Wonders of Warming-up
by: Rachel Noonan
Warming-up helped dancers everywhere by stretching them out before each class and maximize their strength and flexibility. By doing this, it prevented injuries and increased their performance level to make their jumps and tricks look better. Warming-up readied their muscles for a rigorous dance workout.
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"Stretching your muscles is so important so you don't pull a muscle or hurt yourself," said Chase Maszle. Dancers stretched before every class that they took so they stayed warmed up. It protected against injury, especially when doing advanced leaps and tricks. Dancers who did both splits and held for at least 30 seconds kept their muscles warmer and leaped higher and in a full split.
When stretching, staying relaxed and breathing topped as most essential. This advanced the stretching and warmed up the muscles faster. "Having warm muscles is better so the muscles will not be tight and protect the dancer from potential injury," said Giovanni Carbonara. Otherwise, the tenseness interfered with the stretching. To loosen the tension in the back and neck, dancers tucked the chin to the chest and bent over to the ground until a small amount of pain was felt in these specific areas.
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"It is better to be more flexible so that the dancers can leap into the air in a full split and so they can move their bodies in ways that others cannot," said Erin Pakela. Dancers needed to be flexible in some
areas to create a certain image. To make a firebird leap better, work on backstretches such as back bends. If a dancer needed to warm up a toe drop, rolling out the ankles was important. To do this just sit down and rotate the ankle in a clockwise and counter clockwise way until loose. |
Doing strengthening exercises is just as important in a warm up because it builds strength and get the blood pumping. "This is important so they can jump higher up in the air and do crazy tricks", said Caitlin Pendergast. Doing lunges is a common warm-up to really increase the amount of strength in the legs. After doing this, it is a good idea to stretch the muscles out by doing a deep middle split and holding for at least 45 seconds.
Each dancer stretched and warmed up in their own unique form for class with only a few similarities.Butterfly (sitting on the ground with the feet together and the knees turned outward) stretched out the hips and the goal getting the knees to touch the ground. Mat splits gave a little extra stretch and improve splits over all. To do these, dancers found an object (folded mat, stair, books) to elevate one foot while the over foot slid into a split. This stretch worked on an over-spilt. Lastly, warming up the neck (head rolls) and arms (arm circles,
pulling arms across chest and behind head) equaled in importance to be warmed up for class.
pulling arms across chest and behind head) equaled in importance to be warmed up for class.