. Body awareness is something you can only develop with deliberate practice over time, and I encourage you to see the value in cultivating this powerful tool. True embodiment of movement, not survival of movement, allows you to feel the true edge of your abilities and to excel in dance and all aspects of life.

#11 Do not put a fitness solution on a medical problem If you are in chronic pain or acutely injured, exercise exacerbates your pain, and it is not getting better with rest, this is a medical problem, not

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a fitness problem. Seek a healthcare professional. I am not a medical professional. I cannot evaluate and treat medical problems in person or through email. Before you start this or any exercise program, it is best, no matter what, to get the approval of your physician.

This program is not meant to rehabilitate or treat your injuries. It may help you to overcome chronic pain if your body doesn’t move well, or you lack variability in your training program. It may help you to build strength so that strenuous activities, like dance, do not make things hurt. But, Dance Stronger is not a treatment for an injury. This program is not a replacement for proper therapeutic intervention.

The problem is, as dancers, we often feel that therapists don’t understand what we are dealing with when we are in trouble with our bodies. We are afraid that we will be told to stop dancing, but being told to stop doing what we love, or we depend on for a living, isn’t a good enough solution.

The best kind of therapist a dancer can find is one with a desire to educate them about their recovery. Dance isn’t the problem. Lack of knowledge and options is the problem, and dancers often need a compassionate education on what the process of healing will be like, along with the treatment protocols. Unfortunately, the type of therapist dancers need aren’t so easy to find, nor do we, as dancers, always know how to recognize if a therapist is working well for us. Remember my story? I kept going back to the same physiotherapist because he was familiar and friendly, but he wasn’t helping me or educating me on how to take care of myself. He didn’t understand my needs as a dancer, and was working on me with modalities, not with me

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through movement re-education. Some therapists may adjust you and send you on your way, lending you to believe that this is all you need. No exercises. No follow-up. They might instruct you to keep coming back for another five-minute treatment session, followed by the modalities-circuit: Ice, heat, stim, ultra-sound, if and when the pain starts again. Consider this conversation I had with a dancer in a strength training class I was teaching for a group of emerging professional dancers: Dancer: "My knees are both screwed up so I can't do that exercise." Me: "I would recommend you go see someone about that. I can give you a good referral." Dancer: "Oh, it’s okay. I already went to physiotherapist ages ago and I have exercises". Me: "... Do you do them?" Dancer: "No, but I don't think my knees will ever get better so I just deal with it." And sadly, many dancers share this story: a fixed mindset that dancing equals pain, that they must live with pain forever. This is both failure of the physiotherapist to educate the dancer on the process, and of the dancer in not fully engaging and trusting in the therapeutic process. If your therapist isn't helping you get better, go find someone else. Understand that every body responds differently to intervention, and it is important to find a therapist that you connect with. Understand also that there is no guaranteed time frame for recovery from any injury, so please do not assume that if things aren't getting better after a few days, a week, or a month that you are doomed for life. Maybe you need a different approach. Maybe it’s not that the rehab isn’t working,

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maybe it’s that you haven’t removed the root of injury from your life. In the words of my friend, Dr. Brock Easter, a phenomenal chiropractor and Neurokinetic Therapy™ instructor, “You can tie your shoe six times and untie them seven, but your shoes will still be untied.” Be open to doing some research on your therapist and have the understanding that just passively receiving treatment isn't enough. It is very important to take ownership of your role in the rehabilitation process. You are not permanently broken, doomed to always be in pain unless you allow yourself to be. Just how do you recognize the qualities that make a good therapist? It's not just about the certifications, degrees, and fancy anatomy talk. Just what are these mysterious qualities? Look for the absence of ego, a detective spirit, and plenty of compassion. Knowledge is very important, and, of course, my favourite therapists to refer my clients to are incredibly educated, but, they also have my three other criteria, without which I would glance over their long list of credentials. I also feel it is important to have a therapist who works with movement, not just passive modalities that require you to lie on a bed for the entire session. All injuries are related to an issue with movement, and the treatment should appreciate the need for movement in the solution. Therapists should be able to admit they are not all-knowing. They should be willing to refer you to someone else who they know can help you better than they are able to, and they should communicate with that person to make sure you get the best treatment. A good therapist should ask questions to make sure they understand your full history. An effective therapist will be as interested in your understanding of the

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recovery process as they are in treating you. They will work with your body, not on your body. You will want to look for a therapist who also practices what they preach. A compassionate therapist understands your needs as a dancer whether or not they dance themselves, doesn't make you feel bad about yourself and your return to dance, but gives you hope and empowers you. When choosing a therapist, ask: Does your therapist give you homework and outcome measures to check in with your progress? Do they make sure you fully understand your homework exercise? Do they have an efficient assessment protocol that looks not just at individual joint structure and passive range of motion, but active movement in a holistic context? An honest therapist gives you realistic advice. They don't promise that thirty minutes in the traction machine, three times a week, will fix you, or that you just need to keep coming back for an adjustment every week for the rest of your life. A good therapist will guide you in your healing journey but also help you understand that you are responsible for healing yourself. They will remind you that rehabilitation can be hard work and it is impossible to predict how swiftly you will recover. However, it is also entirely possible that recovery will be quicker than you think. They will encourage you to drop all expectations, commit fully, and trust the process.

You may have found yourself in the frustrating situation of hopping from therapist to therapist, each with their own opinion and “fix”, but still you get nowhere. For this reason, I think it is crucial that you find not just one therapist, but a trusted, like-minded network. When you

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choose to enter a network of therapists that all operate on the same principles and share a “detective” mindset, who communicate and refer to each other openly, you know that you’re going to come out with more solutions than questions and frustrations.

A few examples networks that I personally trust:

- Anatomy in Motion (AiM) - NeuroKinetic Therapy (NKT) - Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS- The Prague School) - Postural Restoration Institute (PRI)

Bear in mind that as in any network, not every single person is brilliant. At the end of the day, use your best judgment and work with someone you trust. The most important thing is to realize that pain means you must seek help. Please recognize that receiving help with your pain is important and invest the time, money, and effort in finding a therapist that can help you.

Final thoughts Reading these concepts alone does not mean you fully understand them. Ideas remain just ideas until they are experienced in your body. Keep these ideas in mind as you perform the exercises in the program and you will be able to fully embody them.

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CHAPTER 4 Breathing

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This chapter, breathing, is the one that is closest to my heart. In my own journey learning to move forward from pain and optimize movement, breathing was the biggest hurdle. Learning the factors affecting my breathing, and how to re-train my breathing habits allowed me to reduce chronic pain symptoms, improve physical performance and enhance my quality of life. While this was surprising, even mind-blowing, to me, at the time, there is nothing groundbreaking about the connection between effective breathing and movement quality, and it is a shame that the information in this chapter is not common knowledge in the dance community. It is well documented that breathing pattern disorders and inefficient breathing mechanics can influence our ability to dynamically stabilize the limbs in motion, the ability to express strength and movement quality, and can

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even keep us in pain and chronic emotional states. Re-training our breathing is one of the most fundamental, and therefore, most important things we can do to enhance every other aspect of our physical, and even mental, performance. Below is a short list of improvements that many people I’ve worked with have been able to make by re-patterning their breathing.

• Improved range of motion, anywhere- such as multi-segmental (whole body) movements and neck movements • Feelings of being more “grounded” • Better, more reflexive, core activation • Reduced resting muscle tension • Reduced chronic pain and soreness • Natural transference of breath into dance • Improved body awareness While the list could go on, these changes represent some of the most desired outcomes. WHY IS BREATHING SO IMPORTANT?

If you don’t know why you are doing something it is unlikely you’re actually going to care enough to work on it, and so, despite the best intentions of teachers, dancers rarely develop an appreciation for the importance of their own breathing mechanics. In nearly every dance class I’ve taken, breathing has been stressed as important, but only by the common: “Don’t forget to breathe!” or “Use your breath!”. But I have never taken a dance class that actually taught the why and how of breathing. This is a huge gap. Teachers pull their hair out wondering

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why students can’t do such a simple thing as “just breathe!”, ut if we have never been taught the proper mechanics of breathing and how it will support our dancing, can we really be blamed?

I hope that with help from the concepts and exercises in this section, whether you are a dancer or dance teacher, you will be able to incorporate breathing more effectively into your dance, movement, and training practices right away. If you do, you will reap incredible rewards.

While this chapter is by far not a complete reference on breathing, its aim is to discuss how the breath affects and is affected by dancing. We will explore one of the most important muscles of respiration, the diaphragm, and its many roles in breathing, movement, and autonomics- the regulation of the central nervous system. We will put the pieces together and start to connect how breathing habits are connected to physical performance, injury, body tension, and burnout, and introduce a method for bring awareness to our breath that can be applied to dancing, supplementary training, and daily life. A QUICK PRIMER ON DIAPHRAGMATIC FUNCTION

As stated by Dr. Karel Lewit (neurologist and specialist in manual medicine), “If breathing is not normalized, no other movement pattern can be.” This fact is essential for understanding how breathing can help us with performance and recovery in dance and in the gym. The following section guides you through some basic information on the structure and function of the diaphragm which will help you

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understand the “why” as you breathe your way through Dance Stronger.

In Dance Stronger, we will discuss two major functions of the diaphragm (though this incredibly complex and fascinating muscle has more than just two roles in the body): 1) Respiration- The primary muscle of breathing. 2) Spinal stabilization- Consider the diaphragm a core muscle due to its attachments to the lumbar and thoracic spine. In respiration, your diaphragm concentrically contracts and descends with inhalation, and eccentrically contracts (or lengthens) and ascends with exhalation. The diaphragm’s direct connection to the lumbar vertebral bodies and disks gives it its spinal stabilization role. The diaphragm also has fascial connections to the lower thoracic spine (T12), psoas major and quadratus lumborum muscles, the ribs, sternum, and organs such as the liver, stomach, intestines, and esophagus. That’s a lot of stuff connecting to your diaphragm. This is evident when observing a dissection of the deep front line, a deep fascial line depicted in Thomas Myers’ book Anatomy Trains. One can appreciate that it is nearly impossible to separate the psoas major, quadratus lumborum, and diaphragm. Embryologically, the tissues that formed the diaphragm originate from the cervical spine (neck), and the fascia of the diaphragm can be traced to connect all the way to the dura matter of the brain. Noting such myofascial connections reinforces again that you cannot train a muscle in isolation, but the body must be treated as one beautifully connected closed system: Change one thing, and everything

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else must adapt to accommodate. The deep front line connects the diaphragm to the pelvis and lower extremities, the thorax and upper extremities, as well as your organs and nervous system function. To learn more about the deep front line, Thomas Myers has videos depicting his dissections on www.YouTube.com.

Here are some other functions of the diaphragm that you may not have known about:

• Allows dynamic stabilization of spine and extremities. • Ensures coordination and proper function of mouth, swallowing, speaking, vomiting, with breathing. • Supports healthy organ function, such as heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver. • Prevention of gastro-esophageal reflux (the ring the diaphragm forms around the esophagus acts as a sphincter). Many cases of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease) and acid reflux are related to breathing pattern disorders. • The vagus nerve innervates the diaphragm and is stimulated by exhalation. It is an important feature of the autonomic nervous system that helps regulate our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. It is also a portal for a more parasympathetic (health, growth, restoration) state of being. • Aids in urination and defecation by increasing intra-abdominal pressure. Many cases of constipation or digestive complaints are related to poor breathing patterns. • Respiration plays a large role in maintaining the PH, oxygen, and carbon dioxide balance in the blood (homeostasis), relating

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diaphragm function to systemic inflammation. When we breathe inefficiently, in excess of metabolic requirements (over- breathing), we disrupt this PH balance and do not receive as much oxygen. The body perceives this as “stress” and triggers us to spend time in a more sympathetic state. Unless we retrain how we breathe, we can stay in a chronic, low level state of stress, causing further breathing discord and symptoms to manifest. With all these important related functions, you can see how easily the balance between respiration, spinal stabilization, and neuroregulation (nervous system function) can be disturbed through inefficient habits of breathing. The beautiful thing is that they are only habits and, as such, can be changed through awareness, practice, and patience.

HOW BREATHING DISCORD SERVES US

Everything we do, we do because it is serving us in some way, and this is also true for our breathing habits, even when disordered or inefficient. When you hold your breath, you may be doing this to attempt to create a sense of stability, using the diaphragm primarily for stabilization rather than respiration. This seems to serve you in the sense that it is helping you to dynamically stabilize your spine and limbs, but it is not a great strategy in the long term. Ideally we should be able to find a sense of strength without having to hold our breath.

Dancers, due to a host of factors detailed further below, tend to have diaphragms that are overused in this breath-holding way of stabilization. By not using their diaphragms effectively for optimal respiration, dancers often have difficulty coordinating when the need for both stability and increased breathing arises with challenging

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physical activity. To illustrate this last point further, with disordered breathing patterns, when the demand for respiration increases (think going for a jog, high intensity exercise, or strenuous dancing), your diaphragm isn’t going to be able to do either of its jobs very well. You might experience rib cramping, shortness of breath, or pain in other areas of your body as your diaphragm needs to devote its efforts to the most important thing: Giving you oxygen and keeping you alive. Your system will prioritize getting air over stabilization. This serves you because, even if you hurt yourself through faulty movement mechanics, you’ll still be able to breathe, stay alive, and recover.

The first step, in changing the way you move and perform, is to understand that this pattern of breathing, however ineffective as a long term strategy, is serving you now to keep you going. Fortunately, understanding how it is helping you will help you to find a more useful way of accomplishing this same task. As you will learn, you don’t need to choose between breathing or using your abdominals, you can and will be better served, do both simultaneously.

To train your diaphragm for optimal performance, recovery, and overall health the first step is learning to use its respiratory function. Followed by integrating this efficient breathing pattern back into a movement or exercise with increased demand for stabilization. These two steps will be emphasized throughout the program. I hope you notice (but do not get bored with) how redundant this is. If, as you are training, you notice you slip back into a pattern of breath-holding, stressful breathing, or mouth-breathing, this is a sign that you have progressed too quickly. Notice this, and adjust accordingly: Reduce the complexity or difficulty

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of the activity that requires stabilization, refocus on effective respiratory function, then gradually increase complexity and difficulty at a pace that allows you to maintain effective respiratory function.

SIGNS YOUR DIAPHRAGM MAY NEED SOME LOVE Dance has a particularly wonderful way of challenging the fine balance of your diaphragm’s many roles, so, unless you take proactive measures to keep it happy, you will almost definitely run into some breathing- related troubles. In fact, nearly everyone, not just dancers, has issues with their breathing. The demands of dance, however, are unique and more pronounced than those of most non-dancing human beings.

Here are a few ways dancing can affect how well you breathe, move, and feel: • Being cued to suck in your belly can cause paradoxical breathing. Paradoxical breathing most presents itself as the belly sucking in on inhalation while the chest and neck raise, bypassing the respiratory function of the diaphragm, and using more secondary respiratory muscles (the neck primarily) to pull in air. • Use of exaggerated extension postures and rib flare, causing a reduction of Zone of Apposition (ZOA) putting the diaphragm in an ineffective position for breathing efficiently, and lengthening the abdominals, potentially leading to abdominal muscle downregulation (inability to properly activate at the appropriate time) and/or hypertonicity (high resting tension). • Breath-holding and hyperinflation of lungs, which leaves the body in a resting state of relative inhalation. This contributes to

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chronic diaphragm activity and state of inhalation, coupled with an inability to exhale fully (diaphragm stays contracted unless you exhale). • Forcing turnout with use of an excessive anterior pelvic tilt, a common strategy to achieve more hip rotation than a dancer actually has, exacerbates the hyperextended posture, increasing rib flare, and placing the diaphragm in an ineffective position to breathe and stabilize. • Accessory respiratory muscle overuse due to paradoxical breathing pattern. As mentioned above, the secondary respiratory muscles - neck and shoulders (sternocleidomastoid, scalenes, subclavius, upper traps, latissumus dorsi), can become overused, chronically active, and hypertonic with shallow, chest breathing. They are called secondary for a reason. This type of neck and shoulder tension can’t be stretched out. It is serving you by helping you breathe, and can only be addressed by changing breathing patterns. • Stress and poor recovery from classes and rehearsals. If you do not take time to recover and rest, particularly if you are over- trained or injured, you will not fully enter the restorative aspect of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). Breathing calmly and slowly stimulates the PNS. Stress, anxiety, depression, and other chronic emotional states keep us living primarily in a sympathetic nervous system (SNS) state, which feeds into breathing pattern disorder by increasing rate of breathing and using more of a chest breathing pattern. It can easily become a habitual cycle in which

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we cannot relax causing us to breathe inefficiently, then, because we are breathing inefficiently, we cannot relax.

It is easy to see the vicious cycle of poor breathing mechanics coupled with poor technical cueing and execution in class, and the mental and physical stress of dance all feeding off each other. If you dance, you can probably assume that your diaphragm needs some tender, loving care.

Here’s a short list of signs to be aware of that could indicate your diaphragm needs some love:

• You breathe paradoxically (chest rising coupled with belly sucking in) • You have a breathing disorder such as asthma or sleep apnea, or you snore. • You have various chronic pain symptoms: low back, sacroiliac, neck, hip, shoulder • Chronic headaches/migraines • You have a history of heart disease • You have a flared rib/hyper-extended spinal posture at rest • You experience shortness of breath while exercising • Difficulty speaking and swallowing • Excessive yawning and hiccupping • Diaphragmatic (rib) cramping with strenuous exercise • You notice you hold your breath to complete difficult movements (in dance and in life) • You clench your jaw

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• You have been diagnosed with pelvic floor dysfunction (more on that in the Core Training chapter) • You have digestive issues, like constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, GERD, etc. • You breathe primarily through your mouth, and find it difficult to breathe through your nose, especially while exercising • You feel chronically stressed and fatigued and have trouble sleeping despite always feeling tired • You experience anxiety or panic attacks • You wake up regularly in the middle of the night to use the washroom, or otherwise

Yes, the issues above are all related to breathing. Start to become aware. It could be the most important thing you do for yourself (and your dancing).

CONCEPTS FOR RETRAINING DIAPHRAGMATIC FUNCTION The following concepts will also be explained in several of the video tutorials and, with practice, will help you to change how you breathe, which can lead to improvements in how you move and feel. Imagine a state of being in which your breath does more than just keep you conscious. I think you will like it.

1. Breathe low, awareness to center of mass (Tan Tien breathing), and self-abdominal massage.

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: I suggest this concept under the assumption that a) you currently have a tendency to breathe paradoxically (into your chest while belly sucks in), and/or, b) you currently have limited abdominal expansion as you inhale. These are only assumptions, and may not necessarily be the case, but, I feel confident in these assumptions because nearly every dancer I’ve worked with finds this concept of breathing low beneficial. That said, one should never assume anything. I have also worked with dancers who were “belly- breathers”. Belly breathing, a forward expansion of the abdomen, does not indicate effective breathing, and this is a myth that should be put to rest. A healthy breathing pattern involves a 360-expansion of both the abdomen and ribcage (including chest and sternum movement) simultaneously. This belly-breathing-is-good-breathing myth is, what I speculate, to be one reason some dancers avoid diaphragmatic breathing- they don’t want to be told their belly is sticking out. Fortunately, pushing out your belly to breathe is not something you need, or should do for effective respiration. The purpose of Tan Tien breathing, or, breathing low, as described below, is simply to become aware of a paradoxical breathing habit, and shift the breath to start lower. After this can be done easily the next step is to carry this low expansion into a 360 shape (umbrella breathing) to avoid the forwards-only belly-breathing pattern.

In Taoist teachings, as a part of Tai Chi, Qi Gong, Kung Fu, and many other martial arts, the area approximately two inches below your bellybutton is called Tan Tien. This area also correlates to your center of mass, located at around the same depth as your spine (around L4/L5,

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also a commonly injured segment). This is where we will be focusing your awareness on your breath to begin the re-training process.

To bring your awareness low, I recommend that you place your fingers about an inch or two below your belly button, and, with an exhalation, push in an inch or two as the Tan Tien/center of mass is located at about spine-depth. This technique can also couple as an abdominal massage, and is beneficial for hypertonic abdominals that could be restricting your use of the diaphragm with breathing, and recruiting more of the secondary muscles of respiration (upper traps, scalenes, and other neck muscles). As you inhale, try to push your fingers out with the expansion of the breath. As you exhale, try to sink your fingers a little further into your belly. You can do this same exercise at other points on your abdomen. Just above your hip bones, or the at sides of your abdomen, or even hooked under your ribcage. These are other common areas many of us struggle to expand when breathing.

Again, recall the concept that muscles must lengthen before they can contract. The same applies to your abdominals, which must load eccentrically as you inhale to accommodate expansion of the abdomen. By pressing into your abdomen, you are pre-loading it for stretch, and as you inhale, your abdominals much stretch, or load eccentrically, against your fingers. Breathing into your fingers allows you to eccentrically load your abdominals so that you can then activate them appropriately.

