by Jan Dunn, MS
Summer is drawing to a close, and I’m guessing at least some of you have already started back to school / dance class / rehearsals….and I would guess that you’re in good shape, because you’ve been reading the Dance Wellness column over the last year and a half, and you know to not let your dancing body de-condition over the summer, yes?
So now that a new season is starting – whether that means as a student or professional dancer – let’s talk about how important warm-up is–and what exactly is this anyway, and WHY is it important?
I remember a number of years ago, when my Denver Dance Medicine Medicine colleague, Sarah Graham, PT, and I were working backstage with a well-known international dance company, and were distressed to realize that 90% of the dancers went on-stage with virtually no warm-up before the show – and the company had many injuries that came as a result. It was a grim reminder of how important warm-up is for your dancing life.
Bottom line: We warm-up to prepare our bodies safely for the dance activity to follow, and to avoid injury.
Let’s just start with the basics:
The primary goal of a warm-up is to increase your core internal body temperature by 1-2 degrees. By doing this, you accomplish a number of good things:
-increase your respiration rate (breathing)
-increase the blood flow to your muscles (to fuel your dance movement!)
-increase your joint lubrication, for easier range of motion. Think of your joints as having oil (they do – it’s called “synovial fluid”), which, when cold, moves slowly and makes movement more difficult. Warming-up that fluid makes the joint move more easily and freely. (Like your car on a cold winter morning–you want to warm it up first!)
-increase the speed of neural signal transmission from your brain to your muscles.
-focus your attention