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Strength and conditioning

I recently went to a fabulous day of strength & conditioning at Elmhurst School of Dance in Birmingham. The day started really well with a ballet class from Brian Maloney who is Teacher and Rehabilitation Specialist at the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden, London. The beginning at the barre was manageable but that was all as it quickly moved on to push me way out of my comfort zone ! What I noticed was how we all warmed up slowly with movements that became more and more complex involving the whole body followed by stretching. My next class was 'Solutions for supplementary training' which was run by Nico Kolokythas ASCC, Performance Enhancement Coach and PhD researcher at Elmhurst School of Dance. This was strength & conditioning and also hard work. I realised that it is much easier being flexible than strong and my muscles were sore for a few days afterwards as I was not accustomed to working so hard.....evidently room for improvement. Lastly was 'Cardiovascular Training for Dancers' run by Dr Emma Redding, Head of Dance Science & Sonia Rafferty, Senior Lecturer at Trinity Laban,Conservatoire of Music and Dance.Emma and Sonia warmed up up slowly and then we had a vigorous workout bringing our heart rates up to 85% maximum heart rate and then coming back down to 65% heart rate training zone. By the end of which after 90 minutes we were all quite tired!! What we noticed was that as we became more fatigued our co-ordination suffered as a result.

Take home messages from the day were:

1. Ballet is a fantastic way to build up strength & conditioning and starts slowly but builds up to more difficult exercises requiring co-ordination, strength and balance. It is specific and targets weaknesses.

2. Strength & conditioning needs to be part of training as invariably it is the strength aspect that tends to be neglected and yes it is difficult

3. Cardiovascular fitness is key and the fitter you are the less quickly you fatigue which can result in poor co-ordination and injury

We also had lectures by Greg Retter, Clinical Director at The Royal Ballet, Matthew Wyon, Course Leader MSc Dance Science, University of Wolverhampton and Dr Benjamin Rosenblatt, Senior Strength and Conditioning Coach GB Hockey and English Institute of Sport.

So all in all a very informative day and needless to say I was quite tired when I got home.....Jacqueline