Strength and Conditioning for Dancers E-Book

Matthew Wyon

• Herausgeber: The Crowood Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 282

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Strength and Conditioning for Dancers is an accessible guide to how to design and incorporate supplemental fitness training into a dancer's schedule. It links current evidence on the relationship between physical fitness, dance performance and injury incidence, breaking it down into clear and convenient sections, starting with the fundamentals of muscle physiology and training principles and moving on to specific training components. Key topics covered in the book include: self-screening; programme design; specific exercises for the core, upper and lower body; basic Pilates; nutritional support for training and finally, programmes to get you started. Featuring practical training programmes to get you started, this user-friendly book will be of great value to dancers, teachers and trainers looking to enhance both fitness and performance.

Leseprobe

STRENGTH AND

CONDITIONING

FOR DANCERS

First published in 2021 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

[email protected]

This e-book first published in 2021

© Matthew Wyon and Sefton Clarke 2021

All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 78500 978 5

Cover design: Blue Sunflower Creative

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

1THE FUNDAMENTALS

2TRAINING PRINCIPLES

3TRAINING THE DIFFERENT ATHLETIC COMPONENTS

4SCREENING AND PROGRAMME DESIGN

5PILATES FOR DANCERS – by Aline Nogueira Haas

6CORE EXERCISES

7LOWER-BODY EXERCISES

8UPPER-BODY EXERCISES

9PLYOMETRICS

10PROGRAMME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED

11DANCE NUTRITION – by Tommy Zarate

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Matthew and Sefton would like to thank Lore Zonderman and Joseph Massarelli (Dutch National Ballet), for giving up their time to be our photo models.

Matthew: I would like to thank my family for giving me the space to write. Also Jackie Pelly and Sharon Morrison, formerly the respective physiotherapists at English National Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, for allowing me to provide pre-season and individual training for the dancers in their companies all those years ago. Paul Thacker, a friend and S&C collaborator, who helped me develop; and the dancers I have had the privilege to work with over the past 25 years.

Sefton: I would like to thank Simona and Sophie for their patience, understanding and generally putting up with me. Also Derrick Brown for mentoring me throughout my career, and Orlando Goacher for being there and guiding me.

Thanks to Dutch National Ballet and National Ballet Academy of Amsterdam for allowing me to begin my S&C path with them. And to all the dancers I have had the honour of dancing and working with, in and out of the gym over the years.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way, and the truth that warms the heart. The first is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, Ecco Press, New York, 1938

PREFACE

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Matthew Wyon

Matthew Wyon PhD, is a Professor in Dance Science at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He is a founding partner of the National Institute of Dance Medicine and Science (NIDMS) UK, was the President of International Association for Dance Medicine & Science in 2015–17 and is the Chair of the IADMS Professional Development Committee. He started working as a strength and conditioning coach with ballet and contemporary (modern) dancers in the 1990s and this stimulated his thirty-year focus on how dancers can be supported to maximize their performance potential. Through NIDMS he continues to provide support, as an applied physiologist, to individual dancers and companies.

When working with student and professional dancers in both contemporary/modern dance and ballet as an S&C coach I have found their technical ability surpasses their physical fitness abilities. Although the dancers were capable of carrying out amazing jumps and lifts, there was not the physical fitness back-up to prevent faulty technique creeping in as they became fatigued. I noted that the effects of fatigue started more rapidly than in other more conditioned athletes I was training. Also, the effect of always doing high-skill movements in their training and performances meant that few dancers were used to working at a high intensity (you have to decrease the intensity you work at as the skill element increases).1 One of the main tasks was to build a solid foundation of physical fitness before gradually getting the dancers used to working at these higher intensities.

Some important learning points, for myself, included the following:

•their commitment to excellence is no different from any elite athlete; the performance goals are just different

•there is often a focus on what they are good at rather than what they need to develop

•you need to understand what they do and are currently doing, so watch class and rehearsals and talk to them about what they want to develop

•although dancers can pick up new training exercises very quickly, you still need to progress slowly, so their underlying physiological structures develop adequately

•they are not used to DOMS (localized muscle pain, covered in Chapter 2) so you need to develop their foundation fitness slowly

•they are already doing a lot of exercise, so what seems to be a minimal amount of intervention has a beneficial effect

•the aim is not to produce an Olympic power athlete, but an athletic artist who has an improved physical fitness reserve to support their artistry

Sefton Clarke

Sefton Clarke danced professionally at an elite level for almost twenty years in some of the most prestigious classical companies worldwide, The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, Düsseldorf, Zurich, Vienna and Dutch National Ballet where he was a soloist for twelve years. On retirement he went into the field of nutrition, health and strength and conditioning, travelling the world to learn the most up-to-date methodologies within these fields. With this experience and knowledge, he became the Strength and Conditioning coach for the National Ballet Academy in Amsterdam and the Dutch National Ballet. He gives seminars on training to doctors, physiotherapists, medical students and trainers, as well as lectures on nutrition to many of the top artistic schools in The Netherlands. He co-founded and wrote a fully accredited personal trainers’ course that is now known throughout The Netherlands and accredited throughout Europe. Most recently he has opened up his own private studio where he gives training to professional dancers, actors and everyone in between.

During a rehearsal I broke one of my toes landing from a jump. This was due to fatigue and loss of technique, two main factors that can cause injury. This was a turning point for me and where I began to ask questions about my own physical abilities and how I could improve them.