2. 360-degree expansion (umbrella breathing)

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The diaphragm lines the entire inner aspect of the ribcage, not just in the front of your ribcage where you can get your fingers under it. This makes it a difficult muscle to stretch and release as the ribcage is relatively fixed. For this reason, it is important to be able to access its 360-degree potential to ensure that all the tissues of the diaphragm get to experience contraction and expansion. I often find it helpful for my clients to visualize their ribcage and abdomen expand like an umbrella opening as they inhale. Similarly to the opening of the umbrella, the diaphragm expands 360 degrees, not only to the front, but to the back and sides as well. It also helps to visualize the reverse. With exhalation, the umbrella closes as the air leaves your lungs and your ribcage depresses, moving down and in.

If this is difficult to feel, you can use your fingers, again, for feedback. Just as in the breathing concept number one, push your fingers slightly into the sides of your stomach, below your bottom ribs. On the inhalation, you should be able to expand into your fingers and push them out. If this is difficult to do, then umbrella breathing is the perfect exercise for you right now. 360 expansion, or umbrella breathing, should be trained until it happens unconsciously, so that your body can use it in dance without needing to force it to happen.

3. Allow diaphragm to relax with a 2 or 3:1 exhale to inhale ratio, with pause after exhalation

Remember that when you inhale, or perhaps hold your breath, your diaphragm contracts and stays relatively contracted, never getting to a full relaxation and lengthening, which happens only upon exhalation.

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For this reason, as cross-training for your breathing, a useful suggestion is to try to extend the exhalation two to three times longer than the inhalation, and then pause at the end of each exhalation for a few seconds.

You may start with a count of 3 seconds in, 6 seconds out and work from there. Do what feels challenging yet reasonable for you, and still allows you to keep the umbrella breathing pattern. If you find it difficult to do this or keep your focus, you may find it helpful to work to the beat of music rather than count seconds. It helps keep me focused, gives me a set duration to focus on my breath - and life is just better with music. As a dancer, I know you understand. However, breathing is a wonderful portal for awareness of the present moment. Being able to focus on your breath without an aid of music, or external guidance, is focus-based mind-training. This can be immensely helpful for your dance training, and at all levels of life.

Humming or making an “sss” or “shh” sound with exhalation is a useful tool that helps give you immediate feedback on the duration of your exhalation, and whether you’re exhaling fully. It is excellent when used in conjunction with the abdominal massage technique in breathing - concept one. It may feel in the beginning that you need to hyperventilate as your brain might find this long exhalation distressing. Remember, you are used to holding your breath in, not letting it go, so naturally your nervous system won’t like it, at first. Breath holding has served you, historically, by giving you a sense of stability, and by exhaling you are entering new territory, a dark zone that may feel unsafe. This is normal, and will change with consistent practice.

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However, it is important to respect your limits and be mindful of this during the learning curve. Panic, feelings of anxiousness, or semi- suffocation are normal while you are learning to retrain your breathing. I encourage you to simply observe these feelings, and the desire to quickly inhale without giving in right away to this instinctual urge. Of course, work at your limit. The goal is not to make yourself extremely dizzy, pass out, or have an anxiety attack.

The pause after the exhalation is significant particularly as it relates to reducing over-breathing, that is, breathing in excess of our metabolic demands. Most of us hyperventilate, breathe a larger volume of air than one human being needs. The root of hyperventilation is often a stressor such as excess exercise, foods, relationships, chronic emotional states, work, poor sleep quality, etc. Any stressor will increase our breathing rate and if elevated chronically, for long periods of time, creates an adaptation in which we breathe more per minute than we need. A higher breathing rate correlates with a higher resting heart rate, and a more sympathetic nervous system state, perpetuating the need to breathe more rapidly. Breathing a large volume of air doesn’t mean we’re getting plenty of oxygen, in fact, quite the opposite, as it is the exhalation and the following pause that allows oxygen to be delivered to our bodies. The pause after inhalation slows your rate of breathing, and helps more oxygen to be unloaded from the hemoglobin carrying it to your tissues, while reducing the volume of air you breathe. Over time, by making the switch to breathing only through your nose, slowing your breathing, and increasing the pause after exhalation you will reduce the volume of air you breathe, helping you to receive more oxygen from less air, and lower your resting heart-rate.

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This correlates with parasympathetic nervous system stimulation, contributing to a more beneficial cycle of more efficient breathing, less stress, and less tension in your body. If you’d like to learn more about the significance of the pause after exhalation, nose breathing, and breathing less air, read The Oxygen Advantage, or Shut Your Mouth by Patrick McKeown, a Buteyko breathing method educator. The Buteyko method is designed to help people breathe less and get more oxygen, helping them resolve a host of breathing disorders like asthma, reduce anxiety, and improve athletic performance through improved respiratory fitness.

While there is little research on this topic as it applies to dancers, I am quite sure that helping dancers to reduce over-breathing and enhance oxygen uptake would be a useful way to improve aerobic capacity but without adding the additional stress of more aerobic exercise. Remember, exercise is a stressor, and the wrong kind, or too much stress affects how we breathe.

4. Achieving Zone of Apposition (ZOA) via ribcage depression and complete exhalation for improved diaphragmatic function

As described in the Concepts chapter, Zone of Apposition (ZOA) is achieved with a complete exhalation and pause allowing the ribcage to depress, moving down and in towards the hip bones, like an umbrella closing or balloon deflating. Throughout the breathing exercises in the program you will be placing your awareness on the movement of the ribcage. Are you letting it go down and in to your maximum potential during the exhalation? Are you letting a little more air leave your lungs each time?

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At the end of the exhalation, you should be in your maximum ZOA, and, as described in the previous concept, you should be able to pause for a moment there before the next inhalation. This will help to maximize the time spent with the diaphragm not contracted, and allow you to experience your ZOA. On the next inhalation, the challenge is to maintain a sense of rib depression. This is where many people struggle: maintaining rib position on inhalation without allowing the ribcage to pop open again.

While it is not a large degree of movement, the ribcage and the spine can move independently of each other, and so, it is possible (and desirable) to be able to arch (extend) your back while maintaining ZOA, meaning, you can do an upper back bend without letting your ribcage pop open and flare up. This is also why you will see some people with very rounded, kyphotic, upper backs with a ribcage that is still flared open and a wide angle of the zyphoid process. It is essential for dancers to understand this independent movement potential of the spine and ribcage. This is important for proper use of core musculature and respiratory efficiency, and deeper and safer backbends with efficient load-sharing through the entire spine, meaning, not just hinging off of one spinal segment. This degree of independent ribcage and spinal movement is also essential for implementing and integrating the common cues, “don’t stick out your ribs”, and “stand up tall”, which can seem paradoxical to do simultaneously. The way to train your body to do these seemingly contradictory movements is to own the exhalation into full rib depression, and learn to inhale, allowing for the spine to extend, while still maintaining ZOA. This

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concept will become more clear with practice and with integration into the exercises on spinal movement into flexion and extension that you will practice in the movement preparation portion of the program.

A final important note on this concept is that ZOA is not a position to get stuck in, but one that you need the option to move into and stay in as long as it is your choice to do so. Your body is craving to have this option, ZOA, for optimal breathing and coordinated abdominal function, but it can become equally limiting to feel that you need to stay stuck there all the time. Remember, there is no such thing as a bad position or movement, but any movement or position can become problematic if we get stuck there, or can’t get into it at all.

BREATHING IN DANCE, TRAINING, AND LIFE Breathing is not something to do in just one particular exercise and then forget about. The breathing exercises in Dance Stronger are to provide an experience to explore breathing mechanics in an uncomplicated situation, but then, this awareness of breathing should be layered into every other movement and exercise, into daily life, and into your dancing. I encourage you to apply the breathing concepts as you walk, as you sit, as you exercise, and as you dance. The effect will be profound.

I personally feel that the best way to start applying these concepts to your breathing is to follow along with the breathing tutorials to get a sense of how redundant the drills are (found at www.dancestronger.com/breathing). You’ll notice that in each video, I recommend similar cueing, but applied to different positions. The

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concepts for retraining your breath described in this chapter apply to any exercise or activity you perform (not just the ones in Dance Stronger), and the different positions and movements provide a different sensory experience, some of which will be more challenging for you than others. Some people apply the breathing concepts more successfully while supine (on their back), some prone (on their stomach), others when standing. It will depend on you, your injury history, your particular movement and postural habits, and your psychology.

For example, breathing in supine used to be very difficult for me to do, and while it was a good challenge and helped me to develop awareness, breathing while lying on my back was very strenuous and I couldn’t do it for very long without shaking like a leaf and returning to old breathing habits. This was due to several factors: multiple hyperextension-based back injuries (back-bending), several hard falls on my tailbone, and a few instances of whiplash. These injuries, and some anxiety issues, made lying supine feel “unsafe”, as there wasn’t enough of my body making contact with the floor to feel grounded. Personally, breathing drills done prone (like crocodile) or in quadruped felt safer so I worked on those in conjunction with getting more comfortable in supine, within the limit of my abilities to keep a desirable breathing pattern and feel safe.

The breathing tutorials in this program are based on the exercises that I have found to be the most effective for my clients and myself. Please remember, I have chosen these because they provide the sensory experience that I find easiest to coach. I encourage you to get creative

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if you’d like. This is about you, and your personal exploration, not about what I think you should do. Don’t get too attached to these particular exercises. Create your own breathing drills that work for you based on the breathing concepts in this section (and let me know what you come up with). For instance, if you find yourself in an awkward body position at home, work, or on the dance floor, stop, if safe, and check in with your breathing. You just found a new exercise to train your breathing.

A major challenge for many of us in the retraining process is the resistance from our own minds. Being able to switch your mindset from “this is hard and uncomfortable, why is breathing so frustrating?” to one of “I’m enjoying the new awareness of my breath” will help. We don’t want to mess with your breathing in a forceful way, go gently through this process. Treat it as an exploration your anatomy, connecting it to your history, and observing your mind’s reaction to all this without judging it. This last point, to observe what is really happening and to move, or breathe, honestly into the dark zones, is what allows us to evaluate whether the way we are currently breathing and moving is truly serving us.

Try not to be too attached to old ways of breathing, but at the same time, don’t get too attached to the method I am describing here, because as you change and grow, your approach will also need to evolve. I that I think this Feldenkrais quote expresses it best:

“It must be good for you and not for the Feldenkrais teaching. It should be good for you. You should find out what is good for you and let all the other systems die. Even Feldenkrais."

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Feldenkrais is a well-known therapist who discovered his own practice techniques and built a therapeutic empire around them. I appreciate that he is saying that if his methods don’t work, don’t do them.

CHECKING IN WITH YOUR BREATH: ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE BREATHING

The first crucial step is to observe quietly and non-judgmentally. You can’t change what you are not aware of. As Feldenkrais said, “You can’t do what you won’t until you know what you’re doing”. It is important to discover which elements of effective breathing could be currently missing from your system before trying to change anything. It is also a good idea to have several outcome measures to check in with that are not related to breathing. It is quite possible that by simply changing the way you breathe you also change the way you move (you will read more about choosing and using outcome measures in Chapter 6).

To begin, find a comfortable place, either sitting, standing, or lying down and bring your awareness to your breath. Do not change the way you breathe yet. Simply observe and make notes on which of the following elements are easy, or happen naturally without conscious effort, and which do not:

1. Nasal breathing. Do you inhale and exhale through your nose, or do you find yourself mouth-breathing? Breathing through your nose is an important part of re-training the breath for mechanical and chemical reasons. Check out this article for a list of reasons why nose breathing is so important:

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http://thebreathablebody.com/reasons-breathing-through-your- nose-is-good-for-you/.

1. Tongue position. What is the resting position of your jaw, lips, and tongue? Can you hold your lips together, teeth apart, tip of your tongue behind your front teeth, and the whole belly of your tongue gently sitting on the roof of your mouth? This is the position in which you want your jaw, lips, and tongue to be comfortable while re-training your breath and whenever possible while performing physical activity, and dancing (unless otherwise choreographed).

2. Quality of inhalations. How frequent are your breaths? Count how many times you breathe in one minute. About 10-14 breaths per minute promotes and indicates good health and optimal performance, which is about 6-8 liters of air per minute, compared to those with breathing discord who breathe about 20- 26 breaths per minute, and over 16 liters per minute. Where does your breath go first? Do you breathe up into your chest, neck, and shoulders before your abdomen expands? Does your lower ribcage expand with inhalation? Can you let expand both your sternum and belly as you breathe? Can you expand your abdomen to the back and laterally or does it only protrude forwards? Use your hands on your body to feel where the air is going. What you would like is to feel air expanding your abdominal and thoracic cavity (abdomen, ribs, and chest) 360 degrees and then emptying 360 degrees (umbrella breathing). Be aware of the quality and

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quantity of your breaths.

3. Quality of exhalations. How is the length of your exhalation compared to your inhalation? Can you exhale for twice as long as you inhale? Can you get more air out of your lungs each time you exhale, or is it difficult to fully exhale without feeling an uncomfortable air hunger? Can you pause for a few seconds at the end of your exhalation before breathing in? Can you swallow during the pause at the end of the exhalation? As you exhale completely, do you feel your ribcage moving down and in (ZOA), or does the space at the top of your ribs (zyphoid) remain open? In optimal breathing, we’d like the exhalation to be longer than the inhalation, with a pause at the end of the inhalation in which you could swallow, and to feel your ribcage moving down and in to a maximum ZOA.

ONT3EPZ checklist for retraining breath

As a general reminder to compliment the exercise tutorials, go through the following check-list as you perform the exercises. (use the mnemonic, Oven Nachos Take 3 Extremely Patient Zombies, if you like)

• Observe quietly before changing anything • Nasal breathing • Tongue and jaw position • 360 expansion (balloon breathing) • Exhale longer than inhalation with pause at the end • Pause at the end of the exhalation

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• Zone of apposition (ZOA) - Ribs move down and in as you exhale Record which elements of breath were difficult for you and add these to your list of outcome measures along with others that are not related to breathing. You will track how these change, or don’t change, as you work through the breathing exercises in this program.

Again, keep in mind that the exercises featured in Dance Stronger are just suggestions for where to begin, a starting point for your journey retraining your breathing. Any position or exercise can be a “breathing exercise” if you have that as your intention. I encourage you to experiment with the breathing principles in other positions and exercises and would love to hear what you come up with.

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CHAPTER 5 Core Training

No dance training resource would be complete without a section on how to train your “core”, so here is my two cents (and little bit extra) on the what, why, and how of effective core training.

I’ll be honest, I’ve come to strongly dislike the word “core”. I generally avoid using it, and inwardly cringe when I do, because it feels so ambiguous. Half of the time I feel as if I don’t even know what I am referring to by “core”. What is the core? Is it your abdominal muscles? Is there more to it than that? And what does it mean when you hear “engage your core!”? Do a web search of the topic and it seems like everyone has an individual definition of “core”. And with all the different ways of describing it no wonder there’s so much confusion surrounding how to improve the function of this important system of muscles. To attempt to speak of all the core muscles and their function in detail can be paralyzing (ironically, this seems to be what most forms of core training today tend to do to our bodies—stiffen, and restrict movement).

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This chapter is not meant to be anything new or groundbreaking, nor do I want it to be-I would hate to add further to the core confusion that many of my clients come to me to sort out in the first place. In this chapter we will explore the muscles generally referred to by “core”. Then, I will encourage you to let go of thinking of individual muscles in isolation, which is just one small part of core training, and look at the other pillars supporting the foundation, your core, of your body in motion.

CORE COMPLAINTS AND CONFUSIONS

“Strengthen and activate my core” is the number one goal most of my clients have initially. It is also the number one thing their dance teachers tell them that they need to improve. While they might not be able to tell me what core means, they “know” that theirs is weak, and they know a weak core is a limitation. Many have tried Pilates classes or other group fitness workouts designed to target the core, or they have dedicated an entire morning routine to abdominal exercises. But they are not sure that these classes and routines are helping.

In this chapter we will think beyond the traditional methods of core work presented in many dance classes:

● Lying on the floor crunching, ● “Stabilizing” while moving your limbs in isolation, ● Sucking your bellybutton to your spine (as is a common recommendation), and ● Doing Pilates 100s and V-sits until you cramp (not necessarily your abs, either).

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In fact, one thing I wish dance teachers would stop doing is putting crunches and other favourite core exercises into their dance warm-ups without knowing why or how to do them. This is something my colleague Bizz Varty and I cover in our teacher training workshops. Sure, many dance students enjoy feeling the abdominal muscles burn. And, I must admit, it does feel productive, but only because we’ve been conditioned to equate ¨feeling the burn¨ with effectiveness. But feeling the burn is not always synonymous with effective movement and muscle management. Start to think of muscles as managers, and, as is true of managers in the workplace, we don’t want to make them angry, have them micro-manage, or make them do more work than they need to do to maintain an efficiently functioning system.

If this is the first time you are hearing that crunches may not be the exercise of choice for dancers, I hope you’ll keep an open mind throughout the rest of this chapter. Leave your current beliefs, what you think you already know about core training, at the door. You can go back to your previous way of thinking if you still want to when you’re done reading and exploring movements in your own body. If you already do, or have your dance students do crunches in dance class, I hope you’ll reconsider, not only because they may not be the most beneficial exercise, but because you may be spending valuable time on an ineffective exercise which could be spent helping your students on other levels. In fact, my biggest issue with the current dance class selection at some studios is the excessive amount of time we spend on the floor stretching and doing core exercises, leaving less time to work on technique, choreography, and developing our skills as performers.

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Many of my clients experience this, as do numerous readers who have emailed me with this same complaint. They are unsure what to do about core exercises that feel wrong for them, either because they can’t do the technique or because doing the exercises hurts their bodies. They feel they have no other options and will be seen as rude if they don’t follow along.

There is nothing inherently wrong with crunches, the Pilates 100s, or any specific core exercise, if you truly enjoy it, perform it in an appropriate way, and perceive that it gives you some benefit (we must not ignore the placebo effect and the psychological power of ritual in some cases). These types of exercises can be a useful tool if practiced with an appropriate intention and attention to detail, but, often, rather than developing strength and enhancing movement potential, exercises like crunches are performed in a way that does little to help recruit core musculature to support your dancing. Instead the same inefficient pattern becomes more ingrained in your system with every repetition.

Before we go into a “how-to” and “why-to” of core training, let’s define “core”.

WHAT IS THE CORE? There are many different philosophies and systems for naming and exercising the muscles that comprise the core. I don’t claim that my way is 100% correct. My thoughts might change in few months or years, and if they do, I will be sure to make revisions to this manuscript. In fact, in this second edition of Dance Stronger, nearly 75% of this chapter has been revised (and was close to being deleted completely).

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First, be aware that there are two subgroups of core musculature with different priorities of needs: The intrinsic and extrinsic core subsystems. We need to speak a bit about the muscles to provide a point of reference, but we will not be focusing on individual muscles and their functions in great detail. We want to avoid paralysis, in our minds, and in our bodies’ motions. To learn more about muscles, consult an anatomy book or app.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Core “Intrinsic core” refers to the inner, deeper core: Muscles that don’t create large movements but help to hold the deepest parts of you together, including your organs. Effective use of the intrinsic core is a prerequisite for quality of movement at other distal (further from center) joints and segments, such as arm and leg movement. These intrinsic muscles include (but not limited to):

• Thoracic diaphragm (discussed in detail in Chapter 4) • Pelvic floor • Jaw • Transverse abdominis (TVA)—the deep abdominal muscle that compresses your mid-section and abdominal viscera • Multifidi (the small muscles between vertebrae) The “extrinsic core” consists of more superficial muscles that have a greater responsibility for creating movement than for maintaining a position or alignment. These bigger, moving muscles include:

• Hamstrings

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• Hip adductors (inner thigh muscles) • Internal and external abdominal obliques • Rectus abdominis (the stomach muscles that run upward from pubis to ribs) • Psoas (a deep hip flexors we often complain feels “tight”) • Paraspinal erectors (muscles that run along either side of your spine) In the hierarchy of the core system, intrinsic core function is of first priority. The function of the intrinsic core can become compromised due to an altered resting posture or habitual way of moving. This causes chronic shortness, length, overuse, or poor timing of these muscles within a movement pattern. The initial trigger that causes function to become compromised can often be traced back to an inability to cope with a stressor of some kind, be it physical (exercise, acute injury, illness, habitual posture or way of moving, etc.), or psychological (emotional trauma, anxiety, chronic mental stress, etc.). No number of crunches can remove a stressor from your life, no matter how well you perform them. While we may not consider it “core training”, optimizing intrinsic core function may come down to considering what stressors you could remove, not what exercises you can add. Intrinsic core disruption can cause us to hold excessive tension, guard muscles protectively, and find new ways of moving around to avoid the issue. These new movement strategies are often difficult to feel in our own bodies and to change without guidance. Fortunately, there are many therapists capable of assessing and helping you with this process.

