Sugarfoot Therapy is a revolutionary conditioning program created by Doctors of Physical Therapy in collaboration with the many competitive and professional dancers we work with at our Los Angeles-based Physical Therapy practice. Used by dancers and dance educators worldwide, Sugarfoot Therapy brings the exercises of sports physical therapy to dancers. When practiced regularly, these exercises are scientifically proven to help reduce injury risk and enhance performance.
Sugarfoot Therapy has been featured by the following reputable dance organizations:
Who is Sugarfoot Therapy for?
If you are a competitive dancer frustrated by repeated injuries, a dance teacher worried about having injured dancers, or a professional dancer who fears the impact an injury could have on your income…
this program is for you.
Most orthopedic dance injuries are overuse injuries caused by a repeated movement pattern that places continued stress on a tissue over a period of time. Injuries manifest over time as pain, inflammation, stiffness, weakness, and tissue damage as a result of inefficient dance technique and/or lack of effective cross training. Sugarfoot Therapy provides an easy-to-implement cross training program for dancers, designed by physical therapists and backed by research based evidence.
Our program bridges the gap between the principals of functional biomechanics and traditional dance technique, creating functionally authentic movements to warm-up, mobilize, and stabilize the dancer’s body in all three planes of motion. Understanding that the body in motion is a dynamic chain of moving parts, it is only as strong as it’s weakest link. One part affects the whole and creates optimal function or dysfunction. The dancers body not only requires vast amounts of mobility, but also the ability to stabilize that range of motion with adequate muscular strength and neuromuscular activation. Our bodies are designed for three-dimensional movement; this movement occurs in Sagittal, Frontal, and Transverse planes. Often traditional practices of strength and conditioning neglect one if not two planes of movement. By establishing a foundation of functional movement patterns, introducing triplanar variability to these patterns, and finally adding dance-specific variables, we are able to enhance dance technique and mitigate injury risk.
Sugarfoot Therapy is designed so that you can fit it into the beginning of every class, before every rehearsal, and prior to every audition and performance. Sugarfoot Therapy is not intended to replace dance technique training but to greatly enhance it. Our program offers full-length workouts for dancers in our SFT Routines…these are great to use as your gym workout or as your full-length conditioning class. We also offer a curriculum of individual exercises with our SFT Progressions. This curriculum makes it easy for dance teachers to incorporate our program in the classroom one exercise at a time. Dance teachers, we encourage you to use our program in your classroom. Improve the health of your dancers and teach them the value of taking care of their bodies. We would love to help guide you in figuring out the best way to incorporate Sugarfoot Therapy into your existing studio program. Send us an email and we can discuss!
Sugarfoot Therapy is optimal for every kind of dance. Ballet, modern, jazz, tap, hip hop, ballroom, burlesque…whatever your style, Sugarfoot Therapy will strengthen your body so that the artist in you can move freely. We have created a dance conditioning program that is approachable, that translates across dance genres, and that is applicable to different settings from the PT clinic to the studio setting to backstage.
What People Are Saying About Us
Partnerships
Bridge Dance Project
The Bridge Dance Project builds bridges between the competition and commercial dance community and the dance medicine and science community by providing easily accessible, readily applicable, and personally empowering information.