As part of your warm-up, static stretching alone can do more harm than good. It will turn off a muscle. And when we are about to dance, we want to turn ON the muscle, enabling it to create stability in all movement directions. A proper warm-up should include a 3 dimensional dynamic stretching and muscle […]

The glutes are the most important muscles when it comes to shock absorbing and stabilizing for the hip, knee, and ankle joints. Dance training alone (even when practicing perfect technique) can often lead to weak and/or inactive glute muscles. These exercises focus on neuromuscular activation of the glutes…in functionally relevant movements focused on knee and […]

Foot strength and control is essential in establishing a stable base for dance. Lack of control will affect ankle stability in releve, jumps, and transitional movements. These exercises target the small muscles within the foot for local stabilization as well as larger muscles within the lower leg and hip to create full body control. Integrating […]

Lunges are an important component in dancers’ conditioning, as they train the body to safely and efficiently transfer weight from one foot to the other.  The many lunge variations here focus on creating multi-directional hip mobility and stability.  To prepare dancers for their unique utilization of hip rotation and dynamic traveling through space, we have created […]

Many dance injuries can be traced back to weak and inactive glutes. Squats are an essential building block to the strengthening and neuromuscular activation of the glutes. Basically, squats are the “plié” of functional injury prevention training. It is so valuable for dancers to train in the squat position with the butt- back and weight […]

Functional core work should create abdominal strength in conjunction with shoulder stability and hip stability…while breathing! On stage and in rehearsal, we don’t find ourselves lying on our backs doing isolated abdominal contractions…we find ourselves moving dynamically through space on our hands and feet. And so we need to develop functional abdominal strength that enables […]

Resistance training for the upper body is important for dancers, as movement of the arms is part of nearly every dance style. Mobility in the arms is enabled by a strong midline. In other words, stability in the core enables the arms to move more freely. As you perform these exercises, you will notice not […]

Many dance injuries occur during jumps. These exercises emphasize functional jump mechanics, training hip muscles to fire during takeoff and landing of jump motions in all 3 planes of motion. We first train controlled deceleration, or landings. Activating the hips in this way ensures greater stability for the hip, knee, and ankle joints, helping to […]

Most dance injuries occur in the lower extremities…somewhere between the hip and the foot.  It makes sense, as dancing is essentially transferring your body weight from one leg to the other in a sequence of “steps.”  But a dance sequence is much more complicated and diverse than, say, the repetitive motion of walking or running. […]

SFT Hamstring Bulletproofing is a progression of exercises that focuses very specifically on strengthening the hamstrings. These exercises are important for the prevention of hamstring strains/tears, and are especially important if you have a history of hamstring tears. When a hamstring muscle tears and/or becomes overstretched or strained, it can be a very long, painful, […]