The Power of Dance

My own experiences and why I've come to like dance for fitness

I finally returned to dance class after a lot of procrastination.

The last time I took dance was about 10 years back. But I used to do quite a lot about 20 years ago and that experience made an impression on me at the time which I still carry.

I liked jazz a great deal, although I wasn't as good at it as I wanted to be.

If you’re not familiar with “jazz” in dance terms, jazz rarely means jazz music today, but it’s a rather broad term that covers the performance dance you see in musical theatre (a show) or the commercial jazz or ‘street jazz’ of music videos. I believe there are some popular TV shows which showcase jazz competition. These terms get muddy and vague, and this is another time casual internet searches on a topic are not always that informative.

I never had great "dance genes", but like anything, the more you do the more you will improve. I had no illusions of doing anything with dance even 20 years back, but you could say I've taken an on/off amateur interest in dance over the years. I’ll never be the greatest dancer, but I have some understanding of dance.

I have no impressive flexibility like you see dancers have. I lack the capacity to sit on the ground with wide straight legs and tip my entire pelvis and torso forward almost as one unit getting my elbows on the ground. It always amazed me watching the teachers and some students do it near effortlessly. And I was reminded about it this week. It's something I forgot.

My understanding now, is that the potential for this is more genetic. I don’t know the specifics off hand, but I can’t help but wonder that it’s influenced by how the head of the femur interacts with the acetabulum (the hip socket). You have the capacity to do this or you don’t depending on how you’re configured here. I imagine it’s similar to why some people have a tendency for the pelvic tilt (“butt wink”) in the lower phase of the squat.

Anyway, my interest in dance in relation to general fitness training came about 9 years ago when my boss at the time wanted me to incorporate dance based work with a particular group of her clients. My initial response was “Are you sure you’ve got the right person for this?”, but she wanted me to do it so I did.

After that I had kind of put dance—as something I might do with clients, to one side for some time. It wasn’t something I thought about that much.

But then it returned again as part of a session I do with a particular couple I train.

None of this was a plan. It's something that just happened organically as part of our warm up and developed from there and dance suddenly became an important—and I have to say, quite successful part of this particular session, forcing me to think about it again. I found myself drawing on, and dusting off what I knew while absorbing new material and ideas from YouTube.

So I decided earlier this year to take some dance classes myself again. I had meant to book something in the spring, which became the summer—which became the autumn, and had bought some jazz sneakers which had just been sitting there in a box for months. And now finally I got to use them. Just like the pair I had nearly 20 years ago, there’s always an initial feeling you have bought the size too small, but then they are right in the studio and you don’t think about it. It’s a strange phenomenon.

As I said, it had been 10 years since I last took a dance class myself, although I’ve been incorporating dance into this particular couple’s session and running their “class” as it were as a segment of the session.

But now it was time for me to be taught again. And I was very nervous to be honest. And the teacher, who was excellent and very nice had some quite particular rules —which she is right to have, and she wasn’t thrilled that some of the others were late.

But I settled down a bit.

In the first 20 minutes I could feel the teacher’s eyes testing us, assessing us, seeing where we were individually; what we knew, where we came from. What were we good at ? What were we not so good at ?

After a warm up and a fairly easy series of patterns, she threw quite a lot at us in a more complex routine. It was way more than I had been throwing at my clients in recent times, and I had to absorb a lot quickly.

Memories came flooding back, of “uh oh”. The first 8 counts were fine, then I would get used to the next 8 on top, but she would add more and more, and getting these series of turns and steps later on which I found quite hard to time right, my brain…kept…getting..muddled. Missing steps, missing beats, but that’s ok I’m here to test myself.

I found myself frustrated not being able to "just get" these extended sequences of steps I should. Although there was also the odd new move I wasn’t familiar with and had to do my best to pick up on the fly.

I've often noticed I'm not the quickest learner when someone shows me some kind of movement, whatever it may be. I blame nerves which creates a cloud of “not seeing”, or “seeing yet not absorbing”. Teachers and coaches have often told me I’m overthinking.

But I think she went easy on me as the only guy in the class.

Towards the end, repeating this routine over and over I was also aware of my own fitness level in that moment (my own cardio varies due to my sleep problems) and I wasn’t totally happy with what I was feeling in relation to what was being asked of me. But at the same time, it wasn’t as intense as what I did 20 years ago either. I remember back then being drenched in sweat, and barely being able to breathe at all.

But overall I was pleased to finally to get back to dance class. It was great. I wish I had managed it earlier in the year.

Here’s what I like about dance for general fitness:

• Dance lets us explore cardio, balance, coordination and muscular endurance in all kinds of ways, all in one.

• Dance provides a challenge that aribitrary “fitness” doesn’t. Dance is transcendent of arbitrary fitness alone. It has its own values, distinct from fitness.

• Dance offers different utility for different age groups, including for older adults.

• Dance lets us exercise memory: short term and working memory and long term memory.

• Dance goes hand in hand with flexibility. As we develop with dance we tend to also develop flexibility as a key element of that process, although as I said, my own flexibility level is far from optimal from a dance perspective.

• You can incorporate a ton of specific "corrective" movements —often quite sterile movements straight into dance sequences, warm ups and routines, rather than obsessing about them, while also encouraging overall athleticism which is likely to be far more valuable anyway.

• Dance can be readily adapted to different fitness and ability levels.

• There are many different kinds of dance. And if you don’t like one much (or the kind of music) or struggle with it, there may be another kind that’s more doable or enjoyable.

• Dance lets us explore unfamiliar, sometimes radically alien movement patterns if we want to. It is larger-than-life and that may have practical cross over into the real world.

• Above all, dance is fun, it's a fantastic way to mix fitness with performance.

Now dance isn't a good fit for every person and every situation, nor is it a substitute for specific strength training, functional fitness training, or specific rehab. But it can cover a hell of lot and it has its own distinct benefits for those people who would benefit from it.

One direction dance for fitness has gone in is with trends like Zumba, which became popular some years back.

From what I gather Zumba is one continuous dance workout to Latin beats. There are some foundational steps to learn, but it’s more “keep up” with the teacher at quite a high work rate.

Zumba may be totally fine if you enjoy it and burning calories is your thing. As an entire workout it’s unlikely to meet all specific fitness needs for somebody on an individual level and I think it’s a fairly limited exploration of dance itself. But that may not be a problem.

What is your experience of dance ?

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