The Workouts of a male ballet dancer
So if you read some of my recent posts, or in fact the title of this article you will know by now that I’m a professional male ballet dancer. I have been for almost 9 years and I have been lucky enough to dance all over Europe.
Over the last few years I have experimented A LOT with my diet and training. I’m always tried to find the right weight and build to perform best. As a male dancer I need to be strong enough to lift a girls dead weight but also light enough to jump high, I need to be flexible and also have high stamina.
Trying to optimize all of these things as well as recover well and work on the technical aspects of the job and also learn choreography isn’t easy. I love it though. When I was injured a few years ago I gave up dancing and tried a “normal” career but after 6 months I didn’t feel like myself. I missed the lifestyle more than the stage. I wanted to feel the aches and pains, the tired muscles but also to feel healthy. Dancing is by no means healthy for the body, in fact the opposite really but it does allow one to be uniquely in tune with the body in a way that just working out doesn’t seem to do for me.
So what training do I do?
Firstly I will explain a standard day as a dancer so you understand the base training that I do 6 days per week. Then I will get into how I supplement training.
My day starts with class, this is an hour and 15 minutes. Before class begins I warm up for around 30 minutes, during this time I will mostly do this like theraband exercises to warm up my ankles, some exercises to protect my knees and some abs to protect my back. If the class is a warm up for a show I might do some cardio but on a normal working day I don’t.
Then class begins. During this time we start with slow simple movements to listen up our joints and get out balance, then we do more dynamic training. This gets us warmer and leads us into stretching. After that we start to train tricks and jumps. Throughout the class you are preparing your body to do what ever is needed but also working on improving tricks and technique. By the end of class I am sweating a lot.
After class we will begin rehearsals this can be anywhere from 2–4 hours. It depends on which show me we’re working on, what parts I have ect. After the class I’m pretty warm but I usually use the Theraband to warm up my shoulders and do some rotator cuff strengthening, I will then stretch a bit also. If I have had a break in between class and rehearsal I might do a little bit of class work to get warm again. If I don’t have any rehearsals In the evening I might go to the gym before heading home. If I do have an evening rehearsal I will go to the gym. Lift weights for between 45 mins to an hour, then jump on the exercise bike for 10–15 mins to get my legs warm. Then I will do a little ballet class maybe 20 mins before my rehearsals begin. The evening rehearsals can be between 1 and 3 hours.
I go to the gym two or three times per week at the moment. The show I’m working on at the moment is very heavy lift wise so I don’t do more than this but the next show I won’t lift so much so I will probably push it up to three or four sessions in the gym per week. On top of the gym sessions I also run once per week, a minimum of 5k and sometimes swim. I love swimming but it’s more of a time commitment and I don’t have any where I can swim for free.
In my gym sessions I tend to train full body.
For me this kind of training is for maintenance, I’m not tying to change to much, I don’t want to be bigger or leaner just to maintain my shape and stay injury free. I usually do two exercises per muscle group, one push and one pull for example I might do some type of bench press, dumbbell or bar, flat or incline and then some kind of chest fly either cable or free weight for back I always do pull ups and then something like a bent over row or a bar pull down. You get the idea.
I always do a good abs workout to finish, It’s so important for me to have a strong core so I can protect my back. If people are interested I can write about my ab workouts and suggest exercises to try.
Over the summer I wanted to get leaner and I ran 4 or 5 times per week, I ran distances from 4K to half marathon and really improved my running. As a result I became really lean but I found that when I was partnering I felt a little weak. In the period that followed I broke my training down. I would do longer workouts and train muscle groups individually. I would train chest and triceps twice per week and back and biceps twice per week and a legs session. (Plus a little abs with each workout)
There have been many periods throughout my career where I have had to train in specific ways. I have had to get stronger, slimmer, leaner, more explosive, strengthen my shoulders, knees ankles and more. It’s hard for me to ever recall all the things I have tried to do but I think you understand.
I hope this helped you to imagine how my training works, if there’s anything you want me to cover about this or any other aspects of being a dancer please leave a comment and let me know!
Thanks
Alfie
