Perfect Warm Up

I love my Dancer-Fitness community because they care about their dancers SO MUCH and because of that, they shoot me emails all the time with the BEST questions!

Can you help us with a warm up program that hits everything and doesn’t take a really long time (if that exists)?

YES! It does exist and it’s way more effective than a few jumping jacks and crunches.

To help reduce injuries and ensure your dancers are properly warmed up I would devote at least 20 -30 minutes to each practice for warm up and stretch.

 

Dynamic Warm Up:

• Start with two exercises that involve the whole body like an Inch Worm or Wall sit and High knees.
• Spend 2 minutes on each exercise, switching half way through if there’s partners.

• Warm up the low back before the hamstrings.
• Hold each stretch for 30 to 60 seconds.
• To avoid mindless stretching and chatting, always remind your dancers to be pulling in their belly, pointing their feet and rotate knees to the ceiling.
• Don’t have a stretching routine you love? Set the category filter to “flexibility” at Dancer-Fitness.Com and select 6- 8 stretches you’d like to try!

• Select one core exercise, one lower body, one upper body and one endurance exercise.
• Do each for 40 seconds and rest for 20 seconds between them.
• If you do it one time it’s 4 minutes, but twice is best if you have the time.