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Here are some examples of intrinsic core issues that can alter how we move, and so, how muscles manage our movement:

• The muscles of the pelvic floor can become overused or, particularly post-pregnancnction insufficiently, interfering with the way we recruit other intrinsic and extrinsic core muscles. For example, no amount of crunches will help the TVA (transverse abdominis), properly activate unless the underlying pelvic floor issue, is assessed and addressed. Kegels are not always the miracle solution they are touted to be. Will contracting a pelvic floor that is already stuck short and contracted on an off-center pelvis solve anything? How we use our deep pelvic muscles is not always something we can objectively observe in ourselves. Often it is helpful to find a therapist you trust to help if you suspect you have difficulties with your pelvic floor.

• The diaphragm, you’ll remember from Chapter 4, can become overused for spinal stabilization from chronic breath holding or other factors. Again, this can inhibit the timing and activation of other intrinsic or extrinsic muscles such as the TVA and the pelvic floor. In fact, in restful breathing, the pelvic floor and diaphragm must coordinate together, as the diaphragm descends and contracts with inhalation, the pelvic floor loads eccentrically to accommodate the downwards movement of the abdominal viscera. Breathing discord often pairs with pelvic floor discord, and optimizing breath is key component to optimizing pelvic floor

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function.

• The jaw, not a structure we generally think of as part of the core, but can become a source of trouble in a similar manner as the diaphragm and pelvic floor. In dance (and in daily life), we often clench our jaws to cope with stress or to perform challenging movements, either consciously or not. Do you? The jaw has an amazing ability to sense our position in space (proprioception), and as a last line of defense, clenching or shifting our jaw can help us feel more grounded in our bodies. When this becomes our preferred pattern for coping with stress or giving our position in space a point of reference, it can decrease the degree to which other muscles, such as TVA, multifidus, or quadratus lumborum (QL) contribute. A small lateral jaw deviation or change in occlusion (tooth contact) can have a big impact on how we use our “core muscles”. The above three examples are quite common in dancers. Who among us doesn’t hold their breath and clench their jaw, or hold in their urine for hours during a long dance day? I worked with one dancer whose jaw clenching habit was interfering with access to a whole body rotational pattern. Another dancer’s lateral jaw deviation was inhibiting her quadratus lumborum on the opposite side, contributing to long standing sacroiliac joint discomfort. These same strategies also apply to the general population of non-dancers, and other athletes.

If the timing and coordination of the intrinsic and extrinsic core is altered, and these alterations become habitual patterns, this is the

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number one priority to correct. This is a primary reason that the importance of breathing practices is emphasized in this program. As you’ll soon experience in your body, breath control is core control.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU NEED HELP WITH YOUR INTRINSIC CORE? Clues that you may want to look into intrinsic core function can present in various subtle ways and can be difficult to determine on your own. This is another reason it is important to have a therapeutic network you trust. A trained professional can see what you can’t.

Our starting point, is one of self-inquiry. Review the scenarios below. If any describe you, this may indicate there is potential to unlock in your intrinsic core: • You clench your jaw (consciously or not) and/or grind your teeth at night, or have a history of TMJ (temporal mandibular joint) issues • Your jaw deviates to one side, or clicks regularly or painfully • You’ve ever fallen on your tailbone hard • You’ve given birth • You often hold in your urine or delay bowel movements • You have issues with incontinence • Sex is painful • You hold your breath frequently (or any of the signs of breathing discord from Chapter 4) • You are asthmatic, experience shortness of breath, or sleep apnea

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A MUSCLE MUST LENGTHEN BEFORE IT CAN CONTRACT Remember this idea from Chapter 3? It applies to the core, too. You may be thinking, “What? I need to stretch my core to train it?” Well, not exactly. Don’t go jumping into long duration upward-dogs in the name of core training just yet.

Traditionally we view core training as repetitive contractions of the abdominal muscles, hoping to improve their endurance, strength, and tone. Sure, you can do that, and I’m sure the tone of your abdominal muscles will increase. But, does increased abdominal tone actually help your core muscles respond in a more supportive way while you are in motion?

Seeking “tone” is a completely different goal that may be completely at odds with helping you to optimize movement and express the strength you already have. Six pack abs don’t impress me much. In fact, excess tone can be detrimental. It can interfere with your ability to lengthen and reflexively contract the abdominal muscles, breathe effectively, or to find a sense of center in your body. If you have ever had a massage or an acupuncture treatment to the abdominal region, you probably already know how profoundly this reduction in resting muscle tone can change the way your move and feel in your body.

TONING VS. TRAINING What is muscle tone? Consider the common fitness goal “I want to tone up”. Most of us inherently understand this to mean less body fat and more visible muscle definition. But the verbiage “tone up” is

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misleading. To focus on increasing a muscle’s “tone” is not the same as losing fat, or even gaining strength. These goals require different strategies. One could increase the tone of their muscles without losing any body fat. This may be a semantic issue, but semantic issues are also issues in understanding, and in the case of effective core training and dispelling myths surrounding it, we need to choose our words wisely. Toning a muscle is not the same as improving function and strength of a muscle.

Tone refers to the resting “hardness” of a muscle. A muscle with high tone feels more solid to the touch at rest. This is not indicative of optimal tissue health. Sometimes the abdominals hold a lot of resting tone, and while rock-hard abdominal muscles may be the goal for some, very high resting tone makes using the stomach muscles to manage movement quite difficult.

Remember, that to use a muscle it must be able to lengthen first. Rock- hard abdominals don’t lengthen easily, and so they can’t load effectively, like a slingshot with a frozen elastic band. The goal of core training is not to create tone for the sake of tone, for aesthetics, or to feel the abdominal muscles burn, but to develop this muscular system in way that it responds to your movement in a helpful way. Tone should not be your goal if it’s function you’re after. Consider swapping “reflexive” core, for “tight” core. If we apply the concept that muscles need to lengthen before they can contract, or load to explode, then effective core training must teach the core musculature to load eccentrically, in an automatic way, having given them no choice but to contract in response to stretch. Please, do not worry to those of you

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who still want to “feel the burn”. Eccentric training often tends to cause more muscle soreness than concentric training does. So you’ll still feel sore, if that’s what validates your core training (though it shouldn’t).

Feeling muscles eccentrically load is also what I personally allows us to enjoy movement. Feeling the movement is feeling the eccentric loading happening, making it a pleasurable experience. If you’re missing out on the ability to eccentrically load, particularly muscles that are considered “core”, then you are missing out on some incredible, juicy, experiences of movement, let alone feeling controlled and strong while you dance.

Because dancers often need to be able to use a very large range of motion, effective core training must prepare your body to load into these ranges and then return to center with control. When a muscle stretches, a signal is sent to your brain that says, “Contract me! I’ve been stretched far enough!” This is a feeling we are often trained to ignore in dance for the sake of increased flexibility through lots of static stretching. However, you can train yourself to feel this reflex again, and it won’t make you any less flexible. Note, too, that there is a distinct difference between the feeling of “loading” and a static stretch. Loading does not feel like pulling on a muscle in the way a static stretch does. It feels more full and substantial. While a static stretch may feel cold, sharp, or grabbing, an eccentric load feels deep and warm and takes effort to find. Remember, eccentric loading isn’t passive, it is muscle contraction in an elongated position, which, may feel, for lack of better word, “burny”. So maybe I lied. Maybe sometimes you will “feel the burn”.

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FINDING CENTER

Recall we are not trying to train you to stay neutral, but to reflexively find or return to center. This is another subtle shift in language but one that creates a huge shift in our intention for training and movement. Center refers to having an even distribution of our mass over both feet and joints resting at their mid-range. Recall that the human body will organize itself to perform perfectly based on where our center of mass rests, so, if we tend to be more shifted onto our left leg at rest (perhaps this is our preferred leg to stand on in class or for other activities) then everything else must rearrange to accommodate this new center. Training core muscles in a system that is off-center will only reinforce an off-center distribution of mass, and won’t do anything to change the way you move and perform. It could, in fact, send you farther away from your true center, and deeper into your current pattern. We will explore this idea of finding center more in the Explore Phase chapter, and accompanying video tutorials.

A reflexive core should return you back to center, but we need to know the extremes of our range of motion in order to have some reference of what center feels like. But this does not mean to throw your body into an extreme range of motion relying entirely on luck, or on reference from passive structures, like bones and ligaments, which weren’t designed to load repetitively. I’d rather feel confident in my ability to reflexively find center through muscle reaction, than by luck or bones.

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We will speak more about how to train your body to find center, and develop a reflexive core further in this chapter.

HOW TO DANCE “BIGGER” Have you ever been told to dance “bigger”? Some teachers may refer to this as using your full “kinesphere”. This is something I was always told to do, but I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. I was stuck dancing small. Dancers who seem to “dance small” are also often told they have a “weak core”, or that they lack strength in general. They can’t eccentrically load into a very large range of motion, regardless of their passive flexibility. They are confined to a very small base of support, with tense shoulders, hips and spines in an attempt to keep themselves “stable”. Unable to leave their base of support, they have no reference of center. When they do take a risk and leave that already small/medium range of available motion, they might fall, hop, or wobble around, and so they learn that safety remains in continuing to dance “small”. These dancers often get injured more easily. Clearly core strength is important. But I wouldn’t call it strength so much as responsiveness, knowing center, connectivity, or even mobility. Words seem insufficient to describe this concept, and I have, on many occasions considered deleting this entire chapter for this very reason. It is not something to talk or write about, but something to experience and understand in your own body.

As Lao Tzu wrote in his Tao Te Ching,

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“The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao”, meaning, that if we can describe the way of doing it with words, then it must not the true essence of what it is. Such is attempting to describe movement with words. It is something to experience and understand, not to read about.”

CORE MOBILITY

To consider that the core craves mobility rather than stability, a concept introduced in Chapter 3, makes core training a little bit more complex than planking for minutes on end, but it also makes it a lot more interesting and effective. Not that planking isn’t useful, but training for stability it is only one component of core training. Core mobility is what allows us to find center–the edges of our range of motion provide the context for center. Much like needing dark to understand light, to truly find center, you first need to leave it, not control every deviation from it. You have permission to move your body to train your core. Movement is the key, not forced stability, immobility, and rigidity with fear of losing neutral.

I fondly recall a moment in an Anatomy in Motion seminar in New York in 2016 in which Gary was taking us through a movement workshop, encouraging us to leave center, feel muscles loading, and return to center. One participant, a Pilates teacher, was struggling because she was not allowing herself to breach her base of support (leave center). She was trying to maintain neutral and be stable, as she was trained to do, and could not feel any muscles loading. With a few corrections and cues from Gary to move, she managed to feel her muscles load, and exclaimed, “Oh, so I’m allowed to move!”. “Yeah!”, replied Gary, “It’s

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not f***ing Pilates”. Not to be misunderstood, he didn’t say this to put down Pilates, because when done appropriately Pilates can be an incredible tool. He said this in allusion how many of the methods we use for core training tend to teach us how to be very still, held, and stable, which is not at all how the body was designed to move. This was how I was taught, too. Training to be stable is useful at some times for some people, but doesn’t teach us how to apply this stability in a dynamic way. As always, it is not the method that is right or wrong, but how we apply it.

To train your core you may not need to lie on the floor doing mini arm and leg circles while clenching your abs trying to keep everything else perfectly still with a hyper-specific breathing pattern. It may not be serving you to hold a plank for five minutes thinking any less time makes you a weak failure. If we want to prepare our bodies to have a higher tolerance and work capacity for the performance of the movements we use in dance, we must consider whether or not the exercises we are choosing are helping us. Will sitting on the floor isolating a limb help you perform the vast array of possible movements in dance? Will training your body to be stiff in a plank, on its own, be adequate to support your body in motion? I don’t see how that kind of training alone provides the opportunity for motor learning that will elicit a change in the way you connect to your body, and allow that change to easily translate into your dancing. Yes, planks and leg circles can be components of cross-training for dance, but they focus more on the concentric–the forced contraction of muscles. In these exercises you micro-manage muscles rather than allow the muscles to be the managers. They do not take into consideration the eccentric, reflexive

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type of training that helps to make movement effortless, and the expression of strength an unconscious process. A well balanced movement and strength training diet includes exercises that serve as experiences in which your body is given the option to move spontaneously, reflexively, and without having to think about engaging or tightening anything.

Ask: Are your favorite exercises helping you to dance more effortlessly, or are they just helping you get better at doing the exercises? I am sure that you could get very, very good at executing a seated hip flexion drill with a pointed foot in a small segment of a range of motion, with a particular way of breathing, and make it look darn good, too. But will this actually carry over to your dancing? In my experience, it does not. Maybe at first, if you have never done any kind of strength training before, and maybe to the extent of a specific moment in a piece of choreography in which you happen to be sitting, moving your leg within that specific range of motion you practiced, with your eyes focused in exactly the same direction, with that one trained breathing pattern… You get the point.

The type of training you choose must be specific to the infinite number of movement possibilities in dance. This seems paradoxical because “infinite possibilities” cannot be specifically defined. The concept of specificity of training means that what you train is what you get, and so you must train to be prepared for anything. Trust that technique training will take care of the specific needs for your dance style, experience performing will develop your artistry, and cross-training will cover the rest of the bases, develop your athleticism, promote efficient

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body mechanics, and make your technique more effortless and enjoyable, while reducing the strain on your body.

BUILDING A TABLE: FOUR ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE CORE TRAINING Core training can be seen as a four legged table. The table top represents a foundation on which you can layer other complexities, such as dance technique, general strength, power, movement, flexibility, grace, and athleticism. Each leg represents an element of core training. Lose one leg, or have one shorter than the others, and you lose your supportive foundation. In the previous edition of this book, I was in a “muscle tunnel”. This was before studying Anatomy in Motion and understanding that muscles are just one leg of the table. An important leg, but still just one part of the equation, and to think muscles are all there is to work on would be a mistake. Recall that muscles are managers, but what do they manage? The Prague School and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) teaches that “core stability” is not defined by strength of the abdominals or back muscles (or any others) but results from optimal intra-abdominal pressure regulation. IAP is the air pressure created in the abdomen through effective coordination of the diaphragm, pelvic floor, and abdominals which can be achieved by maintaining optimal ribcage position while breathing. And so, the three other legs of the table that allow muscles to assume their managerial role are: Zone of Apposition, spinal mobility, and intra-abdominal pressure. Let’s take a closer look at how each plays a role in creating a reflexive core.

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Leg 1: Zone of Apposition (ZOA) Without a Zone of Apposition there is no core to train. ZOA is home. It’s point A, and even with the advent of Google Maps, without knowing first where you’re coming from, you can’t get directions to where you want to go. ZOA indicates a nervous system that is adaptable, a diaphragm that can be used effectively for both respiration and spinal stabilization, and a body that is not locked up with excess tone.

As we already looked at in previous chapters, achieving a maximum ZOA is accomplished by exhaling fully and moving the ribcage down and in. This loads the diaphragm eccentrically, and places it and the ribcage in an optimal position from which it can achieve an effective inhalation with abdominal activation. Being able to inhale while maintaining a relative ZOA is what will allow you to breathe and use your abdominals simultaneously–To breathe and brace. It is necessary to train your body to inhale while maintaining a slightly flexed (rounded) spine and depressed-rib position because the diaphragm pulls the spine forward and up into an extended position upon contraction (inhalation), reducing ZOA.

It doesn’t need to be an either/or choice: Breathing or maintaining position and muscle activity. You can, and should, do both by spending some dedicated time practicing, and in doing so you interrupt the pattern of each inhalation pulling you further into an extended posture (lordosis and rib flare). This will help you reposition your ribcage and spine, strengthen your abdominal wall and diaphragm in coordination with one-another, and set the stage for you to create intra-abdominal

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pressure. Therefore, the first step in building your core-training table is to own your exhalation, ribcage depression, and spinal flexion (rounding your back) to get into your maximum ZOA.

Leg 2: Spinal Mobility

As discussed in previous chapters traditional, mainstream, core training methods teach us that we need to be more stable: We must stabilize our spines and prevent movement to be strong and prevent injuries, and neutral spine is the most coveted position of them all. However, this is a misinterpretation of the truth. The ability to be stiff is only one piece of the puzzle.

Professor Paul Hodges, the man recognized for “discovering” the importance and significance of the transverse abdominis, arguably our “most important” core muscle, and popularized by the “draw in your belly button” cue for TVA activation, does not believe that spine was designed to be held rigidly still. It is unfortunate that his research, taken largely out of context, has been misinterpreted as sucking in and keeping rigid. Just because drawing in the belly button was one effective way of helping individuals to activate their transverse abdominis, does not mean that this is how we need to move 100% of the time. In fact, understanding when and how to move our spines, and relax the muscles of our backs is more useful for preventing and dealing with back pain than the exercises that teach us to keep our backs stiff. And in athletics, including dance, it would be incredibly limiting to have trained to keep only a rigid, stable spine.

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As Hodges goes on to say in an interview with SBS (Special Broadcasting Service, Australia): while core stability exercises are easy to teach, they involve very little movement of the spine, says Hodges. "The common assumption in gyms is that people assume core stability means that you stop the spine from moving."

That's not what core stability means, says Prof Hodges. "Core stability is getting the balance between movement and stiffness… If you think about most functions, they actually need the spine to move," he said. In dance we can see very easily how only training to keep a stiff spine would be a hindrance, not just to our technique, but to our ability to express ourselves. With each foot step we take, the spine moves through one full cycle of flexion and extension, from heel strike to toe off (propulsion). This is something we often take for granted. Spinal motion is necessary and natural for the most basic of human movements– Walking.

Training spinal motion as part of core training involves: a. possessing requisite range and ratios of motion of your spine at all segments, b. natural opposition in three planes of movement between the lower (lumbar), upper (thoracic), and cervical (neck) spine, and c. integrating this, in context, within full body movement patterns. If we think of our spine’s inherent structure as many small parts with many joints, we can use the analogy of a bicycle chain. A bicycle chain needs full movement between each segment for the bicycle to run

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smoothly. Sometimes, bicycle chain links (like spinal vertebrae), can become stuck together from non-use, injury, or a habitual way of moving. When we develop a non-moving chunk of spine, something else must move more to pick up the slack, which, is not an efficient long term strategy. The muscles around that spinal chunk will not get the opportunity to load, because there is no movement to manage. An important part of core training is to get to know your spine. Discovering where the chunky bits that don’t move are, where the hypermobile bits that are moving a lot are. Then, feeding movement into your system to restore the balance between mobile and immobile. Allowing previously stagnant muscles and tissues to load, compressed areas to decompress, and areas locked long (open) to close (shorten), creating new options for movement. Natural spinal motion refers to how the spine naturally moves as we walk. The most fundamental motions our bodies can perform are the joint actions that allow us to walk efficiently. Our spines also have a natural motion through the gait cycle. It is really quite simple- The lumbar and thoracic spine oppose the cervical spine. This is true for every plane of movement (sagittal, frontal, and transverse) at every moment in the gait cycle, from heel strike to toe off. When the lumbar spine rounds (flexes), so does the thoracic spine, and simultaneously the cervical spine extends in opposition. When the lumbar spine extends, the thoracic spine does,too, and the cervical spine flexes in opposition. This opposition is also present with side to side and rotational movements. The thing about this that leaves me in awe of the human body is how with each step we are given the opportunity to move our spines fully in every plane of motion. With each step our

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spine and neck naturally compresses and decompresses themselves. When our spines possess a full range of motion, and oppose naturally as we walk, our bodies perform efficiently, with discomfort at a minimum. In the video tutorials that accompany the movement preparation and Explore Phase components of Dance Stronger, you will learn more about natural spinal motion.

Leg 3: Intra-abdominal pressure

Recall that strength of the abdominal and other muscles of the trunk is just one element of “core stability”. By “strong core”, we don’t mean the number of crunches one is capable of doing in one minute. (Too, this is more a measure of endurance than strength, and since there are issues of quality control with crunches, just what exactly are we measuring the endurance of?).

I propose this new definition of core strength: The potential to move, or not move the spine, to create movement or stiffness in desirous ratios that serve us for the given activity we choose to participate in, free of discomfort, inefficiency, or apprehension.

Based on this definition, “feeling the burn” and “toning” muscles become silly to use as primary indicators of effective core training. Using this new definition, core strength describes a dynamic ability, a potential to be expressed, not a bipolar phenomenon (weak vs. strong). So what is a more useful indicator of core strength, in action, if not the

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measure of muscular strength alone?

