Research Update: Warm Up & Stretching

A new study has been published in the Journal of Dance Medicine and Science looking at the effect of varying stretching protocols during warm-up on dance performance. Warm-up is a much neglected are of dance research and it's great to see work being conducted in this area.

Improving jump height in dance training

Jump height is an area that I'll freely admit I largely neglected during my training years; my jetés didn't cause me particular problems and so I paid little attention to developing them. So more recently my training patterns changed, and after stopping performing I moved into training in martial arts. Within 2 months I could jump higher than I had ever been able to before, fast-forward 6 months and it's higher still. Now when I go back to dancing, my sautes, jetés and grand jetés are the highest they've ever been,  my leaps are more powerful and my elevation is significantly more impressive than it was when I was training and performing full-time. Since jump height is such a fundamental aspect of dance performance, serious provision for maximising it should be included within training. The fact that for it isn't provided for in various schools and companies makes little sense, when simple changes to training programmes are liable to elicit substantial gains.