How to Warm up Before Dance Lessons

When you're about to hit the dance floor for study, practice or exercise, you're excited and ready to get out there. Do your body a favor. Warm up before engaging in the nonstop activity of dance. Cold muscles are contracted and guarded. Warm muscles are more flexible and amenable to performing strenuous tasks. Recognize dance for the high-energy sport and art that it is. Always warm up before dance lessons.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Knowledge of your field of dance study
• Time before (and after!) lessons to warm up and stretch

Know Why to Warm up

1. Start slowly. The goal of dance warm up is not to make you sweat or feel warm, but to raise your temperature and heart rate to a "working" condition.

2. Go from zero to 60. Dancers beginning from a standstill ask a lot of their hearts and limbs. Blood and airways need to be flowing and muscles need to be able to reach into a leap, turn or plie. Warm up exercises and stretching accomplish that.

3. Avoid injuries. A "pulled" muscle is actually a tear in a muscle or tendon that was not properly prepared for action. Warm up in order to stay on the dance floor, not the sidelines.

Know How to Warm up

4. Raise your heart rate and work the joints you will be using. Begin warm up with dancelike movements that mimic steps or arm motions. Remember to start out small and gradually increase motion.

5. Add movements specific to your style of dance. Ballet dancers will drop into plies, tap dancers will practice gentle shuffles. Ask your dance instructor for ideas.

6. Follow a planned warm up regimen. Put together some of your own favorite dance moves in a special sequence or watch the professional dance warm up DVD "Lester Horton Technique" at Amazon (see Resources below).

Tips & Warnings

• Warm up and cool down can take between 5 and 10 minutes, so plan accordingly.
• Tell your chatty friend to wait after class while you cool down--or better yet, cool down with you.
• Start a trend. Often if one dancer persists in warming up, others will join.
• Stretch after you warm up or cool off.
• Warming up is essential to maintain musculoskeletal health during repeat strenuous activity.
• Warming up prepares the body for stretching. Make sure your warm-up exercises are gentle in comparison to moderate stretching.
• Find out if your dance discipline has a specific warm-up need.

Resources

• Modern dance warm-up DVD