IAP: Your internal airbag

Intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) supports the spine in motion as air pressure builds against the abdominal wall and dorsal-lumbar fascia (the back of the inside your abdominal wall). I often liken this phenomenon to creating an airbag inside your body that allows your spine to move around freely without bumping into itself or other structures. This enables you to lift heavy loads without over compressing your spine or moving it too much under the load. Most importantly, with this internal support, what needs to relax, relaxes, reducing the amount of resting tone your body holds. This improves efficiency of movement, blood flow, nerve conduction, and circulation of lymph, etc., through the body. Remember, core training has little to do with creating tone, and, as Professor Hodges explains, teaching the abdominal and back muscles to relax is often more useful for individuals with lower back pain than teaching them to stiffen and protect.

Creating intra-abdominal pressure results requires balanced co-activity of the diaphragm, abdominal, and pelvic muscles. IAP increases when we inhale, as the diaphragm descends, and creates a vacuum which draws air into our lungs. This should cause the lower ribs to expand to the back and laterally, which is why being able to achieve a 360, umbrella breath is of vital importance. When you place your hands on the sides of your lower ribs, if you do not feel expansion, it is likely that your ability to create IAP is currently quite low. In teachings from the Prague School and DNS, one aspect of assessing diaphragmatic

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breathing is to feel for lower lateral and posterior (back) ribcage expansion in various positions. It is an easy way to check in with yourself or your students.

Lower rib expansion should occur prior to your ribcage and chest filling with air, and this is achievable only by first knowing your Zone of Apposition–complete rib depression. We are not trying to completely avoid chest breathing, but for creation of IAP, chest breathing must follow, or happen simultaneously with abdominal expansion, not before. Many people find this pattern confusing, being taught that chest breathing is not desirous, ever, and on its own, a chest breathing pattern it is not useful. What we want is for the chest and abdomen to expand simultaneously for optimal IAP, but, knowing that many of us breathe into our chests primarily, it is useful at first to direct the airflow into our abdomens as part of the re-training process to break the pattern (see Tan Tien breathing in chapter 4). In fact, being able to get air to expand the chest and upper ribs is a very important aspect of diaphragmatic breathing if done in the appropriate ratios, at the appropriate time, and with an appropriate direction of chest movement (sternum should move forward, not up). Chest breathing within a diaphragmatic breathing pattern allows us to take full advantage building air pressure in our abdominal and chest cavities, and allows that sticky area of tissues between the collarbone and first ribs to expand with inhalation (part of an area fondly referred to by David Weinstock, creator of Neurokinetic Therapy™, as the “upper-cluster- f**k). To reiterate, it is important for IAP that the middle and upper ribcage expansion occurs only after the lower ribcage expands laterally

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and posteriorly, as this indicates proper diaphragmatic activation coordinated with the abdominals and pelvic floor.

As described in a research paper by pelvic floor specialist, Dr. Patricia Neumann,

“Increased IAP results from diaphragmatic descend; diaphragm expands the lower ribs laterally. Once stabilized by increased IAP, continuing contraction of the costal fibers elevates the middle and lower ribs”.

The upper chest should expand more forwards (anteriorally) than lifting up towards your face (superiorally). Notice how your chest moves as you breathe. Does it expand outwards, or do you feel your collarbone and shoulders rising up to your ears? The former is desirous for IAP. If you can get this coordination, you should feel this awesome sense of being “full”, and strong, and supported from the inside without the need to force abdominal contraction. Though it is difficult to describe with words, I hope you get the opportunity to experience this sense of internal support in your own body as you practice.

Maintaining IAP in Motion

This is the tricky part. Research by Paul Hodges has demonstrated that with limb movement, the diaphragm and abdominals need to coordinate to create IAP– breathing and bracing simultaneously. He states in a paper titled, “Changes in intra-abdominal pressure during postural and respiratory activation of the human diaphragm”:

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In humans, when the stability of the trunk is challenged in a controlled manner by repetitive movement of a limb, activity of the diaphragm becomes tonic but is also modulated at the frequency of limb movement. In addition, the tonic activity is modulated by respiration.

This means that when in motion, dancing, training, etc., the diaphragm must brace and stiffen before limb movement. When we need to move our limbs more frequently and quickly, the diaphragm adapts to accommodate this, becoming more tonic (stiff), this modulation of diaphragmatic tension is achieved through our breathing. He goes on to say,

Intra-abdominal pressure was increased during the period of limb movement in proportion to the reactive forces from the movement. These results show that co-activation of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles causes a sustained increase in intra-abdominal pressure, whereas inspiration and expiration are controlled by opposing activity of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles to vary the shape of the pressurized abdominal cavity.

So, to achieve the limb movement and create the strength and power you need in motion, appropriate coordination of the diaphragm and abdominal muscles is necessary to match the situation. Modulating your breathing to create IAP is a necessary part of this, but breath holding won’t cut it, and limits your potential even if it is currently serving you in the short term.

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The exercises in the movement preparation section are set up in sequence to help you practice IAP from supine to standing. The least complex position to retrain your breath is starting on your back on the floor. In reality, an ideal respiratory pattern must be maintained in any dynamic activity or exercise if it is to be taken into your dancing. As discussed in Chapter 4, there is competition between postural and respiratory function of the diaphragm which will affect the quality of movement, and ability to create IAP. For this reason it is necessary that you progress honestly through the exercises, only increasing volume and intensity of work at a rate that corresponds to your ability to use a breathing pattern that allows you to create IAP. The moment you notice your breathing shift, take a break to avoid practicing patterns that don’t serve you.

To practice moving honestly use your breathing as an indicator. If we expand cross-training for dance to include our breathing patterns, and emphasize the practice of creating IAP in a non-complex environment and in fundamental movement patterns (as in strength training) then we prepare ourselves for the challenges of dance and the need for increased respiration. Own each exercise by checking in with your breath. If we can’t own what we do with our bodies through optimal IAP, we will have no choice but to find other survival strategies that are less ideal in the long term (breath holding, excess muscle tone, immobile segments of spine, etc.).

Leg 4: Muscles as managers

With the first three legs in place the remaining fourth is simple. In effortless movement there should be little need for you to consciously

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manage your muscles. Muscles simply manage movement, and it is for you, now, to tune in and pay attention to whether your muscles are performing their management role effectively.

How do muscles manage movement? When bones move, muscles must decelerate them, and, if you recall the slingshot analogy from the Concepts chapter, moving into those tissues is like loading a slingshot to explode into motion. So while performing strength training, warming up, or in your movement practice, tune in to see if you can feel muscles loading under length. If you have successfully been able to practice the first three legs of core-training, then you have created a system in which core muscles can be managers. As you inhale, the movement of the ribcage expanding like an umbrella loads the abdominals in 3D, decelerating the movement of the ribcage. This loading allows the abdominals to contact, releasing the abdominal slingshot. Exploring IAP in various positions that are now open to you through practicing spinal mobility in all planes of motion gives you the opportunity to load the core musculature in 3D. There is no need to force a contraction. You create a reactive core in which muscles manage movement automatically. Gary Ward has a fabulous video that demonstrates how the abdominal muscles lengthen in 3D that you may find interesting, and I encourage you to check it out here: www.anatomyinmotion.co.uk/abs

“ENGAGING” YOUR CORE

If you find yourself wondering, “Should I be engaging my core during this exercise?”, my answer will generally be, “Don’t worry about it, muscle activation is an indicator of an effective pattern and intention

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for movement, not something to force unless under an extreme condition”. Naturally, this isn’t a satisfying answer and I have been met with frustration from several clients who want to be told exactly what to do and what muscles to focus on. These are generally the perfectionist, type-A personalities who want to be in complete control. They would rather try to control the exercise and do it “perfectly” than tune in to how they are breathing, or change their intention for movement. The intention of movement should be enough to create a response from the core without forcing a contraction, just as the intention to walk is sufficient for walking to take place- It does not require us to consciously engage every muscle involved. Train the reflex, not the muscles, and you’ll automatically feel the muscles activate. If the movement doesn’t get a natural core response, figure out why. Often the answer has something to do with digging deeper into autonomics, spinal mobility or intra-abdominal pressure. As yourself:

a. What’s preventing me from exhaling and getting ZOA? b. Is there a chunk of my spine not moving in one or multiple planes of motion? c. Can I coordinate breathing– my diaphragm and abdominal activity–in challenging positions and movements?

Keep these questions in mind as you progress through the exercises in the Dance Stronger program, and other movement practices.

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CHAPTER 6 Outcome Measures

The purpose of this chapter is to provide you with a very important tool, one you already possess- Outcome measures. How can you tell if what you are doing is helping you improve if you don’t have a method of testing it? You can’t. You can only guess. I’m sure you already have exercises, stretches, or other rituals that you do before class or performing because you perceive them to improve some aspect of your dancing: flexibility, balance, turnout, etc. But, have you ever tested the effectiveness of your favourite exercises? Does your stretch to improve turnout actually improve your turnout? Do your core exercises help you

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find “center” during class? Whether by placebo effect or true physiological or neuromuscular change, what matters most is that the exercises and movements you are using actually accomplish what you want them to improve. Imagine that you saw the Bolshoi Ballet’s principal dancer doing a cool- looking exercise in class and you want to try it because you think, “If she’s doing it, it must be good for all dancers to do it.” Before you do, think critically. Try it, but test it objectively to check if it is truly useful for you. Maybe it will be. But maybe it won’t. And if not, you don’t want to be wasting time with it. Perhaps you did a search online for “best stretches for dancers”, found a long list and you decide to do all of them. How do you know if you actually need all of them, or if just one would give you the desired benefit? Maybe none of them help you. By the way, I did that exact search, read one of these articles online, and it wasn’t worth the energy. I wouldn’t have recommended any of the stretches to my dance clients since they weren’t applicable to their needs. Be a critical consumer and have a system to test the usefulness of what you’re learning (I’m about to give you one such system). Why would you do all of a long list of exercises, hoping something works, when you could systematically check the efficacy of these exercises and choose only the ones that work for you? Wouldn’t you like to save time and energy, and actually get results? That’s why outcome measures are so important.

WHAT IS AN OUTCOME MEASURE?

As defined by www.physio-pedia.com an “outcome measure” is:

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“…the result of a test that is used to objectively determine the baseline function of a patient at the beginning of treatment. Once treatment has commenced, the same instrument can be used to determine progress and treatment efficacy. With the move towards Evidence Based Practice (EBP) in the health sciences, objective measures of outcome are important to provide credible and reliable justification for treatment. The instrument should also be convenient to apply for the therapist and comfortable for the patient.”

In other words, an outcome measure can be an exercise or movement that indicates whether you are progressing towards a specific goal that you have set, based on its performance.

This same technique used in rehabilitation can be adapted and used to gauge your progression through this program and other endeavours. Although perhaps not always completely objective, you can set outcome measures to check your progress and develop your body awareness while avoiding exercises that waste your time or regress you.

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HOW TO USE OUTCOME MEASURES Outcome measures are easy to use, and can even be fun and interesting for your inner-nerd. They help you to learn about yourself and how your body responds to various stimuli. You can use just one or several outcome measures whenever you wish. I recommend capping the number to two or three tests. You may use different measures for different situations and different goals, but they will all relate to you as a whole. As your outcome measures improve, you will see that other things also improves. Remember, in a closed system such as your body, we cannot change one thing without changing everything else.

Here is a step-by-step guide for how to use outcome measures:

1) Identify a simple movement or position that is difficult, uncomfortable, or currently painful for you to do. But remember… get help if something truly hurts. One example of an outcome measure is as follows: EXAMPLE: “Neck flexion-Can’t get chin to touch all the way down to chest.”

2) Check this position or movement two or more times throughout the day to establish your baseline. How does it generally feel to do this position or movement? Does it seem easier or less painful at different times of the day, or after specific activities? Does the measureable posture get worse during certain incidences? After eating certain foods? Talking to certain people? Now, you are

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noticing the effect of the things you do in your life have on your physical performance. Stress can play a big role, but so can specific activities, foods, amount of sleep, et cetera. An example you might note in your exercise log might be: EXAMPLE: “Neck flexion range of motion improves after yoga class, but gets worse after sitting at the computer for a few hours, and on mornings after not sleeping enough. Average range of motion seems to be 2 inches from chest (baseline). “

3) Test it specifically in the context of an activity or intervention strategy. You need to identify what activities, intervention strategies, or other factors specifically improve or regress your chosen outcome measure. Check it before and then again after a specific activity. A logged entry for this occasion might read: EXAMPLE: “Neck flexion before dance class was at average, and after dance class was much more limited. I can assume now that something during that class caused my outcome measure to regress, OR stresses my nervous system in a non-productive way (pirouettes perhaps…). “

Fact about me: Turns do really, truly stress me out.

4) Keep checking in regularly. When you find a strategy or exercise that helps improve your outcome measure, keep doing it until you no longer need to test that motion. If you find a stimulus that regresses you, remove it from your life, if possible. Even if you are using a corrective strategy to improve your outcome measure, if you

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don’t identify and remove the regressive trigger, nothing will improve. Fix the leaky roof, don’t just put a bucket underneath it.

You may have one long-term outcome measure that you realize will take some time to improve, and several short-term measures you use and discard along the way. EXAMPLE: “After doing breathing exercises for 5 minutes, my chin goes down closer to my chest. I now know that breathing is related to neck flexion, and dance, where I am likely to stress out and hold my breath, makes it regress. I will be more aware of breathing while I dance, and perform the breathing exercises before and after class to see if this improves neck flexion.”

It’s that simple. Establishing successful outcome measures can take experimentation, possibly longer than four weeks, and the process of checking in will be ongoing, but the impact on your life, your physical performance, and the management of your pain can be remarkable.

HOW TO CHOOSE OUTCOME MEASURES Choosing outcome measures is highly individual. I cannot do it for you, and it might take some investigation to identify movements the most relevant to you. You want to select outcome measures that allow you to recognize your progress in this program, and improvements in your dancing, and quality of life. For the purposes of this non-clinical program, it should suffice to consider the following two points when choosing your outcome measure(s):

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1) How easy and convenient is it to test? If your outcome measure is highly complicated and takes you more than a few seconds to perform, you are probably not going to be using it regularly. Outcome measures should add convenience to your life, not make things more difficult.

2) What are you measuring and why? Are you checking for painful movement? Something sport/dance/lifestyle specific? Are you simply establishing a baseline you wish to improve? Maybe you are trying to test the efficacy of an intervention such as an exercise or stretch. Or, perhaps you are measuring something that relates to your quality of life? Clearly identify the main reason for choosing your particular outcome measure.

SOME SUGGESTED OUTCOME MEASURES:

I’m going to suggest a short list of outcome measures that I have used myself, and with my dance clients; but, remember, they must be specific to you. I recommend trying out all of the following movements, and choosing one or two that feel the most limited, restricted, or difficult. Or use these as inspiration to come up with your own.

Breathing: The Ultimate Outcome Measure As I mentioned in the concepts section, checking in with your breath is a great way to tell if you “own” a movement or if you are “renting” it. Being able to breathe in any given position is the ultimate outcome measure and barometer of your neural edge. For example, if you take

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the half-kneeling position (you’ll see the tutorial for this exercise in the Dance Stronger program) and find that you revert to a chest-and neck- breathing pattern with short, shallow exhalations, and find it very difficult to use an umbrella expansion of your abdomen as you inhale, you can infer that your brain finds something about half-kneeling distressing. Keep checking in with your breath in half-kneeling to see if the things you are doing in your training and in your life are helping to improve it. Feel free to use any position or movement to check in with your breathing as an outcome measure. Breathing while lying on your back is a simple and useful outcome measure to check, and is one that I personally like to use daily for both my clients and myself.

Ideas for Outcome Measures. These measures were adapted from Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA). The SFMA tests can be simple and revealing as outcome measures. For more information on the SFMA and assessing movement, I strongly recommend you read the book Movement, by Gray Cook, as it explains in depth exactly how to assess these movements and what they mean. As always, these are just movements. No need to add meaning or become attached to them. Neck flexion

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Stand with your feet right together, shoulders calm, and try to touch your chin to your sternum. Can you get your chin to your chest with your lips together, teeth apart, relaxed jaw, relaxed shoulders? If no, this is something I recommend you check in with as one of your outcome measures. As this range of motion increases, other things may start to feel better. If your neck doesn’t flex all the way, chin to chest, then it’s likely that something else is flexing excessively to compensate for that. Hips? Lumbar spine? Shoulders? Ankle? Knee? Don’t change anything else since this is something to consider and monitor.

Neck rotation with flexion

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Stand with your feet together, shoulders calm, turn your head all the way to the left and try to touch your chin down to your collarbone. Can you do it without lifting your shoulder to meet it? Are you rotating your torso to achieve this motion? Where do you feel restriction? Try the right side, also.

Restricted neck rotation can be compensated for by excessive rotation and shifting from anywhere else in the body. There are a lot of possibilities for this compensation… observe your whole body. Maybe you can see the subtle (or not so subtle) compensations that allow me to complete this movement?

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Deep overhead squat

Stand with your feet about hip-width apart, completely parallel, and arms overhead in line with ears. Try to squat down as far as you can.

There is a lot going on in an overhead squat. Some major points you can bring into your awareness:

• Does anything hurt? • How deep can you go toward the ground? Thighs past parallel to the floor (90 degree angle) or without much of a knee bend? • Do your heels lift off the ground? • Do your toes rotate out as you descend (like me)? • How upright can you stay? Or do you lean forward (like me)?

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• How easy is it to keep your arms in line with your ears? • Where do you feel the most tension? • Do you fall over backwards if you try to go all the way down? Make note of what stands out most, or better yet, take a picture or video of you at the end position.

If the deep squat hurts anywhere, I’d recommend not using it as an outcome measure frequently, as you do not want to be always testing and provoking a painful movement. Just let it be for now and choose a non-painful measure. As another motion improves, perhaps your deep squats will, also.

Multi-segmental flexion

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Stand with your feet together, knees straight, arms straight. Place one palm over the other and reach towards the floor. For the hypermobile, touching the floor won’t be a problem. If you easily reach the floor, tune in to the quality of the motion rather than the ability to achieve the range.

This movement checks your ability to flex globally (full body folding). Note: too much range of motion in multi-segmental flexion can indicate imbalances in your body, especially if you are in pain. Do you have control over all that range?

Again, notice:

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• Where do you feel the most tension? • Do you feel any stretch? • Are you able to let your neck drop and relax? • Does anything hurt?

Please do not just start stretching your hamstrings if this pose isn’t easy. Sometimes a lack of full range here can indicate a posterior chain extensibility issue warranting stretching. But then again, it could also be a core stability/mobility/coordination issue, or other motor control disconnect.

Multi-segmental extension

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Stand with your feet right together, knees straight, lift arms overhead and lean back as far as you can. This movement checks your ability to extend globally.

Ideally you want the front of your hips (the pointy part of your hips, the anterior superior iliac crest, or ASIS) to clear the front of your toes, and your shoulder blades (scapulae) should get behind your heels, if a plumb line was drawn. Mine, in the above photograph, is considered acceptable (functional) by these standards.

A few things to ponder:

• Does this hurt anywhere? Your lower back in particular might feel pinched. • Do your knees bend? • Do you only bend back from one segment of your back? • Where do you feel a restriction or extra tension? • Can you breathe?

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Multi-segmental rotation

Stand with your feet together, knees straight. Look as far over your right shoulder as possible, letting your neck rotation initiate the movement as your whole body twists as far as it can without moving your feet. Repeat on the left.

One important thing to be aware of is symmetry. Try to feel if one side is able to rotate much farther than the other. You can see that I am able to twist a little farther to the right through my lumbo-pelvic region, thorax and neck compared to the left.

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Be sensitive to these issues as well:

• Pain anywhere? • What are your feet doing? Does one lift off the floor while you weight shift onto the other leg? • Do your arms or shoulders instinctively lift or tense to create more rotation? • Which segment of your body rotates well and which doesn’t? • Do you feel restriction anywhere? • How far can you see toward one direction compared to the other rotational direction?

OTHER IDEAS FOR OUTCOME MEASURES

In Chapter 8, Explore Phase, you will be introduced to a self-movement assessment (3D Movement Exploration) from which you will be able to pull other outcome measures to track, based on natural joint actions that occur in the gait cycle. It is also possible and acceptable to choose dance specific movements as outcome measures. Remember to observe range of motion, presence of pain, perceived difficulty, etc. For example, you could check your range of motion while using functional turnout (the turnout you can do without forcing it), or assess how deep your demi-plie feels. The simpler and less complicated the better. Any exercise, movement, or even sense can be used as an outcome measure. Do you ever keep track of how wide your peripheral vision feels? Where is your weight is centered in your feet? What points of contact do you feel on the floor while lying on your back? Energy level

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and mood can also be outcome measures. Tracking heart rate variability (HRV) is a good outcome measure. You can use anything you like, so long as it is a movement or thing you have awareness of, you can test, re-test, and would notice quickly if it felt better or worse, day to day.

