TOTAL LIFETIME FITNESS

What Dancers Know

November 10th, 2008 Posted by David Lemberg

My alternate title for this article is “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Ballet Class”. But that was too long for a URL.

Seriously, though, that statement is pretty much accurate. And in our fitness-and-exercise context, the dancer’s experience provides lifelong guidance. Here are some things dancers know.

Le Classe de Danse, Edgar Degas, 1873-1875, Musée D'Orsay

Hard Work
Well, duh. But really, that’s it. Dancers and gymnasts are arguably the fittest people in the world. Dance training provides flexibility, strength, speed, agility, and elevation [the ability to jump high]. You don’t have to take special category-specific classes or do various specialized activities to achieve these qualities. Dance training provides it all.

How you get there is the hard work. Dancers usually take two 90-minute classes per day, five or six days per week, year in and year out. That’s a lot of personal discipline and sacrifice. The results are magnificent. If we want comparable [for us] magnificent results, we must put in the time, we must do the hard work.

Process and Practice
Dancers know they’re in it for the long haul. Dancers are committed to the process of becoming a dancer and to the practice required to get where they want to go. It’s a goal that takes years to accomplish and it’s a goal that has no end-point. Dancers are always in training, they’re always taking class.

Dancers are always practicing, so their bodies know – deep down at the cellular level – exactly what to do and exactly when to do it. Dancers call this profound level of physical awareness muscular memory. And dancers learn to let muscular memory take over. Dancers know their bodies are much smarter than their conscious minds are.

There’s no thinking when you’re dancing. There’s 100% focus, concentration, and awareness, but there’s no thinking. Dancers’ bodies are doing the “thinking”. They can do this because of the years of training and practice.

Adults who want to get fit, be fit, and stay fit need to remember this long timeline. Fitness doesn’t happen in a month or even three months. Sure, you can make good fitness gains, getting slimmer and stronger, having more endurance. But the real power comes from embracing the process and practice of fitness.

The real power comes from a long-term commitment to being fit, healthy, and well. To being willing to take small steps, just as dancers literally do, day after day.

Mind-Set
A dancer’s mind-set is all about the moment, it’s all about the work-at-hand. Looked at from this perspective, being a dancer is a Zen process.

The work of dance is the work of right-now. This double turn, this pointed foot, this leg kick, this big jump. Whatever a dancer is doing right now has to be the best that dancer can do, right now. Otherwise, what’s the point?

If the work of the moment isn’t the very best you can bring to that moment, you’ll learn nothing, gain nothing, and your time and effort are wasted. More importantly, neither you, nor your body, nor your brain will grow. Dance is that clear-cut.

Dancers learn these lessons in their very first class. Maximum effort is required all the time. It is supremely exciting and life-affirming to be part of such demanding activity, to be part of a group that is fully engaged in being the best they can be, in every moment.

Strength training can be just like this. Running can be just like this. All our aerobic exercise. All our core exercises. Spin class. Pilates class. All of it.

What we can learn from dance and dancers is to take on bringing a total-commitment mind-set to all our fitness activities.

In this way we can learn to bring our very best selves to our fitness activities, all the time. Of course, there will be moments, even days, when we don’t completely get our act together. That’s fine. That’s part of what it means to be human.

Our level of commitment is what keeps us going. Dancers know this. Deep in their muscles, deep in their bones. Deep in their beautiful, shining selves.

Please visit What Dancers Know Part 2