You are warming up before each class with cardio, stretching, strength and  conditioning…so why is it not showing up in class?

Do you just keep coming earlier and earlier before class to fit more exercises in? 

And what if anything are you doing for the pain and stiffness you feel before and after classes (and often during)  other than a once a month massage, a foam roller (ouch!) and maybe a panadol?!

Start now

Hello Teachers and Dancers!

If you’re reading this, then you’re likely in the same boat so many dancers and teachers I work with are before they start utilising  the Heal Yourself and Move system

You are doing the same stretches you have been doing for the last 5 years but somehow they don’t work to improve your flexibility to the ‘next level’ you need now (and they often hurt!)

You can’t find a way to access you deepest muscles without blocking your freedom of movement.

Coming back from lock down has seemingly exacerbated all of the above and added injury risk from lack of daily dance physical  resilience to the equation.

You have big goals to achieve for your dancing ( like exams, performance, full-time auditions, professional aspirations) and you are running out of time to improve enough to get there (lockdowns also not helpful for consistency!)

“Sooooo frustrating”

So then you  go looking for different  programs and approaches to try and solve each problem separately and they told you to do this:

a)Stretch at the end of your range to improve flexibility

b)Do individual repetition bases exercises to strengthen  each muscle group you are ‘weak’ in

c)Create ‘dance conditioning’ by engaging ‘the correct’ muscles and then when that fails to improve the ability to hold a developpé or arabesque or utilise turnout in class just do a) and b) again

d) Roll out stiffness and soreness on a roller or massage ball (‘ow!’) and when that doesn’t  work go  and pay someone to really make it hurt and be just as sore again a couple of days later!

 

“Dancer Groundhog Day”

‘

But they told you:

Improving flexibility meant you had to feel a  stretch. 

Strengthening to improve dance ability meant conditioning exercises.

To access core muscles you had to consciously and strongly engage to feel them working.

Feeling intense pain when massaging out tight muscles was a sign you were relieving the tension.

Restriction and discomfort in your body was a byproduct of training at intensity and you are a dancer so what did you expect?!!

Turns out none of that was true

So, what is the real problem here?

The real problem is you are constantly asking your body to try and make the shapes that define your dancing style (ballet, lyric, hip-hop, contemporary, Irish, tap you get the picture!)  before you have felt and understood your own bodies’ unique signals.

This means you are constantly trying to fit a square peg (your styles required shapes) into a round hole (your body)

And if you don’t have  a body that already has the facility to make the required shape (for instance in ballet think ridiculous arches, hyper-extended knees, lean long lines bendy back, natural leg flexibility)

Then you are do whatever you can to make it fit into the required shape.

And that is not healthy for your body or for your chances of really progressing to where you want to go or for you as a person.

See, to master the physical shapes that define your style of dance  at the same time as you are trying to remember and perform sequences of steps at different speeds, intensities, dynamics and complexities in perfect time to the music (aka dancing!).

Is an almost impossible task…

Is it any wonder that it seems like there is just waaay to much to try and get right and waaaay too little time to do it in?

But there is a solution:  bypass the outer muscle ‘movement gatekeepers’ and go straight to the source, 

(the muscles that attach to bone), without conscious engagement- whilst having the shapes themselves completely supported and ‘safe.’

Because no true lasting improvement is possible without the body trusting that it will not be hurt.

“That sounds great but how can I possibly do that????” 

You’re absolutely right, so here it might be good to provide a little background to how this all came about…

About 15 or so years ago I was teaching dance and pilates and martial arts in different spaces and places, instructing students to consciously engage the right muscles to create the right shapes and I realised that all that concentration required to engage meant they couldn’t  move with freedom (or at all!), 

But then when I emphasised relaxing their form fell apart, 

Therefore I started becoming obsessed with finding the ‘sweet spot’ of how to both achieve the deep strength and control and yet also move with complete freedom and fluidity.

And just like everyone else I thought that improving flexibility, strength, stamina, skill levels each required a separate class…

But what I didn’t realise then was that the longer the gap between a ‘specialist’ conditioning or flexibility exercise and its utilisation in the actual high level movement genre you were training in, whether ballet, gymnastic, martial arts, calisthenics or any sport, the less likely that it would ever improve skill level.

Essentially, because your movement skill or art requires  a far higher order of neuro-muscular complexity than the exercises you are most probably using, you need to be testing them against technique immediately you do them to see what if any changes (positive, neutral or negative) have occured.   

Otherwise you fall straight back in to the ‘conditioning trap’ of doing all the ‘right things’ with no way of gauging if they are actually working or not in the only area that counts-dance class and performance safe facility and skill improvement.

Therefore when after years of painstaking experiment and  trial and error  I finally discovered the secret to auto-engagement of the deepest muscles that allowed safe simultaneous access to flexibility, strength and skill and shared this with a select group of high level dancers  they began to see results that were supposed to be impossible in the time from and with the ‘apparent’ limitations they had been told they had.

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