The possibilities are endless. You know your body better than anyone else. The above outcome measures are starting ideas. These are ones that I have used for my dance clients and for myself, Sometimes these can change over the course of 10 minutes, sometimes it takes weeks, months, or even a year.

AN OUTCOME MEASURE CASE-STUDY Here’s a more detailed example of a dance client I worked with in the summer of 2014:

She is a university dancer whose goals were to become stronger and overcome chronic hip pinching and back pain. Her chiropractor recommended that she do some “core strengthening”, so she became my client. This dancer had difficulty performing a rolling pattern on the floor because it hurt to turn her neck. When we checked out her neck flexion we found that she couldn’t get her chin to her chest. We corrected this with some manual therapy and a self-mobilization exercise to activate her deep neck flexors (muscles responsible for flexing the neck). When she repeated the rolling pattern, it had become pain-free. Great.

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But, the neck range of motion limitation was something I wanted her to monitor on her own because I suspected that if it affected her rolling pattern on the floor, it would affect how she created spirals with her body when she was dancing. I stressed that it was important for her to keep track of whether or not she could maintain the neck range of motion correction we achieved by checking it before and after dancing.

A few months later, she proudly told me that she continues to use this outcome measure as an effective barometer of her body’s movement health. She has been able to maintain full neck flexion. It can be empowering to have a tool like this. A final case study with regards to this topic is an example of my own personal use of outcome measures.

In 2014, not so long ago, I had sharp pains in my right knee while going down stairs as well as some pain while walking on flat surfaces. I worked with two colleagues to get to the root of the pain. I used half- kneeling as an outcome measure. In this case, the position that caused pain (note that I didn’t exacerbate the pain by doing this because I used only a partial range of motion, stopping when I felt apprehensive of the position). With my painful knee onto the ground, we tested various intervention methods. The process: Half-kneel, check range of motion and pain level, intervention, half-kneel, check range of motion and pain perception again. Did the treatment create an improvement or not? I kept track of this throughout the day. Some days were better, some were worse, and I began to establish my daily baseline.

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What finally helped to reduce the knee pain was not at all what I would have expected: a) breathing, and b) an exercise focusing on neck (upper cervical) and upper thoracic spine flexion.

I was floored. How were my diaphragm and neck connected to my knee pain? This is a clear example that your pain isn’t always where you think it is.

These discoveries led me to my next outcome measures, ones I’ve already mentioned: Breathing and neck flexion. I knew that if I tested my neck flexion in the morning and it wasn’t fully chin to chest, my knee would probably get cranky very soon. So, I became aware of what caused my neck flexion to regress. And, I knew that when my breathing wasn’t optimal, with lower abdomen and 360-degree expansion, my neck flexion would regress, so I learned to keep track of my breathing to manage my knee pain. Keeping track of these two measures has allowed me to keep my knee pain at bay for over a year. Since I haven’t been bracing myself during movements that I expected to cause knee pain, my lower back and hips have been feeling better, too.

These examples show you how powerful using outcome measures can be for developing body awareness and taking ownership of your body’s needs. Understanding your body is one of the most important tools you can develop as a dancer. I hope that with the examples in this section you can start to cultivate the awareness that allows you to choose your own outcome measures, allowing you to be sure that you are improving, and not just moving around, sweating, and hoping for the best.

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FINAL IMPORTANT REMINDERS FOR CHOOSING OUTCOME MEASURES

I recommend you choose only one or two things to track at a time or it will become chaotic. Don’t get stuck thinking that more is better. In this case, less is often better. Track one noticeable thing, track it well, and when you feel you’ve taken it as far as you can, choose something more relevant as a measure.

I also recommend that if you do choose a painful measure, don’t test it over and over, as this can make things feel worse. Painful outcome measures should be used as secondary tool to non-painful measures to keep from provoking and exacerbating pain. Avoid testing painful measures frequently unless advised otherwise. Outcome measures are a simple effective tool, they aren’t anything fancy or new. They don’t require a budget, and can be done anywhere, anytime. Outcome measures can be used to check in and become more aware of how your body feels. Isn’t feeling movement at the heart of what dance is all about?

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CHAPTER 7 Warm-up and Movement Preparation

I will be honest. For the majority of my dance career I didn’t care about warming up, nor did I care to learn how. I felt invincible. At best, I went through brief phases of doing “core exercises” in an attempt to activate my abdominal muscles for class, which I was praised for doing

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by my teachers. “You should all be more like Monika”, one teacher said, however, this created a rivalrous tension between myself and my classmates. These were always short-lived stints of proactivity and they were never effective, and perhaps because of this and the jealous glares I was getting from other dancers, my effort to warm-up never stood the test of time. Possibly, they made things worse.

“Back then”, teachers always encouraged us to warm up before class and I knew, at the time, that I should be doing something more than a few haphazard core exercises. The problem was we were never shown how to warm up. “Don’t just sit there, you should be warming up!” is insufficient guidance, and takes for granted that we’ve ever been shown how. I operated under the assumption that what we did at the barre, or in a jazz center warm-up, or during our Graham technique class’ contraction series, would be a sufficient warm-up. (Graham is a modern dance technique created by Martha Graham, the foundation of which is the “contraction”.)

This chapter is dedicated to helping you make smarter choices about warming up, and how to change your mindset towards warming up, both for dance classes, performances, and at the gym. This chapter will include: • What not to do as a warm-up. • The importance of changing how you think about warming up. • The difference between a general movement preparation and a dance-specific warm-up.

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• How to structure the warm-up for dance and for the training sessions in this program.

The warm-up suggestions in this section apply to both warming up for the training sessions in the Dance Stronger program, and for dance classes, rehearsals and performances.

THE WORST-CASE-SCENARIO DANCE WARM-UP Before I discovered the somatic pleasure of warm-up and movement preparation, I didn’t warm up at all. Much like being told “Don’t forget to breathe!”, “Make sure you warm-up!” was a common directive from my dance teachers that I acknowledged and quickly chose to forget about. Doing our own warm-up before class was expected despite being given zero guidance on how and no explanation of why.

So, my “warm-up” generally went something like this:

1. Sit in the splits for at least a few minutes in each direction. Maybe over-splits if I felt like showing off. I also liked to throw in a nice long hamstring stretch for good measure, because they always felt so tight.

2. Stretch out the top of my feet, or rather, crush them into a more pointed position. Sometimes I got a friend to stretch my feet for me. I never had a foot-stretcher, but you can bet I would have used one excessively. I would have worn it to bed.

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3. Rub some analgesic cream on my sore spots. This was my “warm- up in a can”.

4. Pop my hips. If I didn’t get a decent cavitation, I felt that I wouldn’t be able to get my leg as high toward the ceiling. This took some playing around with different positions until I got the right “pop”.

5. Maybe I’d throw in some leg swings. Maybe. Because I was bored.

6. As I mentioned above, sometimes I “did some abs”. This is what I would call a worst-case scenario warm-up. If you are guilty of doing a similar “warm-up”, please make the commitment to yourself that you will reconsider. This worst-case-warm-up was also the exact warm-up (minus the leg swings and abs) I performed the day I injured my hamstring in a Jazz warm-up. I injured my leg before the meat of the class! I just couldn’t be bothered to warm-up. I didn’t care. And I didn’t know how. Sadly, the worst-case-warm-up is also quite common. Why? Part of this may be because we see warming up as a chore. To make warming up for dance more effective, we first need to change how we perceive it. We can’t change anything until we can change the value we get from it. For dancers to begin seeing value in warming up requires a massive mindset shift, along with some guidance, structure, and exercise suggestions.

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HOW THE TYPICAL DANCE WARM-UP COULD BE HARMING YOU

I injured myself during a dance warm-up. Isn’t the warm-up supposed to help you prevent injuries? And you definitely shouldn’t get hurt while warming up. What if I tell you that you need to warm-up prior to your dance warm-up? Would you think that was excessive?

It’s not.

Because of the unique demands of a dance-specific warm-up (i.e. the warming-up portion of a dance class), I suggest that dancers complete a general warm-up or, movement preparation, before starting the dance warm-up.

WHAT IS MOVEMENT PREPARATION?

A general movement preparation does exactly what it sounds like- It prepares your body for movement, in general. The dance specific warm-up (ballet barre, Jazz center warm-up, Graham warm-up, etc.) is to prepare you for the dance-specific movement that will happen in class, rehearsal, or performance. The point of a general movement preparation is to prepare your body through mindful practice of fundamental movements, and basic movement patterns it struggles with so that they can be better accessed in your dancing, and to give you more movement options for work with. Fundamental movements are like individual letters of the alphabet that makes up the universal language of human movement. If you

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can’t write the individual letters of the alphabet, how do you expect to write complex sentences with fancy words and sophisticated punctuation? Some letters you might be able to draw quite nicely, but others still need some practice before you write that final essay. In elementary school, I needed to always practice my cursive Qs. In my movement preparation these days, I always need to prepare my body to manage extension (to back bend), because extension-based movement was a mechanism of previous injury for me. This doesn’t mean practicing back-bends, but practicing the individual, fundamental components and pre-requisites that make back-bending possible and safe (more on that further in this chapter). If the movement, back-bend, is a word, then the individual components of a back-bend, are the letters to practice writing. The movement preparation is like practicing the individual letters of the human movement alphabet. In a movement preparation, rather than letters, your alphabet is made of elements like joint segment mobility, breathing patterns, and timing of muscle sequencing.

Do you remember taking pleasure writing the alphabet as a young child? For me, putting pen to paper felt great. While practicing letters had its frustrating moments, it was always satisfying to draw a really nice looking Q, and then finally linking it to a full word. Similarly, movement preparation should feel good. It should be satisfying. It can be frustrating as you are learning, and tough on the ego for those who feel they are above practicing the basics, but enjoying movement preparation is a skill that you can learn. With focused practice, you can

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train yourself to embody and take satisfaction in the pure act of executing the basic movements of a warm-up.

WHAT IS THE GOAL OF WARMING-UP?

You may read in other resources that the primary goal of warming-up is to prevent injuries, but injury prevention as a primary goal doesn’t work because injury prevention isn’t tangible and immediately appreciable. Injury prevention is meaningless as a goal for dancers who feel indestructible.

Striving to prevent injuries does not come with immediate feedback. It is an idea, something that exists somewhere in a future that we will never know we have achieved successfully until near the end of our dance careers when we realize that, “Hey, I didn’t have a major back injury! And I don’t need hip replacements! All that injury prevention and warming up must have worked!”. Injury prevention as the goal for warm-up isn’t motivating because dancers have more immediate, moment-to-moment goals- Higher extension, better feet, higher jumps, etc. They need immediate feedback that tells them they are making progress, and often feel invincible and simply don’t care about a vague future goal. Injury prevention is an idea that we only appreciate after becoming injured.

For this reason, I invite you to drop injury prevention as you primary reason for warming up, and choose a something different that instantly rewards you. That is not to say that injury risk management, is not something worthwhile, but that the goal must be dropped, and

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focus brought to present moment while warming up. This is something that has been described as entering a state of “flow”. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow, describes this state of consciousness as, “being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought, follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being in involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost”. From Csikszentmihalyi’s book, the characteristics of a flow state are:

● Balance between the challenge of the task and the skill of the performer. It must not be too easy, but not too hard either. Skill and challenge level must be matched. ● Merging of action and awareness, not overthinking, but simply being aware of each spontaneous action. ● With end goals that are clearly defined, but not focused on while performing. ● Clear, unambiguous, and immediate feedback. ● Total concentration on the skill being performed in each moment. ● Sense of being in control but without trying to be in control. ● Loss of self-awareness, but being “one” with the activity. ● Loss of time awareness. The sense of time distorts and time may seem to pass very quickly, or not at all.

The state of flow is similar to how we can describe our experience while actually dancing and performing, and so, an important aspect of the warm-up is, in fact, to practice the same state of consciousness you

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wish to use while dancing, a flow state. Warming-up, therefore, cannot be a mindless act. It can’t be thrown away. It must be a deep, deliberate practice.

CHOOSING A GOAL

Paradoxically, as soon as we choose a goal, it must be dropped so that we can focus completely on the moment to moment execution of the steps leading to the goal, but that doesn’t mean the goal is not still important. The end goal must remain in our peripheral vision, not in our immediate awareness yet not lost sight of completely.

A motivating goal is one that makes you want to warm-up, not one that makes you see it as a chore. It must be tangibly achievable, short- and long-term. The movements you choose to do in a warm-up must require your full focus, be at an appropriate level of challenge for your skill level. You must be able to notice a difference in how you feel in your body during and after your warm-up in order to want to warm-up every time before you dance, and before a training session. You should not be counting down the minutes, gauging the effectiveness of the warm-up based on the time you spent doing it. The exercise selection should not be based on someone having told you that exercises x, y, z were the “best”, but on their ability to serve as input that can change the way you move and feel (for which using outcome measures is a useful tool). This warm-up chapter is less of an educational resource on how to warm-up to prevent injuries, and more a suggestion to change your entire mindset towards warming up.

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Give yourself permission to not think of warm-up as a boring chore with a boring goal. My warm-up goal, for example, is quite simple- To feel different and unlock movement options. If you feel the same, and move the same after warming up as you did before, what exactly has your warm-up done for you? Using a more specific, objective outcome measure improvement as a goal can be useful, but sometimes it is enough just to subjectively feel “floaty and good”. You may choose never do a warm-up exactly the same way twice, keeping in mind the need for spontaneity in a flow experience. Changing up your warm- ups often helps to prevent monotony and stay inspired, and can also serve as a goal in itself.

Be curious enough to adopt a mindset that views warming-up as an empowering 15 minutes in which you fully embody your movement and feel differently afterwards. Warming up is a time to enjoy being in your body and then carry that embodied enjoyment into your dancing. Movement preparation also prepares you to feel the pleasure of movement, which is, what brings us to dance in the first place. Enjoying movement to the fullest is what keeps us coming back for more, despite the challenges and struggles of dancing. You are allowed to enjoy warming up, and making this change in perception is huge.

THE PICK-POCKET STORY Have you ever wondered how people change? How does one change their priorities to begin to see warming-up as a valuable, dare I even

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say, enjoyable, use of time? Let’s use the story of Dave the pick-pocket to explore this idea.

Dave hated the fact that he was a pick-pocket, and he wanted to change. He wished he could change, but the urge he felt to pick peoples’ pockets was so strong that he couldn’t control himself. It was just too easy for him to do. He was a very good pick-pocket and the habit was so deeply ingrained.

One day, he saw a little old lady walking down the street. She was the perfect candidate to rob, small and frail. It would be so easy to steal her wallet. As she came towards him, he could feel a familiar struggle within him begin, “Don’t do it! Stealing is bad! Get a real job before you get arrested!” But he couldn’t take his own advice, and at the last minute, he did indeed snatch her wallet from her purse and run away. He got away with it, as usual. But he felt horrible. He had a feeling his luck would one day run out. He knew he could do better than stealing wallets. He felt hopeless because stealing had become so habitual and so easy. The same thing happened again the next day. And, the next day. His inner struggle was eating him up. Then one day, he saw an even more perfect victim to rob. It would be too easy. It was almost an invitation to rob this little old woman. But something different happened that day. As he approached her, the struggle in his head was louder than ever, but slightly different. “How good would it feel if you didn’t steal from this lady, just for today? Don’t you want to find out?” And at the very last minute, as his arm was halfway out to grab her purse, he pulled it back, and he ran away

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purse-less. And it felt glorious. Dave couldn’t believe how good it felt to make that decision.

So he made that resolution again the next day, and the next. And, eventually, he made it into a new habit. He stopped picking pockets because his curiosity dared him to try something different. He was striving for something that might feel better than stealing. He discovered that it felt better not to pick-pockets because he asked the right question. He stopped torturing himself with judgmental “shoulds” and “should nots” that made him feel inadequate. He tried a “what if?” instead. And it felt better.

I told this story to illustrate the process underlying changing our habits. It involves the cessation of self-judgment, the curiosity to try something new, and the awareness of how it feels to make new decision that better serves our goals. This new pleasant awareness makes us want to repeat it again, and again, forming a habit. In dance, injury be the catalyst for changing our habits, but ideally healthy habits should be formed before becoming injured. In The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, the structure of “trigger, habit, reward “ is described as the way in which people are able to change their habits.

For example:

Trigger: Sit in front of the TV. Habit: Eat a tub of cookie dough ice-cream. Reward: Temporary satisfaction of relaxing and unwinding via the tasty

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ice-cream flavor

But this pattern will not form a habit that will serve us long-term, and we can interrupt it by changing the habit, but keeping the trigger and reward. This pattern interrupt may look like this:

SAME Trigger: Sit in front of the TV. NEW Habit: Knitting. SIMILAR Reward: Satisfaction of relaxing and unwinding born from a sense of mental focus, presence in the moment, and flowing creative juices

If we use this structure to examine a dancer's habits of warming-up, we may find it looks something like this:

Trigger: Dance class. Habit: Sit in the splits and stretch passively to “warm up”. Reward: Temporary feeling of improved flexibility, and sense of confidence and preparedness from having gone through a meaningful, habitual, ritual.

But we know this might not be the most sustainable long term. So what if, instead:

SAME Trigger: Dance class. NEW Habit: Treat warm-up as a deep practice of movement, requiring complete presence and awareness, respecting the body’s limits and needs, while preparing it for the demands of dance class. SIMILAR Reward: Lasting sense of improved connection to the body,

range of motion, and a sense of preparedness and confidence that can only come from being totally present in your body.

Same trigger, a more useful habit, and similar, yet superior, reward. To make the habit change seem valuable you have to feel the reward, just one exposure to different experience from which you can feel immediate value. That’s all it takes. And ideally, this should happen before an injury.

When you are curious enough to experiment and find that a proper warm-up will actually make you feel noticeably better, you will be hooked. You will love warming up. And you won’t do it for intangible future rewards like “injury prevention”. You will do it because it feels good, you love to do it, and you notice a real difference in your dancing when you warm-up. Your homework is to change your habit of warming up, pay attention to how it feels, and linger in how good it feels. Extract every bit of value from it so that you’ll be more likely to choose this pattern again and again.

CHANGE YOUR WARM-UP MINDSET I get excited about movement preparation because I know that afterwards my body will feel great. As I go through my preparatory exercises, I can feel my range of motion improve. I feel my feet becoming more grounded, and I feel that I’m experiencing my body in an honest way. Since I started thinking about warming-up as a pleasurable, somatic experience rather than as a chore, my warm-ups

have become more consistent and thus my progress in training more linear.

Your warm-up should make you feel perceptibly different. Not just warm and limber, but more “present” in your body. Your warm-up should be honest. By “honesty” in movement preparation, I mean that you shouldn’t be trying to move like someone else. “Honest movement” stays within a range of motion you can control, without holding your breath or ignoring nagging pain and soreness. Honest movement preparation is not avoiding the hard or frustrating exercises but embracing them and feeling the struggle. The problem is that in dance classes, it is easy to compare ourselves to others and to try to move like someone we admire. This is dishonesty in movement and is almost always counterproductive. A movement preparation should help you to cultivate “movement honesty”. Preparing to move honestly will help you to dance more like you, not like anyone else.

As you begin to change the way you think about warming up, you will rediscover how good it feels to prepare your body for the wonderful movement it is capable of doing. Your sensory experience when dancing will be more pleasurable and honest. When your movement is genuine, and less strained, you will not injure yourself.

In addition to the scientific evidence proving the value of a solid warmup, movement preparation allows you to regain the fluid ease that attracted you to dance. Establishing your movement preparation practice will reduce your stress, rather than creating more of it.

Reduced stress, physical and mental, is as important in the global injury prevention solution as the more evidence-based factors. I hope, knowing how good warming up can make you feel both during and after, you begin to think of warming up not as a chore but as an exploration, a healing practice, and a pleasure.

The exercises I suggest in this section are ones that I have used on my movement journey. They have been the most effective for helping me tune into my body, improve mobility and reflexive core function, and perform better in my training and dance sessions. Combining these movements with the breathing principles in a previous chapter gives you powerful tools for self-improvement. You can also use these tools to create your own restorative movement practice, or if you already have one, to add to it.

Having a daily movement practice is empowering. It’s healing. It restores balance in your mind and body and reminds you of what it feels like just to “be” in your body.

Remember a key philosophy of this program is to respect and take care of you-the-human first, and you-the-dancer will improve as secondary result. Doing this will allow you to become a stronger, more resilient, more versatile dancer, who enjoys dancing more, because behind the dancer there is a strong person.

A MOVEMENT PREPARATION EXAMPLE

To help you understand exactly what I mean by “movement preparation” and how it fits into your warm-up, I will use Sally as an example. (Sally is not real, but many of you could probably relate to her.)

