Why Warm Up & Cool Down is important in Dance?
Have you all come across any kind
of injury during your dance activity where you felt mild muscle or joint pain?
If yes, then were you ever able
to find the root cause of that pain?
If not, then we might be able to
help you in finding the same. It might be because your body wasn’t prepared for
your intended dance activity. What we meant with the preparation is that your muscles
& joints weren’t ready to take up your dance lessons which may lead to
unexpected injury or pain. So, how can we prevent it?
This is when Warm Up comes into action
as a saviour for you!
What is Warm Up?
Warm Up is basically a set of physical
activities which involves low to high level exercises that raises your body
temperature, works on your muscles & joints to make you prepared for your
intended physical activity like Dance, Sports, etc. We can also call it as a way
of body conditioning to make you physically prepared for any activity.
Every Dance expert, performer or
teacher understands the importance of Warm Up which they make it mandatory to follow
before their performance or along with their students before commencement of
their Dance lessons. Those set of exercises performed during Warm Up makes you prepared
mentally and physically for your Dance activity. It is always an important
activity that needs to be performed before taking up any Dance lessons.
Jumping directly onto your Dance
activity may lead to pain in joints, muscles and inability to make yourself
move correctly resulting in undesired performance.
So, its very important that you plan your Warm Up precisely as per your capacity and perform it well with proper techniques so that it can make you prepared well for your activity.
How can you plan your Warm Up activity?
Any Warm Up activity needs to be
planned as per an individual’s ability or potential after proper examination of
their strengths and weaknesses. Anything done beyond of an individual’s
capacity can also cause injuries resulting in complete break from your Dance
activity until you are fully recovered.
Ideally, a Warm Up session should
be done at least for 20 mins which can be increased to 40 mins through gradual
progress of an individual. You need to plan what all kinds of exercises you need
to perform during that particular session which results in preparation of the
body for Dance activity. Exercises should include both static exercises such as
head & hand rotations, side twisting, body bending, leg exercises, squats
and dynamic exercises which engages your core muscles like jumping jacks, planks,
jumping lunges and squats and many more. You need to plan your session as per
your capacity and increase it day by day with more repetitions and exercises through
progressive strength development in your body.
Being a Dancer, you can also
include certain moves or steps from your Dance lessons in your Warm Up session
to make it more fun & energetic. To be honest, I have done it many times
when I used to train my students. I always used to come up with different ways
making it to more interactive & fun rather than keeping it tiring. Too much
of Warm Up may also cause fatigue or tiring because of which you unable to
perform your Dance activity properly. So, always ensure to plan your Warm Up
session wisely.
Why do we need to Cool Down after
Dance?
Cool Down is basically the reverse of Warm Up which is done post your Dance activity. It is as important as that of Warm Up which helps your body temperature and heart rate get back to normal level like the way it was before starting with warm up. Its important after any intense Dance activity because it helps the muscles stretch to its maximum potential and relax at the same time. Cool Down ensures muscle rehabilitation and helps in normalising the heart rate.
How to Cool Down yourself post intense
Dance session?
As mentioned earlier, Cool Down
should contain stretching of all the muscles and joints which were put in intense
use during your Warm Up and Dance activity. Its basically relaxation of all the
muscles post your Dance session. Usually, people perform it for at least 10 -
12 mins performing stretches from top to bottom that includes your forearms, legs,
basically every part of your body which was put in use during Dance.
I hope you were able to
understand the importance of Warm Up & Cool Down in Dance and how it can
help us in becoming a better performer by working on our physical fitness. Please
always make it mandatory to perform both of them carefully with proper
assistance from your Dance Instructor because it is responsibility of every Dance
Tutor to guide you properly when taking your Dance lessons.
We at IDALS have formulated a basic Warm Up & Cool Down session for all of our IDALites which they follow from our Fitness Instructor before taking our online and post online classes on our website. You can access both of them now from the below attached link.