Cross Training 101: The Missing Piece to Better Technique
Dr. Chelsea Moehlenbrock 
I am sure in the dance world, and in the more general world of sports, you’ve heard that cross training is important.
Yeah, yeah, yeah...
BUT...
What does that actually look like for dancers? And what are the benefits?
Cross training is a broad term and there are so many ways that an athlete can cross train. The main reason for cross training being so beneficial is that it gets your body to move and handle load* in a different way than it normally does. When we spend our time doing repetitive motions, the same forces are applied over and over on our joints, muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments. This can lead to injuries. Think about how many times dancers do a plié or a tendu in a day; or how much time they spend in turned out positions.
Many dancers think of pilates, or yoga, or Progressive Ballet Technique (PBT) as being good cross training. However, movements in these activities end up mimicking many of the movements that dancers are already frequently doing.
Just to be clear, I am not saying that these forms of exercise are bad or won’t help with strength and mobility. I’m just pointing out that they are too similar to dance movements to be considered cross training. In addition, these methods will not be as beneficial as exploring movements that are different from those that you are already doing in your technique classes.
Incorporating cross training into dancers’ training regimes will greatly increase their tolerance for the repetitive demands of dance. Their bodies’ will tolerate higher stresses that would have caused injury had they not been cross training.
So what does this mean for your technique if you start cross training?
It means that your turnout is better.
It means your developpes are higher.
It means that your jumps are higher.
It means you can do more pirouettes because you have a stronger core.
It means your port de bras always looks smooth instead of stiff and awkward while compensating because of a difficult step that your feet are doing.
It means you can test your base of support more with moves that take you off center.
It means floorwork is easier.
It means the transitions between movements are fluid.
It means your dancing looks effortless.
Okay. So what does cross training actually look like for dancers? There are numerous possibilities! Here are a few things to try out.
- Strengthening exercises in parallel:
Hip Hinges with Resistance Band (aka Banded Romanian Deadlift)
- Pushing and pulling motions with both the upper body and lower body:
- Focus on stabilizing muscles:
And what about your stamina? Endurance is a major element of fitness that I hear dancers saying they want to improve. Between technique classes and rehearsals, there ends up being a lot of stop and start without much challenge to a dancer’s endurance. Then when dress rehearsals and performances start, there are much less breaks, and dancers find they are getting fatigued more quickly than they would like. Sound familiar?
Endurance training can take many different forms. It doesn’t have to look like being on a treadmill for what feels like an endless amount of time. Endurance can be improved by simply reducing the amount of rest between sets of an exercise, or doing faster paced exercises that use multiple joints, or combining two exercises into one movement (squat + overhead press), or high intensity interval training (HIIT), or adding cardio bursts to a strength training session, or adding in an activity that is completely new to your body, like swimming.
Hopefully this gives you a better idea of what cross training looks like for dancers and provides some ideas of things to get you started. Improving overall fitness is always going to be helpful for athletes like dancers. There is no ceiling on fitness.
Stay tuned for future blog posts that go into more detail on elements of cross training for dancers.
*The use of load in this context is an umbrella term referring to different variables that can be used in exercise to put stresses on the body. These could be number of reps, number of sets, tempo, amount of rest between sets, etc. By varying these loads appropriately, different outcomes can be achieved, whether that is endurance, strength, hypertrophy (getting bulky or not), power, agility, etc.
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