Sally sometimes gets back pain when she dances, especially during back bending movements. At the end of the day, her back generally aches. Her hamstrings also always feel tight. Her initial instinct is to stretch away the tightness as her pre-dance warm-up, so she’s been stretching her lower back and hamstrings. This is not an effective solution since passively stretching tends to decrease its strength, and we do not know if her tightness is due to protective tension, which, if she were to stretch out, is likely to make things feel worse, not better. Let’s explore how Sally could use a general movement preparation to address her challenges and groove a more efficient way of moving so that her body isn’t fighting with her during class.

On option is for Sally to prepare her extension (back-bending) movement pattern. Remember the multi-segmental extension movement from the Outcome Measures chapter? One or many segments of her spine may not be sharing the load as she backbends, and may need extra preparation before she can do this global movement in a dance class or training session without apprehension. She could do this by addressing some of the factors that could be affecting her extension pattern. Though there are many possible ways to skin this cat, some examples of this might include:

• Practice breathing drills to ensure her diaphragm and abdominal muscles are coordinating, her ribs are not flaring excessively and she knows where her Zone of Apposition is in her body. • Work on spinal motion limitations- If she has trouble extending, she probably needs some work on flexing as well. She cannot expect to extend well when starting from an already half extended position. She may also find use in learning to extend from all segments of her spine equally, to distribute the load evenly and avoid compression at one point. The “cog” exercise variations in the program are a great opportunity for this. • Practice moving her hips into extension, enhancing her load sharing, so that her spine won’t take all the strain as she bends backwards. • Perform a movement that requires hip extension and recruits anterior core and/or rotational control, such as a half-kneeling variation (which you will see in the program). • Integrate this all into a dynamic movement flow, such as a sun salutation, or other dynamic stretching sequence.

After a preparation such as this, the intention is that Sally’s brain will better understand how to perform a backbend, more safely and naturally, with less tension and apprehension. Notice we didn’t try to stretch anything out. The back-bending movement pattern can then be more easily integrated into her dance warm-up, and then her dancing. Not only will this preparation improve her performance, mobility, and help her prevent injuries, she will enjoy dancing more since she will feel more confident and grounded in her body. This

same movement preparation would serve her well before a strength training session, or any type of physical activity.

HOW TO PRACTICE MOVEMENT PREPARATION I recommend doing a light intensity, five to ten minute aerobic warm- up to increase your body temperature and get blood flowing. Activities like skipping rope, cycling, brisk walking, light jogging, jumping jacks, dancing around, or whatever is simple and convenient to do at that moment. Break a bit of a sweat and feel your heart rate elevate during this time. You will be using Explore Phase to get comfortable with the movement preparation exercises and establish them as a daily movement practice (more on that in Chapter 8). Then, as you use them as a warm-up sequence before sessions, you will know exactly what to expect and you won’t waste time fiddling around, although, sometimes it can be great fun to fiddle around if you have the time. Watch the videos and choose a variation of each exercise that feels right for you at this time. In Explore Phase, you will be working on a few exercises each day so you can start to get a sense of which ones help, and which don’t at this time. You will know which ones are useful to you since you will be tracking changes in your selected outcome measures. As you learn the position or movement, make sure you layer on the breathing concepts from the Breathing chapter. This allows you to

fully embody the exercise. It can take an exercise from “meh” to “what was that???”. Breath is the key to moving honestly.

The suggested warm-up and movement preparation exercises tutorials are available at www.dancestronger.com/warmup. Follow the exercises in the order provided, at first. Later, when you are more comfortable with the program, you can experiment with the order. Just like a good chef, first you must follow the recipe, and then you can make creative changes. I encourage experimentation. The order provided is meant to help you experience the developmental stages of movement from lying supine, to prone, to kneeling, and finally to getting up onto your feet. Layer on new challenges in more upright positions, as you advance your muscular- and breath-control.

THE RULES OF MOVEMENT PREPARATION You will do one set of each exercise (unless it feels really great to do two or more sets), of between three to eight repetitions, depending on the movement. Move through the exercises without taking a break. The warm-up and movement preparation should take you about 15-20 minutes maximum. For some of you, the exercises in this movement preparation section might feel like eight points on a ten-point scale of intensity, representing challenging and exhausting. In that case, you may even be using the as the training session themselves until they feel less intense. As I mentioned earlier, this program is designed to take four weeks, but you may need more. If it takes you a few weeks to get past the

movement preparation exercises, by all means, take those extra weeks. Better to have a good understanding of these preparatory movements before jumping into the “meat” of the program. This program is meant to be customizable to your needs by giving you a lot of options and permission to get creative. No two people will or should do this program the same way, and if you find a way of executing it that differs from what I’ve suggested listen to your inner voice, go with it, and report your results to the group.

Follow the structure in the tutorials section below. Work on the variations that you find reasonable at this point. When one variation becomes too easy (lower than 5/10 intensity) and you are technically proficient, move to the next level of difficulty for an added challenge. If an exercise in this sequence is painful, omit it. Revisit it later when you are ready to try again. As always, use your best judgment, respect your body’s limits, be open to experimentation, and ask questions on the Facebook Dance Stronger group forum or a from a trained professional. The movement preparation tutorials can be found at www.dancestronger.com/warmup

You do not need to do every exercise on the list as part of the warm-up. In the next chapter, Explore Phase, you will begin to explore which of these exercises are of greatest benefit to you at this time by using a daily check-in process. After completing the Explore Phase you will be able to determine which of the movement preparation exercises you would like to focus on in your warm-up. A reminder, the intention of Dance Stronger is not to tell you what to do, but to provide tools,

suggestions, and support for you to make informed decisions and take ownership of your situation.

CHAPTER 8 Explore Phase

I know how it feels to start a new training program, or a new “anything”. The excitement can be overwhelming. You have high expectations for yourself. I know you want to jump right into the first session and go at it hard. That’s admirable, but I am going to suggest that to get the most out of the Dance Stronger training program, you do one very important thing: Make the time to honestly appraise where your body is right now. Establish a daily practice of checking in with you. Find what movements might be missing from your body,

explore what your body can do and what you can’t (or won’t), see what has the potential to change and, of equal importance, what doesn’t.

The Dance Stronger training program isn’t of exceptionally high intensity, like a powerlifting or Olympic lifting program (i.e. heavy loading relative to one repetition max). Rather, it focuses on building movement quality and restorative, conscious strength. Throughout this program I ask you to think differently about executing movements, to explore your body’s response to certain movements, and to observe your physical, mental, and emotional response to them. There are built- in opportunities to modulate the program intensity to your needs as you progress.

In this chapter, I’d like to introduce “Explore Phase” as a useful prelude to the first of the four weeks of this program.

WHAT IS EXPLORE PHASE? Our human impatient desire for a “quick fix” means some of you will probably skip Explore Phase, and that is okay. However, I have been told that this is potentially the most valuable part of Dance Stronger, and, if you do skip it, I feel that you will be missing out on some very important experiential self-learning and ultimately limiting your progress.

Purposes of Explore Phase:

1. To find “what’s missing”. You will watch and participate in the 3D Movement Exploration tutorial video (inspired by the Anatomy in

Motion movement assessment) which takes you through a self- assessment through three planes of movement with the goal of finding what’s currently missing from your system.

2. To use and apply the breathing concepts and exercises to begin to shift your nervous system to a more parasympathetic resting state, to begin to cultivate a sense of movement honesty, and develop a base-line appreciation of how your breathing is now.

3. To familiarize yourself with the warm-up and movement preparation exercises from the previous chapter: The suggested foundation exercises to build your daily exploratory movement practice.

4. To establish a daily movement practice. Adding a ten-minute mini- movement session daily can have profound effects. By establishing this daily practice with the simple intention of “explore” before starting this program helps to prepare you for what I hope will be a lifestyle change: Making movement practice a part of your daily routine.

5. To kick-start the process of noticing and changing habitual ways of moving that are no longer serving you, and replacing them with something different. This helps to ensure that when you start to work on developing strength, you are working within a foundation of parameters you understand. You have read the blueprint, know where the limitations are in your system, and know what you can do

well. Explore phase helps you build and cultivate honest movement.

6. To get comfortable choosing and tracking outcome measures, and to begin including them into your movement and dance practice, and other levels of life.

7. To become familiar with the structure of the training sessions and exercise tutorials.

8. To build anticipation to start the meat of the program. You should be eager to get into the main program by the end of your Explore Phase.

9. To minimize feelings of overwhelm. Taking away the “meat” of the program gives you time to work on a few basics each day so that you won’t be overwhelmed by new information and feel like giving up after the first week of the program. Even as you start the program, you’ll feel like you’re still exploring, because in reality, you always will be. As in movement, so too in life. The learning never ends. Explore Phase is not to make you stronger or better at the suggested exercises. It is to honestly appreciate where you’re at right now: What movements you currently can’t or won’t do, and to feed new movement into your system for the sole purpose of seeing what might happen. It is purely exploratory. A simple process of tinkering and self- discovery. A way of dropping expectations of how your body “should” move, Explore Phase encourages you to notice what your body is doing and not doing, right now. It also re-introduces ways of moving that you

may not have experienced for years due to injuries, trauma, or habitual ways you have been trained to move (whether primarily behavioural, skill-oriented, or for aesthetics).

ON FEELING OVERWHELMED I once purchased a training program online designed by a very prominent and respected strength coach, and it looked great on paper. I was so excited to get started. I read testimonials from people who had already used it and my expectations were high. But on day one, I was already overwhelmed. The sessions had so many exercises that I couldn’t remember all the cues I needed from the videos (which were full of great information). I wasn’t sure if they were good for me or not, which made me not want to do them. And in the warm-up section, there were so many different warm-up suggestions that I skipped the warm-up altogether. Skipping the warm-ups for me was easy to do since I never enjoyed this portion of working out.

While I appreciated the variety and the abundance of exercises in this program, there was just too much content and, because I couldn’t process it all, I dropped off the wagon by the second week. It was a very well-designed program that probably would have been very effective, had I been able to stick with it.

Immersing yourself fully in the practices recommended as part of the Explore Phase is meant to prevent this from happening to you. These two weeks (or more, if you like) are to ease you in, build your excitement, and give you the opportunity to work on just a few fundamental things each day while you prepare a foundation, both

mentally and physically (even spiritually if that resonates) for the program. You can also take this phase to re-read concepts, watch the exercise videos and review the structure of the sessions. Whatever you need to do, this is your time to prepare, because it doesn’t matter how good a program is if you aren’t prepared, inspired, and motivated to see it through to the end.

The best exercise program isn’t the best-designed, backed-by-evidence, raved about by the masses, perfect-on-paper program. It is the one that you actually are able to complete. The “perfect program” won’t help you if you can’t stick with it. And I want you to be able to commit to Dance Stronger for the full four weeks and succeed.

KEY PRACTICES OF EXPLORE PHASE Explore Phase involves checking in and practicing movement daily. I have suggested a structure for you to use to explore, but it is just that: A suggestion. I encourage you to get creative if you wish, and use other methods of self-tracking currently in your vocabulary. I am not attached to the exercises I’ve provided, though they have the potential to create significant change in anyone’s system. I am not attached to my suggested method of self-movement assessment (that is, the AiM approach), though I find it particularly helpful and simple. You have permission to make adjustments you feel are necessary for you, and I hope this exploration ultimately serves as a catalyst for making new discoveries about your body beyond the structure of Dance Stronger.

It is my hope that you will continue to “explore” while completing the meat of the four-week program, and that exploring daily becomes part of your movement practice after you complete Dance Stronger.

EXPLORE PHASE INSTRUCTIONS STEP 1: What’s missing?

A. 3D Movement Exploration Watch and participate in the 3D Movement Exploration video, and complete the accompanying worksheet (found in the appendix and online). You will get a sense of what movements your body is not currently accessing, as well as the general quality of your movement in three planes (sagittal, frontal, transverse). From this you will have a list of outcome measures to use as you check in and track your body’s changes on a daily basis.

B. Select other outcome measures Based on Chapter 6 (outcome measures) you should have a sense of what kind of outcome measures you wish to track. Record all chosen outcome measures on the “What’s Missing?” worksheet, or in a way that makes sense for you.

Note that you do not need to track outcome measures constantly, to the point of obsession, but doing it consistently in Explore Phase should provide you useful information on how your system is responding to various stimuli. It is useful, initially, to check in with how your body is doing at various times of the day: In the morning, before warming up, after warming up, and after class to see how things may have changed.

Make notes in a way that makes sense to you, and you will begin to notice patterns over time.

Remember, the process of checking in and exploring movement is more important than accomplishing the goal- improving movement and strength, itself. The process IS the goal, and the goal can only be met by complete presence in the process, not obsessing on the future goal.

C. Introductory tutorial videos

Check out the following tutorial videos to get a sense of the fundamental concepts for movement and breathing that will help you better understand your practice: - ONT3EPZ Checklist for restoring optimal breathing - ZOA and diaphragmatic breathing tutorial - Applying ZOA to other positions like quadruped - Natural Spinal Movement 101: Sagittal Plane - Natural Spinal Movement 101: Frontal Plane - Natural Spinal Movement 101: Transverse Plane - Foot and ankle motion into pronation and supination

STEP 2: Set the intention of practicing daily

On a daily basis you be doing three things:

1. Check in with your body by going through the 3D Movement Exploration and making notes of what’s changing, what is not, and how things feel.

2. Explore the movements and exercises suggested in the Explore Phase section. My suggestion is to choose one or two exercises from the breathing category, and at least one exercise from each basic position: On your back (supine), on your stomach (prone), on your side, in quadruped, and in kneeling or standing. Note, however, that this is not a rule. You may choose to explore fewer total exercises, two or three perhaps, to see if your body responds well to a minimal input and not to overwhelm yourself. Less is often more, especially in the beginning- The more exercises you throw into the mix at this point will make it trickier to tell which ones are benefitting you, and which you are doing “just because” but aren’t actually creating a useful change in your body. This points to the importance of checking in with outcome measures. Minimize the noise, maximize the truth.

3. Check in again with your outcome measures to see what has changed, and what hasn’t. Record your observations in a way that makes sense to you. You may choose to copy the 3D Movement Exploration worksheet and fill it in everyday, or you may prefer to write in a journal or word document. It doesn’t matter as long as the practice is consistent, makes sense when you review it, and you can it use to pinpoint what triggers change for you and what doesn’t.

If you are a dance teacher, this daily practice will help you to better understand the challenges your students face. My personal movement sessions are how I experiment with new things that often help my clients to overcome similar limitations. Maybe something you discover will help one of your dance students, friends, or a family member.

The length of your mini-movement sessions, which you will establish during preparation week, is up to you. Maybe you want to spend only five minutes on breathing, and practice one exercise from the warm-up because you were crunched for time. That’s okay. Five minutes is better than no minutes. Or maybe you felt so good that you spent fifteen minutes working on just breathing because you got in the “zone” and lost track of time. It doesn’t matter, and it is important not to judge yourself for “not doing enough”. Making it a habit to spend a bit of time on you, breathing and moving, is amazing.

The act of taking time for YOU, to explore and potentially make a positive change, is physically and mentally beneficial, even if nothing changes. The process of exploration is more important than the end goal: Creating the habit of honoring your body and mind primes your system for making changes in the future.

HOW LONG, HOW MANY REPS, WHEN TO PRACTICE, ETC.?

There are only seven simple rules for Explore Phase: 1) Make time for a deliberate practice (instead of just fitting it in). 2) Drop expectations and judgements. 3) Practice movement quality over quantity. 4) Move honestly. 5) Record using descriptive terms that reflect quality (how it feels), not just quantity (range of motion). 6) Practice daily. 7) Trust the process.

There is no set time limit or preferred number of sets and repetitions for “best results”. These are not exercises to build strength or get better at, but to help you explore motions that you don’t normally access. Only you will know the appropriate number of repetitions or time spent practicing as you tune in honestly to how your body is responding to the movements. Providing you stay inside safe ranges of volume and intensity, your body will use the stimulus and new information to begin reorganizing itself. Opt for high quality over high volume–six well connected reps is always going to be more stimulating than 60 unconnected reps. One minute spent being fully present will be more effective than 30 minutes wishing you were doing something else. The pervasive mentality is that doing anything for less than an hour isn’t enough time. This is untrue. With attention, fifteen minutes can be powerful. One minute can be powerful. Practice without judgement. While I recommend this as a daily practice, do not beat yourself up if you miss a day, or only make time to practice every other day or even three days a week. We are all at different stages of readiness. Understand that wherever you are currently is acceptable. My desire is for you to enjoy and trust the process while not feeling pressured. Remember, there is a distinct difference between “making time for” and “fitting it in”. This practice of exploration requires honesty, and a practice of honesty starts by deliberately setting time aside, no matter how long.

Ideally, and at the very least, you will want to have tried all of the exercises from Explore Phase so that Week One of the program isn’t your first exposure to them, as these will serve as a component of your

warm-up. By the end of Explore Phase you will have developed a good sense of what your body can do well and what feels safe, what it struggles to execute or what feels unsafe, and it’s potential to adapt to new stimulus.

So, ready to start?

CHAPTER 9 What Now?

If you are reading this and you have not yet completed Explore Phase or the four weeks of the training program, I recommend you come back to this chapter only after you have finished the program. Why? Simply, if your haven’t at least tried to feed this information into your body, you don’t need this new information yet.

Get back to work on the program. This chapter will still be around when you are ready for it. It is important for your learning to only receive the information you need at the time that you need it. The reflections in this chapter will be more useful to you after you have gone through

the exercises and experienced your body through Dance Stronger. This chapter might have suggestions that will be unrealistic to you at this time and until you complete the entire Dance Stronger program. It certainly isn’t helpful to be thinking about what you should do after the program if you haven’t even completed it.

You need to feel the exercises in your own system- More than information, a true embodied understanding. Give the program one hundred percent of your focus so that you can decide for sure whether it worked for you or not. Whether you enjoyed it, or you didn’t. So here’s your last call to action: Go finish the program. Then and only then, read this chapter. Deal?

Good. Moving on.

First, congratulations on finishing the four weeks of Dance Stronger (or, in reality, as long as you needed)!

Now that you have finished the program, you are probably wondering “what now?” You might already have an idea of which direction you want to go and that is great. I can, and will, suggest the next progression to Dance Stronger. However, I cannot tell you what to do. That said, I will use this chapter to reflect on the program with you and give you some ideas for how you can keep training.

You know by now that four weeks is just the tip of the iceberg. You have the rest of your life, after all. What will you choose to do to continue working with your body, becoming healthier, more pain-free, more alive and able?

SOME REFLECTIONS

Dance Stronger isn’t a traditional strength training program. It was not designed to be only a strength training program, or a kettlebell program, or a bodyweight program, or a flexibility program. In fact, I prefer that it remains labelless. Dance Stronger is simply a framework for the exploration of nurturing movement. It combines various styles of movement training that I have found helpful both for myself and clients over the years. Dance Stronger draws from many different aspects of moving and strength training: Conventional strength training, restorative or corrective exercise, fundamental and developmental movement, and breath-work.

My choice of programming was inspired by my own experiences (successes and failures) with power-lifting, body-weight strength training, kettlebell training, Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS), Anatomy in Motion (AIM), Neurokinetic Therapy® (NKT), Postural Restoration Institute (PRI), Functional Movement Screen (FMS), Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA), yoga, Qi Gong, somatic practices, and other systems and philosophies of movement and strength development.

You may have enjoyed some elements or exercises from Dance Stronger more than others, and I’d suggest that from this point on, pick the elements of the program you enjoyed the most, or got the most benefit from, and explore them in more depth. Maybe there were some parts of the program that you felt were not for you right now, and that is absolutely fine. You are your own “trainer”. Feel free to

drop them for now, and move on. They will be there for you when you are ready to give them another try.

In this chapter we will break down in more detail some of the main influences for the creation of Dance Stronger, and where they appear in the program. My hopes is that this will help you to choose what you would most like your continuing movement and strength training to look and feel like, and perhaps lead you to like-minded teachers, trainers, practitioners, and communities of people with whom you can thrive.

As a friendly reminder, one that I often need myself, go bravely into the spaces that challenge your comfort zone. When exercises are hard or uncomfortable, these are sometimes the ones we hate and want to avoid the most, but are really the ones we will get the most out of provided we have the requisite support. So don’t always choose the easy road. Choose the road that challenges you, and changes you..

CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE

Here is a breakdown of the individual parts of the program, and potential directions you can take your training, based on which parts you enjoyed and benefitted from the most.

