Aloha and Happy Holidays! We are now past “Nutcracker” season, so here’s a brief post for your post-holiday thoughts, as you gear up for the New Year:
Dr. Matt Wyon, PhD, our Dance Wellness Panel member and current President of IADMS, has done some research on the benefits of dancers incorporating Power Plate / “Vibration Training” into their conditioning program, which he shares in the post below. If you have access to this type of equipment, you might well investigate using it…
Enjoy, and Pass it On! – Jan Dunn, MS
by Matt Wyon, PhD
It is now a recognized fact that that dancers need to do supplemental training, but what can be fitted into an already hectic schedule without taking up lots of time?
Vibration training (or Power Plate training) has been shown to improve jump height and developpé height after just 8 sessions (2 ten-minute sessions per week).
In a recent study, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, Marshall and Wyon had dancers hold 9 positions while on the Power Plate, for 30 seconds each for the first two weeks, and then for 40 seconds for the subsequent two weeks. The positions were:
plié in first
plié in second
relevé
pelvic bridge (back on the floor and feet on the platform)
right leg leading lunge with front foot on the platform
left foot leading lunge
bent over hamstring hold (with a right angle between torso and legs)
right leg developpé
left leg developpé
(the extension phase of these last two exercises were held for 2-5 seconds)
All the dancers who did the training increased their jump height 4 cm and their developpé height by approximately 20-degrees.
The important thing to remember with everything is that quality is much more important that quantity. This is especially true of supplemental training, and vibration training seems to be able to provide good results with little time demands.
Matthew Wyon, PhD, is a Professor in Dance Science at the University of Wolverhampton, UK and a Visiting Professor at the ArtEZ, Institute of the Arts, The Netherlands.
At Wolverhampton he is the course leader for the MSc in Dance Science and Director of Studies for a number of dance science and medicine doctoral candidates. He is a founding partner of the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science, UK.
Prof. Wyon is President of the International Association for Dance Medicine & Science and a past chair of the Research Committee. He has worked with numerous dancers and companies within the UK and Europe as an applied physiologist and strength and conditioning coach.
He has published over 80 peer-reviewed articles in dance medicine and science.
