The days have long gone since doing class alone is enough to make you an elite dancer. It is now commonplace to include additional body conditioning and fitness work into dance training from an early age. So far, however, weight training has only played a small part, and then only in later years (and only for males). But the Australian Ballet School may be about to change that.
The ABS has developed a regime that gets both boys and girls into the gym from the very first years. Always at the forefront of body conditioning and fitness for dancers, the School’s new emphasis on the use of weights has been introduced by Elizabeth Hewett, exercise physiologist and coordinator of the strength and conditioning program. She has been with the School since 2008.
“I’m a big fan of weight training for dancers. I think it’s essential,” she says.
“Dancers need to be strong, they need to have power, and they also need to prevent injuries. Weight training is very effective at developing those core athletic components to become a dancer.”
As she explains, weight training can help develop the strong core essential for a strong technique, controlled adage and high leg extensions, and can help power the legs in jumps. For hypermobile students weight training can help in strengthening and stabilising the joints.
For men, the most obvious benefit of weight training is to gain strength for lifting and partnering work. Even this means building the whole body, not just the upper body. “It’s easy to see that their arms and backs and core have to be strong,” says Hewett, but when you look the repertoire and partnering positions you see that their legs also need to be strong.”
This is an extract from an article by Karen van Ulzen in the Oct/Nov issue of Dance Australia. OUT NOW!