If you liked the breathing material:

If you are like me and found that the Breathing chapter, or your application of the breathing concepts to your life was revealing, or

profound, there are a few philosophies, institutions, and training methodologies you could explore from here:

1. Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) www.posturalrestoration.com

PRI is where I learned the concept of Zone of Apposition (ZOA), as well as the 90/90 hip lift exercise from the program. Studying with PRI was life changing for me. Not because I use their exercises all the time (I actually find that I don’t use many of them at all), but because it was the first time I became aware of how emotionally attached I was to my postures and movements, and how this correlated with how I was breathing. I saw for the first time the long road of change I had ahead of me. The work I had to do. I also enjoyed the way they teach anatomy. PRI teaches us that asymmetry is normal, which is a huge relief for those of us who are perfectionists. PRI also illustrates common patterns of compensation that all human beings theoretically slip into based on these predictable asymmetries.

A little known story, one that I sometimes tell my clients when they are frustrated with the 90/90 hip lift or any other exercise, is that in 2013 when I was chosen to demo the hip lift with balloon at the PRI Myokinematic Restoration seminar, I cried in front of the whole class. Crying in a room full of smart people was both embarrassing and liberating. I cried because I was so frustrated at the amount of effort it took to properly perform such a simple exercise, because I wasn’t a “perfect mover” like every dancer wishes they were, and out of the realization that I had to do something about this clear inability to perform something so fundamental. I would have to change.

Embarrassed as I was, no one judged me. It was as though everyone in the room understood what I was going through internally simply based on my inability to lumbar flex and breathe simultaneously.

PRI places a huge importance on positioning yourself in a way that allows the diaphragm to coordinate effectively with the rest of the body, which as you may have experienced, can be difficult, but extremely rewarding. PRI is also where I learned to use a 3:1 exhale to inhale ratio and the importance of the parasympathetic nervous system for movement quality and retaining changes to it. If you want to learn more about optimizing breath PRI-style, you can search for someone who has trained with PRI, is PRI-certified, or if you are a clinician or trainer yourself, attend a seminar. They aren’t too expensive compared to some conferences, and worth every dollar. More and more trainers, yoga teachers, and other fitness and movement coaches are integrating principles of PRI into their classes and training sessions, so it might be worth it for you to ask and see whether they have trained in PRI. See the PRI website for the philosophies behind their teaching, the research, and to search their directory of practitioners.

2. Traditional Hatha Yoga

If you are like me and you feel calmer, have more mental clarity and energy, and just feel overall better after a movement session with the intention set primarily on breathing, then you might be interested in developing a deeper yoga practice. There isn’t much that resembles traditional yoga asanas in Dance Stronger, but it has inspired the program in that the intention of consciously breathing throughout an

entire movement session can be tremendously powerful. Yoga is just one avenue to explore this intention.

I love yoga, but I’ll be honest. It can be difficult to find a good yoga teacher and class. There are so many of them, just like there are so many personal trainers, and many of them I would not pay or trust with my body. The yoga industry is quite unregulated (like personal training and dance). It is very easy to become certified. Scarily easy.

At the age of eighteen, I was fortunate to stumble across an incredible Sivananda yoga teacher and fell in love with the style and the way it made me feel. Since then, I have been rather biased towards the Sivananda-style, and though I’ve tried other classes and styles I enjoy, I keep coming back to the Sivananda style (www.sivananda.org), even after injuring myself in a Sivananda class (I don’t blame the yoga class, I blame myself). I kept coming back to this yoga style because I always felt a profound difference after practicing. Sivananda is a very traditional practice, and it places emphasis on breathing (pranayama) and the mental aspect (meditation) just as much as the physical (the asanas), components I often find missing at many yoga studios. There is something beautiful to me about performing the ancient Kirtan chanting, the specific sequence of breathing exercises, the sun salutations, and practicing the same twelve postures each time, trying to approach them in new ways. The repetitiveness of this method offered me a challenge outside my comfort zone, yet just enough security and comfort. I say this not because I think you should do only Sivananda yoga, but because it is important for you to find a style that

makes you feel good, too. You may need to try a lot of styles of yoga to see which method works best for you.

The primary reason I feel that yoga is important for dancers to do, as I already mentioned, is because it places an emphasis on coordinating movements and breath for a complete session. In Sivananda yoga, we sometimes practice two-hour sessions. Let me tell you, if you can maintain an uninterrupted, focused awareness on your breathing for two hours of movement, you feel incredible afterwards. I think it is important to learn how to do any movement practice with this intention of breath-consciousness, and yoga is one of the best environments I know of to do so. Dance tends to bring our awareness away from proper breathing. For this reason, yoga and dance complement each other well.

Yoga was the first movement practice that started me on my healing process. Today, a ninety-minute yoga class will generally leaves me feeling lighter, calmer, and less tense, and teaches me new things about my body. Experimenting with ZOA principles in a yoga class helped me to train back-bends in a safe way and gradually I gained confidence in my body again after several back injuries. Frequently Dance Stronger participants tell me that applying the concepts and the breathing practices from this program into their yoga practices has helped them to get more out of each session.

If you want to deepen your yoga studies, I would recommend going the private route if you can, at least at first, to really help you understand your body.

3. Qi Gong

I’m not going to pretend I am an expert in this therapeutic form. My experiences with Qi Gong are based on a few weeks that I spent in Thailand. Our curriculum encompassed thirty-minutes practices of Qi Gong to warm-up prior to our massage training every morning. Qi Gong is a Tao practice that combines work on breathing, self-massage and percussion techniques, movement, healing sounds, and philosophy into a deep self-healing practice. The more I learn about Qi Gong, the more fascinated I become.

In Dance Stronger, the main concept I drew from Qi Gong and Tao practices is finding “center” through physically touching your Tan Tien (the point below your belly-button correlating with your center of mass). It is a technique I continue to use for self-awareness, to check in with my breathing, and for self-massage. If I can’t Tan Tien breathe during a movement, I know I don’t “own” it, and so it serves as an excellent barometer. If you enjoyed this subtle part of the program, perhaps you will consider learning more about Qi Gong, Tai Chi, or other Tao-based practices by finding someone in your area who can teach you.

4. Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) www.rehabps.com

I am not certified in DNS. My experience with it has been through a colleague of mine who helped me through some times of pain that I never thought could be resolved so quickly (and in such an

unpredictable way). DNS-based movements and concepts were some of the first treatments that gave me instant pain relief as well as made me feel like I was moving differently immediately.

A major, fundamental concept of DNS is to use breath to create intra- abdominal pressures in your body by anchoring the ribs appropriately and expanding them uniformly front, back, and side, as was demonstrated with the umbrella breathing concept, and similarly to the Zone of Apposition from PRI. DNS works developmentally, taking you through benchmark positions and movements that every human being should be able to accomplish at a specific stage in their development. This helps to uncover potential gaps in your movement vocabulary that could be keeping you in pain and preventing you from performing to your optimum potential. If you have been avoiding a movement pattern that should have been learned at around 3 months old, whether you never learned it, or unlearned it somehow, DNS therapies are designed to give it back to your system. It is fascinating work. In DNS protocol, effective breathing (to create IAP) has to be demonstrated in each position in order to graduate to the next level of competence.

Many therapists use Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization techniques in rehabilitation. However, more and more trainers, yoga instructors, and other movement coaches are taking the courses. If developmental kinesiology or the use of breath as a barometer of movement- ownership was powerful for you in Dance Stronger, then DNS is likely to be something that interests you.

If you liked the movement preparation:

The movement preparation exercises are, again, a meld of several styles of movement I’ve learned. I chose the exercises that I have found to be most helpful for my clients and myself and included them in Dance Stronger. If you enjoyed the movement preparation and want to learn more about their foundation, the main ones are listed below:

1. Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS)

Again, many of the exercises from the movement preparation are inspired by DNS. I wrote, “inspired by”, because I’m not a certified DNS practitioner. Exercises like the deadbug, head lift, bear breathing, and side-lying variations were DNS-inspired.

2. Anatomy in Motion (AiM) www.anatomyinmotion.co.uk

Anatomy in Motion is a model for working with the human body as it makes its journey through the gait cycle. It maps each joint of the body through the phases of gait, and their specific timings in three planes of movement in concert with every other joint in the body. This is a system that I have studied in depth, and is the most complete and effective way of working with the body that I have come across. Much of this book’s philosophy was inspired by Anatomy in Motion, as were many of the exercises, including cogs, suspension, transition, shift, and the format of the 3D movement exploration from Explore Phase. My own experience with AiM has helped me to immediately notice a difference in how I moved and felt, how I danced, and which created a major reduction in my pain. Through the AiM model, I continue to learn new things about myself and my clients, daily,

I frequently referenced Gary Ward, the creator of Anatomy in Motion, and his book, What the Foot, in the Concepts chapter, and throughout the book. Refer to their website for more information and to find a practitioner in your area.

If you liked the barbell lifts and weighted exercises:

I like feeling strong. Not only do I want to move well, breathe well, and be pain-free, I enjoy how it feels to be able to pick up heavy objects, and do pull-ups and push-ups. It’s empowering and it’s fun. Most of my clients enjoy it, too, after they try it. Strong feels good. If you want to add more heavy barbell lifting to your training, check out the information below, which have informed a lot of my lifting education. These references are not necessarily dance specific, but human being specific strength training, which obviously will assist you with your dancing, too:

1. High Performance Handbook: Training Program, by Eric Cressey: www.highperformancehandbook.com

Eric Cressey is the owner of Cressey Sports Performance in Boston, MA. While his primary athletic population is baseball players, his work applies to all athletes and general population trainees. I think you’ll find his guidance sensible, and his wisdom impressive. His resource, High Performance Handbook, is an excellent training program if you want to learn more about how to resistance train at the gym. Dance Stronger is a great introduction into weighted exercises that were noted in this book, if resistance training is the direction you want take.

Cressey’s High Performance Handbook helps you train like an athlete should, giving you a well-balanced program with lots of options to customize. His program inspired Dance Stronger to a certain degree, and so I give thanks to Eric Cressey.

2. Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe www.startingstrength.com

This is the first book I picked up when I decided that yes, I did indeed want to learn how to squat, deadlift, and bench press. Starting Strength gives amazingly detailed step-by-step instructions for how to set up and perform the big three barbell lifts, as well as the Olympic lifts. However, it is always safer to learn these techniques from a coach in person, and not from a book, due to their high complexity. Starting Strength also gives some simple, yet effective, ideas for programming the lifts into your workout routine. You will find great information presented with no “fluff”. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to learn how to lift heavy items proficiently.

3. Beyond 531, by Jim Wendler www.jimwendler.com

This is the program I often start my students with if we are working on barbell lifts and they have specific strength goals. This book is another simple, no-nonsense guide to progressively building strength in your lifts. Yes, it is meant for powerlifters, but you don’t have to take your lifting to a maximum absolute strength level. Doing powerlifting is a sport in itself. No one is saying you have to lift a truck; but, it does feel

empowering to build the strength in yourself to lift your own bodyweight and beyond. Not to mention, being stronger helps your dancing in many ways (up to a certain extent). Beyond 531 gives you enough information to customize how you want to train to your life’s unique demands. There are guidelines for many situations such as if you only have two days per week to train and it allows you to keep adjusting the workouts for as long as you need. If you are serious about progressing the amount of weight you can lift, you will absolutely want to check this guide out, or any variation of the 531 program. It’s simple, classic, and will never go out of style. This book offers practical strength development information that you can apply to any type of strength training. Note, however, that because this book is written for powerlifters, it can be a bit aggressive in the rate of progression and intensity. Adjust as needed for your body.

If you liked Turkish get-ups:

The Turkish get-up is a complicated movement that warrants some in- person coaching if you can get it. I will admit that I learned this activity first from a www.Youtube.com video. Although I eventually had the sense to get a strength coach here in Toronto to coach me on it, and I’m glad I did! A lot goes into in properly performing a Turkish get-up, and it is the ultimate exercise for simultaneously building whole body mobility, stability, while revealing your limiting factors and asymmetries.

If you found that after working on the Turkish get-up for four weeks, you want to learn more about training with kettlebells or variations on the Turkish get-up, I will direct you to three main teaching bodies.

Kettlebells are a fantastic tool because of their versatility and minimalism. You can travel with them, do many different exercises with them without taking up a lot of space.

There are two main branches of thought for kettlebell exercises- Girevoy Sport and Hardstyle. Both are good, and you can certainly train using both styles, but there are differences that are good to know about before choosing which organization and style is right for you.

In Girevoy the focus is on long-duration cycles, efficient movement, and continuous power generation over time. The kettlebell size and shape, grip, and the choice of exercises are slightly different. For example, you won’t see a Girevoy sport competitor doing two-handed swings or Turkish get-ups.

Hardstyle is viewed as being more complimentary to movement optimization, injury prevention, and rehabilitation as it is not a competition sport in itself. The emphasis is on shorter duration bursts of force production rather than long cycles, coaches often encouraging students to stop before their form starts to break down. Two-handed swings and Turkish get-ups are included in Hardstyle kettlebell curriculum.

For further information, there are three organizations that you may want to look into to teach you how to use kettlebells to continue to get strong: a. Strong First (SFG):

www.strongfirst.com

SFG is a system of Hardstyle kettlebell training popularized by Pavel Tsatsouline. I’m not certified in Strong First, but the majority of my experience with kettlebells has been through Strong First coaches, and I personally love it. If you study with Strong First, you will learn moves like the Turkish get-ups in detail, as well as presses, swings, snatches, cleans, and more. b. Russian Kettlebell Certification (RKC): www.dragondoor.com

RKC is another Hardstyle kettlebell training certification. Again, I am not certified in RKC nor have I had as much experience with it compared to SFG. While it is similar to SFG, I don’t know enough about the differences between it and RKC to list them here. Nonetheless, both RKC and SFG forms were founded by Pavel Tsatsouline. c. Girevoy Kettlebell Sport www.gsplanet.com

Girevoy is different from Hardstyle in that it focuses on power output for long periods of time. They train to work for long cycles, and competitions often consist of how many repetitions of a particular movement can be performed in a specific duration. This style makes you strong for sure, but in a different way than Hardstyle.

I do not know of any research that has studied the use of either style’s efficacy for dancers, so you may want to try both. My opinion is that

either style would help improve your strength and power, but that Hardstyle might be a little more forgiving on the body. Hardstyle and Girevoy sport athletes will probably always argue about which system is “best”, but they are just different tools with different goals. To learn more about the differences between Hardstyle, Girevoy, and their various certifying organizations, read this article: www.breakingmuscle.com/kettlebells/hardstyle-girevoy-or-crossfit- how-to-decide-which-kettlebell-style-is-best.

If you liked the body-weight exercises or want to continue training at home: I love bodyweight training. My first experiences with working out were done at home with minimal equipment, in minimal space. And I loved it. I used a duffle-bag full of books to squat with, and a rickety homemade inverted row station made of a broomstick laid across two chairs. I think you can absolutely build strength and movement quality at home (or at the park!) without equipment. Even if you do have access to a gym, it is a good practice to include bodyweight movements into your program as well.

That said, if you want to learn more about how to progress the exercises from Dance Stronger and to learn more bodyweight exercises, a very interesting read is Naked Warrior by Pavel Tsatsouline. In Naked Warrior, the focus is on teaching you two exercises: The single leg squat (pistol squat) and one-armed push-up with variations, regressions, and progressions. The book is less of a body-weight program and more of a philosophy for how to build strength, with any exercise selection, using only your bodyweight. He uses bodyweight exercises not to “get

shredded”, lose fat, or build muscle, but to generate maximum force efficiently. Working on the single leg squat and pistol squat are great ways of doing this. With his philosophy you are not just “exercising” aimlessly to get a sweat on, you are training for an end-goal that requires focus, correct progression, and commitment to a method.

If you are looking for a coach in-person:

This part is a little bit harder for me to help you with because I don’t know you, the personality of the coach and coaching style that works best for you or who is in your area might be compatible.

What is most important for you to ask yourself is what type of training are you interested in continuing? What is your intention for your continued training? Do you want to specialize on one particular movement style? Do you want to find multiple trainers with their own specialty or find a coach kind of like me, who tries a little bit of everything? Do a search for someone in your area who specializes in what you are interested in studying. It is your right to interview them before you hire them. If you are afraid to ask questions of your potential new coach this may not be the person for you.

Yes, you should absolutely interview your potential movement coach, yoga teacher, personal trainer, and therapist, too. Think of it this way: You are hiring them for a job. You are the boss. Treat finding a coach or therapist as if you are hiring an employee. Make sure your values and intentions are in alignment and that your personalities don’t clash. Hiring a coach is an investment. It can be enormously rewarding when

you work with the right person. Take the time it takes to find a coach that resonates with you and feels right.

FINAL REMARKS

I will always remember this line from the book Anatomy Trains, by Thomas Myers:

“You can change your body about your mind.”

We all know we can change our minds about our bodies, but consider the reverse to also be true. Changing your body can change your mind. I want to leave you with this line because it is my “why”. I make movement a priority in my life for many reasons, but this, the idea that we can inform our psychology through exploration of our physiology, is number one.

I don’t think it is wrong to have aesthetic goals. Peoples’ lives do change when they learn to improve their weight or body composition in healthy ways. They change their mindset, and, therefore, they manage to change their bodies. They lose weight that was putting extra stress on joints, and affecting their self-esteem and quality of life. As many people improve their physical fitness and lose fat, they often derive more enjoyment from physical activities and so choose move more daily, which continues to enhance their health, happiness, and relationships.

But aesthetic goals cannot be the only goals we have. Aesthetic goals without an appreciation for honest movement will leave us with an

unfulfilled void. Movement can change you. Movement can lead to insights about yourself that thinking and reflecting on a couch, cannot. Nor can extreme dieting and high-intensity workouts, in which you push yourself to your limits, always help you learn your body’s needs. As you begin to change your body, you change your mind as well. Changing movement patterns and the ways we move also change neural pathways. As you make changes to your neural circuitry, you may find yourself thinking in ways that you would not have considered before. As you re-learn movement that perhaps you haven’t performed since childhood, you may remember ways you did things then, the way you perceived the world, and connect them to the way you are now.

I realize this may seem like a far-out concept for a cross-training program, but it is the truth. Movement and strength are as good a psychological therapy as talking about your feelings to another person, in some instances (in fact, it is shown that movement and talk-based therapy combined is often the most effective form of therapy. This is something you can read more about in the book The Body Keeps the Score, by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk). You may be aware of this if you have ever had an emotional response to movement, which, if you are a dancer, is quite common. Upon completion of Dance Stronger, when you reflect upon the time invested, you may observe that is was a therapeutic experience. You may have learned more than just how to breathe, how to move, and how to build strength. You may have learned something about yourself that you didn’t know, or that you forgot.

Maybe you think you don’t need therapy, but I think we all need it in some form. We all need something therapeutic. Therapy isn’t for crazy persons; it is for smart people. Therapy is for people who know that understanding themselves is preventative. Therapy is useful to help them enjoy life more, and be present for the people around them.

I want to leave you with one final personal story. An example of how I changed my body about my mind. By learning to optimize movement, I changed something mentally without focusing on it. “Movement therapy” helped me learn why I am the way I am and why the things that happened to me came to be and allowed me to accept them.

HOW AN EXPERIENTIAL MOVEMENT EDUCATION CHANGED ME

The story of my movement journey is long and probably not very interesting for many of you. I’d love to have coffee with you and tell you the whole thing, but for now, here is an abbreviated version.

For as long as I can remember I have been a perfectionist. I was wound so tightly that I could not leave the house if my shoelaces weren’t perfectly symmetrical lest I burst into tears and consider myself a failure. If you think this is an exaggeration, ask my mother about it. All through elementary school, I was very hard on myself when I couldn’t do something perfectly the first time. I remember one particular day in grade seven when we were making paper cranes and I couldn’t do it. I was the only one in class who wasn’t able to make one single paper crane, and I hated that, so I started crying. The teacher sat me down after class and asked me what was wrong. “Oh, don’t mind me. It’s just how I am. If I can’t do something, I cry. It’s normal.”

I do not consider this to be normal now. Just because it is habitual does not mean it is serving me and that I can’t change it. These days I can still feel the tears welling up in my eyes sometimes if I am unable to do something as well as I’d like the first time around. A reminder of the perfectionist I used to be. Nonetheless, I’ve learned to ease up a little bit and accept that not everything comes easily, and that failures lead to growth. The sun sets, but then it rises. There must be rainy days and hurricanes to appreciate the sunshine. Winter always comes (especially true in Canada), but we can always count on spring to follow. I am sure many reading my story can relate to this type-A, perfectionist attitude.

And it wasn’t just that I felt the need to be perfect, I needed to please everyone and meet their expectations for how I “should” be. On my long list of those that I was looking to impress were my parents, my teachers, and my friends. I needed everyone to like me, and to like the things I did, and approve of me. This is how I learned to hold my pee for long periods of time. Yes this story is getting weird, but it’s relevant, I promise.

I’ve always had an uncanny talent for holding my pee, but as I explained in the Core Training chapter, holding urine for too long chronically can disrupt your pelvic floor dynamics and interfere with important patterns of breathing and moving. I didn’t know this fact until learning about pelvic floor function (or my lack thereof) at a Neurokinetic Therapy® seminar. After that seminar, I began to connect some dots and ask myself why I felt the need to always hold my pee as a kid, and often still to this day. I needed to understand how I had learned this behaviour. I understand this now in a few ways that I’ll share with you.

One is that the “pleaser” in me didn’t want to let anyone down, or be left out of a group by having to stop to go to the washroom. Interruptions from whatever activity I was doing were unacceptable, in my opinion. I would rather hold it in than miss one minute “fitting in”, being part of a group. It’s silly, but it was real and important to me at the time.

Another reason is that my ballet teacher always discouraged us from going to the bathroom during class since she saw it as rude to interrupt. We were judged and publically called out for needing to pee during class, and shamed in front of the other students. I dreaded the humiliation. Also noteworthy is that going to the washroom in a bodysuit and tights is no simple task, so it was much easier to hold it in than have to strip naked from sweaty spandex to pee.

Yet another reason is that the perfectionist in me always wanted to do things to the extreme. Pee holding, too, was an internal challenge I had to win. I thought it was a good thing that I could do this. I saw it as an advantage to have this “skill”. The thing about pee holding is that it teaches you to change your posture, movement, and how you use your intrinsic core (pelvic floor). I find myself slipping into my body’s most comfortable, habitual posture- anteriorly tilting my pelvis and exaggerating my lumbar lordosis even today when I have to pee. Reminders of how I used to be. This is a posture I now know is indicative of someone with poor breathing patterns and who is potentially highly strung, anxious, or needs to be perfect all the time. As a child, this posture often attracts comments like, “suck in your

stomach!”, from well-intentioned parents, which can create further feelings of shame.

All through my dance career, I was told to hold my pee, breathe into my chest, suck in my gut, and to fit in and try to be perfect. Thinking that the reason I was told to suck it in was because I was fat, I developed an eating disorder. Never did I connect it with my static posture. Nor would I have connected my posture with pelvic floor issues, and my pelvic floor issues with my need to please, and be perfect.

These issues became clear as I started my journey into restorative movement and strength training after multiple dance injuries. I had to peel away at the layers of pelvic floor dysfunction, poor breathing, and non-existent core function to heal. To do that, I had to face the real reasons why I was like that. I was frequently injured because of my need to please, be perfect, and meet other peoples’ expectations. I learned though my movement journey that emotions can hurt as much as physical pain. It just takes a bit longer to catch up. I learned through my movement journey that I need to let go of pleasing other people, and that it is acceptable to not be perfect. I have been fortunate to work with therapists and coaches who view things holistically. I have had my posture, movement, and their emotional signals pointed out to me and questioned, and it was not always nice to hear. But critically considering the root, the “why” I had adapted in these particular ways was an important step towards changing my mental and physical state:

- You can’t close your lips when you do exercise, why? - You yawn frequently, why?

- You struggle posteriorly tilt (tuck under) your pelvis, why? - Your pelvic floor is over-active, why? - You can’t flex your lumbar spine, why? - Your shoulders round forwards at rest, why? - You can’t expand certain parts of your abdomen when you breathe, why?

Having to consider the “why” behind every movement was hard to do. Initially, I felt like there was so much wrong with me that I could have easily given up, but I had lived too many years in discomfort to disregard each new bit of information. My desire to understand and to change my present state made it impossible to continue to ignore my truth. It was time to face my “whys” head on. If I had not worked with these people who asked me “why” and given me an opportunity to explore it with movement, I don’t know if I would have gained the understanding of myself that allowed me to gradually let go of painful patterns. Had I never learned how my breathing and pelvic floor were affecting my movement, structure, and even my digestion, I would have never thought about the “why”. Why did I feel the need to hold my pee for so long? It was my belief about how I needed to be. Somewhere, from someone I had learned that I needed to be perfect, I needed to please everyone, and it was hurting me.

So as you reflect on your experience with Dance Stronger, I encourage you to face your “whys”. If an exercise was hard for you and you avoided it, “why”? What are you not facing that is preventing you from doing it? What’s blocking you up and holding you back? These are not

only exercises to become stronger, but opportunities to experience yourself.

YOU ARE AWESOME AND I AM GRATEFUL FOR YOU

If you have read this far, I want to sincerely congratulate and thank you. It is not easy to change the way you move. If you have finished the program and have felt a difference, then you’ve done something important. While I can’t tell you exactly what to do now, I hope you have some ideas as to the direction you’d like to go, and what type of supplementary training and movement is interesting and effective for you.

Three things I want you to remember as you continue to cross-train for dance are that it has to be enjoyable, it has to be just the right level of challenge for you, and it has to be progressive.

Make sure you love what you are doing and that you feel immediate benefits, even if that means an ambiguous “it makes me feel good”. Often, that is enough.

Make sure it’s outside your comfort zone. If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you. Find your neural edge, the sweet spot between support and challenge.

Make sure your training is progressive. In order to become a little better and a little stronger each day, you have to do a little more work than the day before. Choose a movement form that allows you to keep progressing objectively.

Thank you for reading and exploring movement with me. If you have come away from this program feeling that you’ve learned something more about yourself, then you’ve accomplished something great.

Keep breathing, moving, and Dancing Stronger.

APPENDIX i. Program Guidelines

NOTE: AS WITH ALL EXERCISE PROGRAMS, CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN PRIOR TO STARTING THIS PROGRAM TO DETERMINE YOUR NEEDS AND SAFETY. I am not a physician. I cannot diagnose your problems. I cannot state if you are at risk with this program or not. Please seek the advice of a trained medical professional prior to starting this program.

The following are some specific things you should be aware of to get the most out of following this program. This section is also available online for quick access at www.dancestronger.com/support-resources when you log into your account.

A. Breathing. Breathing is the foundation of any movement training program. For dancers, this is often the largest obstacle, and the first hurdle to overcome in order to effectively improve strength. Recommended breathing techniques will be described in the breathing section. The techniques recommended in the specific breathing exercises should be carried into every exercise (unless otherwise specified).

The diaphragm is king. If you neglect the breathing guidelines you will not make much progress with this program. If you learn one thing from this program, I want it to be a new found appreciation for proper diaphragmatic breathing. Breathing correctly is a game changer. Please, remember to breathe.

B. Movement preparation and warm-up. Before each session, you will be warming up with five to ten minutes of light intensity cardiopulmonary exercise to increase your body temperature. Then you will execute a series of movement preparation drills, including breathing drills (although I would like you to consider any exercise a breathing drill). This section is possibly more important than anything you do in the entire exercise session itself. Do not skip the warm-up movement preparation. When you are comfortable with it, it should only take about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. If you don’t have enough time to warm up, you don’t have enough time to train.

If you are doing the gym program: you will also want to do extra warm- up sets for the barbell lifts. Perform two or three sets of a lighter weight and/or lower repetitions to prepare you for Set One. For example, if your plan is to try to work up to 125lbs for the deadlift, you may do warm-up sets as follows:

Warm-up set 1: empty bar for 8-10 repetitions (0lbs x 8-10 reps).

Then you will start adding weights onto the bar for the next two sets.

Warm-up set 2: 85lbs x 5 reps Warm-up set 3: 100lbs x 3 reps REAL set 1: 115lbs x 5 reps REAL set 2: 125lbsx 3 reps REAL set 3: 125lbs x 3 reps REAL set 4: 115lbs x 5 reps

Remember that this is an example. Be smart and listen to your body. If you are unable to breathe well nor maintain good posture, the weight on the bar may be too heavy. The warm-up sets should still be fairly easy. You do not want to tire yourself out. By the end of your warm-up sets, you should still feel very strong and ready for more. The higher the weight you are warming up for, the more warm-up sets you should do.

C. Intensity. Remember you should be working at the edge of your ability (refer to “neural edge” from the Concepts chapter). Exercises should feel about 8 out of a maximum 10 on the intensity scale. You should stop short of pain, losing control of your form, or any other feelings of impending doom. You want to feel like you have one more decent repetition left in the tank, but it should not be sloppy. You might not look pretty doing some of these exercises, but you shouldn’t be sloppy with the technique. Don’t practice slop, or slop you will become.

D. Choosing the best variation for you. For many exercises, you will see that there are variations, regressions and progressions, to help you choose an intensity that is reasonable for you. If the originally stated version of an exercise is too difficult to control, hurts, or is straining you excessively, regress it. For example, if the half-kneeling anti- rotation press is too hard, regress and work on holding the half- kneeling position, breathing, with head rotation (you will see this example in the “half-kneeling tutorial video”). There is always a way to regress or progress a given exercise. It is often necessary to “regress to progress”, and is good for the ego, too. If you are having trouble

without how to enhance your exercise, the Dance Stronger community on Facebook is a great source for help.

E. Progressive overload. This principle means that with each session, you are trying to do more work. Adjusting variables ensures that you are continuing to provide a stimulus that elicits some kind of change and performance that is better than the last session. This is also why you are tracking your training sessions with the tracking sheets. The tracking sheets are an easy and important way to see how you are progressing.

Here are some of the ways to overload each session:

• Perform one more repetition than the last workout • Perform the sets and repetitions in less time than the last session • Add an extra 5-10 pounds to a loaded exercise • Set your intention to improving the quality of your technique • Slow down the repetition speed to spend more time under tension • Change your breathing pattern, perhaps by lengthening the exhalation to increase the challenge

F. Supersets (A1, A2, etc.). When you see A1, A2, or B1, B2 this designates a superset. This means you will complete all the repetitions from exercise A1 (both right and left sides of your body, if it’s a bilateral exercise and applicable), move immediately to exercise A2 and complete all the repetitions. Then, take a short rest (up to a 1 minute rest) and continue on to perform the rest of the prescribed sets and

repetitions of both the A exercises again. After all the sets of A1 and A2 are complete, take a longer rest and then move on to the B series.

G. Tracking sheets. If you don’t record your training sessions, you won’t have proof that you are making progress. Use them to record the sets, repetitions, amount of weight used (if any) as well as any notes on how things felt and any adjustments (regressions/progressions) you made. It is okay to tweak sessions to make them more appropriate for you. I hope that you will! For best results, record the activity during the session or immediately after. I know it feels like you can leave it for later because you think you will remember, but trust me, you’ll forget some details.

H. Stress and strain versus effort. The exercises should feel like effort (see intensity) but you should not be stressing and straining. Please make sure you can feel this difference since stress and strain are counterproductive to your progress. “No pain, no gain” doesn’t apply here.

I. Recovery between sessions. Make sure you leave at least 24 hours between sessions. Hydrate. Eat and sleep enough. I cannot go into specific detail on the science of recovery for this program. However, if you find you are not becoming stronger and progressing, check if these factors are affecting your recovery: Hydration, sleep, stress, amount of rest between sessions, past injuries and physical restrictions, and nutrition. If you are not taking care of these important factors, training isn’t going to help anything improve. If something makes you worse,

discontinue or regress. Do not push through the pain. See a medical practitioner if necessary.

J. Session duration. Sessions should take about one hour, give or take. If you are short on time and only finish half the session, do the rest of the exercises in a separate mini-session. Please remember to not jump in “cold” to the exercises. Always make time for some type of warm-up. Maybe some weeks your schedule will allow four times a week to train and some weeks one to two sessions to train. As long as you get all the sets and repetitions of each exercise into a given training week, it doesn’t matter if you need to split them up.

K. Repetition speed. Unless a tempo is specified, do not worry about the speed of the repetitions. Ideally, you will be in control of the movement and coordinating it with your breath. You will note that some exercises specify that you pause for a breath cycle, or exhale for a particular amount of time. For the gym program, with exercises that use weights, like the squat and deadlift, you will, as a general rule, perform the lifting portion with power and more rapidity. While you perform the lowering portion of the exercise, do it more slowly and with an emphasis on control.

L. Rest periods during the sessions. Between exercises in a superset, you will try to rest as little as necessary while still being able to perform the repetitions with good technique. After you’ve completed all the sets and repetitions of the superset (Both A1 and A2 OR B1 and B2), you can take a longer rest. This is to keep things challenging for you, as

well as to make sure the sessions don’t take two hours to complete. Take as much rest as you need while taking as little rest as possible.

M. For those with fat loss and body composition goals. This program was not designed specifically to help you lose fat and build muscle mass. While some of my clients have found that they have noticed things ‘lifting and toning”, this is a side effect of becoming stronger and developing muscle. If you have a significant amount of fat you would like to lose, this program can help, but only in conjunction with a healthy nutrition strategy that puts you in a caloric deficit, and perhaps with some additional cardiopulmonary activity and/or higher intensity training. For recommendations on that, please consult a professional who specializes in body composition.

N. What your training weeks will look like. Bear in mind that a training week doesn’t need to be seven days. You may find that you need more or less recovery time so it becomes a five- or ten-day training week. If it takes you six weeks to do the program rather than four, that is fine! As long as you see the twelve sessions through to the end, you will benefit. It is a mentality common in dancers to have to do things perfectly or it’s not worth doing at all. This is untrue in this case.

The home program has two sessions that you will be alternating between while the gym program has three. Since the gym has a wider variety of tools at your disposal, there is more room for variations. At home, you are using mostly your bodyweight. It will serve you best to get in a higher volume of work with each exercise and own your bodyweight.

For the home program: you will alternate between session 1 and 2 until you have done each session three times in 2 weeks.

For example: Week 1: Sessions 1, 2, 1 Week 2: Sessions 2, 1, 2, Week 3: Sessions 1, 2, 1 Week 4: Sessions 2, 1, 2

For the gym program: it is simply a matter of doing sessions 1, 2, 3 in a given training week.

Any other questions? Any other answers? Ask them on the Dance Stronger Facebook group forum.

Have fun with the program. Relax and breathe.

APPENDIX ii. Your 3D Movement Exploration Worksheet

Print off and complete this worksheet as you go through the 3D Movement Exploration, found at www.dancestronger.com/explore-phase

Shade in foot pressures: 360 breathing: Other observations:

SAGITTAL FRONTAL TRANSVERSE (forward & back) (side to side) (rotation)

Pelvis

Ribcage

Skull

APPENDIX iii. Goal Setting and Priorities Questionnaire

What if what is holding you back is the way that you are thinking, or a lack of awareness in the congruence of your actions with your priorities? Use these 11 questions to shine light to where in your life your thoughts and actions may not be in alignment with your goals.

1. What are the three things that you visualize, envision, or day dream about most and bringing about?

2. What are the three things that you dominate your thoughts on?

3. Where are you most reliable, disciplined and focused?

4. What are the three things that you always find energy for most?

5. What are the three most consistent long-term goals that you have persisted working on that have stood the test of time?

6. What are the top three things you are struggling with in your dancing right now?

7. What are the three things that you spend your time on most?

8. What are the three things that you spend your money on most?

9. What in your life are you avoiding taking action on?

10. What would it take, what would have to happen in your life, to make you care about cross-training and proactive injury prevention as much as you care about your dancing?

11. What do you think would happen if you placed just as much value on your self-care, cross-training, and recovery practices as you did on your dancing? APPENDIX iV. Referenced Resources

BOOKS

Anatomy Trains, Thomas Myers The Art of Asking, Amanda Palmer Beyond 531, Jim Wendler The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk The Brain That Changes Itself, Dr. Norman Doidge The Brain’s Way of Healing, Dr. Norman Doidge Naked Warrior, Pavel Tsatsouline Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Life in Motion, Misty Copeland Lower Back Fitness and Performance, Dr. Stuart McGill Movement, Gray Cook Neurokinetic Therapy, David Weinstock The Poly Vagal Theory, Dr. Stephen Porges The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg Recognizing and Treating Breathing Pattern Disorders, Leon Chaitow Shut Your Mouth, Patrick McKeown Starting Strength, Mark Rippetoe

The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle What The Foot, Gary Ward

ORGANIZATIONS AND SEMINARS (All links below active and accessed 9-13-15)

Anatomy in Motion (AiM): www.anatomyinmotion.co.uk The Prague School and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS): www.rehabps.com Strong First (SFG): www.strongfirst.com Russian Kettlebell Certification (RKC): www.dragondoor.com Girevoy Kettlebell Sport: www.gsplanet.com The Postural Restoration Institute (PRI): www.posturalrestoration.com Neurokinetic Therapy®: www.neurokinetictherapy.com Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA): www.functionalmovement.com Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers International: www.sivananda.org

ONLINE RESOURCES

High Performance Handbook, Eric Cressey: www.highperformancehandbook.com How to Decide Which Kettlebell Style is Best, Craig Marker: www.breakingmuscle.com/kettlebells/hardstyle-girevoy-or-crossfit- how-to-decide-which-kettlebell-style-is-best

VIDEO

“Rehab Prehab 101”, Dr. Mark Cheng: www.movementlectures.com/VMEG0114-16.html “Training=Rehab Rehab=Training”, Charlie Weingroff: www.charlieweingroff.com/products-page/dvds/training-rehab-dvd-set “Deep Front Line Dissection” , Anatomy Trains: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zK-MZ2fjXA

OTHER WORKS REFERENCED

Fitt, S. S. (1988). Dance kinesiology. New York: Schirmer Books.

Geirland, John. "Go With The Flow." Wired Magazine. N.p., 01 Sept. 1996. Web. 11 Oct. 2016.

McCormack, Moira, M.Sc. "Teaching the Hypermobile Dancer." The IADMS Bulletin for Teachers 2.1 (2010): 1-8. Web. 21 Sept. 2015.

Knight, Isobel, MSc, Moira McCormack, MSc, and Howard Bird, MA MD FRCP.Managing Joint Hypermobility – A Guide for Dance Teachers. Exeter: South West Music School, Mar. 2012. PDF.

Arcelus, Jon, Alex Mitchell, and Jackie Wales. "Mortality Rates in Patients With Anorexia Nervosa and Other Eating Disorders." Arch Gen Psychiatry. (2011): n. pag. Web. Aug. 2016.

Hodges, Paul, and Gandevia, Simon. "Changes in Intra-abdominal Pressure during Postural and Respiratory Activation of the Human Diaphragm." J Appl Physiol (2000): 967-76. Web. Aug. 2016.

Borgatti, E., Marcolin, G., Zonin, F., Grigoletto, D. & Paoli, A., "Effects of kettlebell training on lower limb power, body balance, blood pressure and heart rate in a group of dancers," Italian Society of Motor and Sports Sciences (SISMeS), October 2-4, 2015.

Kay, Josephine. "'The Core': Understanding It, and Retraining Its Dysfunction."Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. (2013): 541-59. Web. June 2015.

"Dismantling 'the Core' to Better Back Care." SBS. N.p., 17 Aug. 2016. Web. Sept. 2016.

Litman, Robert. "Reasons Breathing Through Your Nose Is Good for You." Web log post. The Breathable Body. N.p., 14 Jan. 2013. Web. Oct. 2016.

Morton, AR, K. King, and S. Paplia. "Comparison of Maximal Oxygen Consumption with Oral and Nasal Breathing." Aust J Sci Med Sport. (1995): 51-55. Web. Sept. 2016.

Boyle, Kyndall, Josh Olinick, and Cynthia Lewis. "THE VALUE OF BLOWING UP A BALLOON." N Am J Sports Phys Ther. (2010): 179-88. Web. Oct. 2013. Hruska, Ron, MPA, PT. ZOA Position and Mechanical Function. N.p.: Postural Restoration Institute, 2015. PDF.

Di Vica, Rosa, Luca Ardigo, and Gianluca Salernitano. "The Acute Effect of the Tongue Position in the Mouth on Knee Isokinetic Test Performance: A Highly Surprising Pilot Study." Muscles Ligaments Tendons J. (2013): 318-23. Web. Mortality in anorexia nervosa. (1997, July). American Journal of Psychiatry,152(7), 1073-1074. Retrieved December 5, 2016, from http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/ajp.152.7.1073?journalCode=ajp

Stalder, M. A., Noble, B. J., & Wilkinson, J. G. (1990). The Effects of Supplemental Weight Training for Ballet Dancers [Abstract]. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 4(3), 95- 102. doi:10.1519/00124278-199008000-00006

Negus, V. (2005). Associations Between Turnout and Lower Extremity Injuries in Classical Ballet Dancers [Abstract]. Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, 307-318. doi:10.2519/jospt.2005.1600

Koutedakis, Y., Myszkewycz, L., Soulas, D., Papapostolou, V., Sullivan, I., & Sharp, N. (1999). The Effects of Rest and Subsequent Training on Selected Physiological Parameters in Professional Female Classical Dancers [Abstract]. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 20(06), 379-383. doi:10.1055/s-2007-971148

Koutedakis, Y., Hukam, H., Metsios, G., Nevill, A., Giakas, G., Jamurtas, A., & Myszkewycz, L. (2007). The Effects of Three Months of Aerobic and Strength Training on Selected Performance- and Fitness-Related Parameters in Modern Dance Students. The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 21(3), 808. doi:10.1519/r-20856.1

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