At that time, S&C for classical dance was in its infancy and there was not a lot of research around, so I turned to the athletic world to learn and bring across aspects that I thought were useful and apply them to myself. This worked and I began to delve deeper into this area as the results were excellent: more strength, increased work capacity and greater recoverability.

I continued with strength training and incorporated it into my schedule, making sure that I focused on addressing certain weaker areas that do not normally get trained during ballet class or rehearsals. As I gained strength this was not to the detriment of my dancing and only enhanced it. I was underweight to begin with, due to poor nutrition and lack of what I call ‘cross-training’; this extra strength served not only to help protect but as an added bonus it helped with my aesthetics, making for better symmetry between my upper and lower body as well as creating better lines throughout.

By this time, I had been strength training for a couple of years and due to the results other dancers had become interested in additional training outside of the ballet studio. I had gained a better understanding of how to programme workouts and what was needed, but there was still a reluctance to accept this sort of training for fear of ‘getting bigger’ – in part due to the stigma attached to weight training, even with the results staring the dancers in the face. I began to try and break down these myths and barriers by proving that it is possible to get stronger without necessarily getting bigger, because in the end ‘strength is a skill’ much like ballet is. It is something that requires patience and consistency, and with the right programming it will only help with a dancer’s career without them becoming a bodybuilder. The outcomes between the two are entirely different and require different training methodologies.

I began working with the medical team of the company to devise a way of incorporating strength training into the dancers’ already overburdened schedule. One of the ways we did this was by breaking a programme down into components that were manageable and would allow the dancer to complete a workout without overstressing their system. Over time this was refined and retuned with great results and the dancers were performing better than ever. This was further evidence that S&C can fit into the dance world in a way to suit everyone’s needs.

Aline Nogueira Haas (Chapter 5, Pilates for Dancers)

Aline Nogueira Haas started her studies in Pilates with Romana Kryzanowska in 1998, and she was certified by ‘The Pilates Studio’ in 1999. In 2006, she finished the ‘Power Pilates® Certification Program’ and, in 2008, opened the second Power Pilates® Affiliate Studio in Porto Alegre, Brazil – ATC Power Pilates® South Region Brazil. She became a PMA Certified Teacher in 2010. She has been working with Pilates for more than twenty years in different ways: as an instructor, as a teacher trainer, and as a researcher. As an Associate Professor and Senior Researcher at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, she has been researching and publishing papers on Pilates since 2014.

Tommy Zarate (Chapter 11, Dance Nutrition)

Tommy Zarate is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor and performance nutritionist supporting teams within the EFL and ECB. He is CISSN and SENr certified with an MSc in Sports Nutrition. Before relocating to the United Kingdom, Tommy set up his consultancy, The Performance Nutritionist, LLC, supporting various athletes from the United States, New Zealand, and Singapore. Previously, Tommy was enlisted as a combat medic in the United States Army where he fought in OEF IX during the Global War on Terrorism. His hobbies include international travel, street photography, and eating.

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way, and the truth that warms the heart. The first is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler, Ecco Press, New York, 1938

INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING TRAINING?

Strength and conditioning (S&C) training covers a wide range of activities that have the underlying aim to cause change to the body. Our body is a reactive organism that responds to increased or decreased levels of physical stress placed on it by adapting accordingly. Basically, by putting a regular new stress on the body it starts to adapt positively so that it can cope with this new stress easily; in the same vein, if we remove a stress from the body it starts to degenerate. In this context, the stress is focused on neuromuscular or cardiorespiratory systems of the body and activities can include Pilates, weight training, running and stretching. The stress can be generated by numerous means including bodyweight, bands, machines, weights, etc. It is how these stresses are placed on the body, the genetics and sex of the person, their training history, their nutrition – to mention a few factors – that will determine how the body reacts.

Depending on the training status of an individual, training adaptations can occur both centrally and peripherally. Generally, central adaptations occur prior to peripheral ones and can include refining or developing motor skills, development of the central cardiorespiratory system (heart and lungs), and enhancement of the biofeedback mechanisms. Peripheral adaptations include the development of supply mechanisms (increasing capillary bed density in the muscles and glycogen content of the muscle cells), increase in specific enzyme concentrations in the muscle cells involved with particular energy (ATP) replacement systems, and the structural adaptation of muscle fibres and tendons.

Supplemental S&C training has become a regular aspect of training for sportspeople involved with activities ranging from golf to powerlifting. It is incorporated to supplement skills training, to enhance performance or help protect the body against the forces it experiences that could lead to injury.

Dance too has been utilizing supplemental S&C training since the 1920s in the form of Pilates when Joseph Pilates opened his studio in the same building as the New York City Ballet. It was reported that his exercises allowed them to dance better and promoted the aesthetic that Balanchine and other choreographers came to favour: long lean limbs with large ranges of movement that needed to be supported by a strong core. In the 1950s, Audrey de Vos started to incorporate anatomical knowledge and conditioning exercises into the dance class to enhance performance. Other dance genres incorporated somatic techniques into their training as either a philosophical approach within a technique class or as supplemental training. For a long time, somatic training was the main supplemental training that dancers engaged in and it wasn’t until the 1990s that other forms of training started to become more established.

In the 1990s, Professor Craig Sharp referred to dancers as ‘artist athletes’ due to the physical demands and training requirements of dance. Their long training days and performance demands were often in contrast to that seen in other sports, in which there had been a change from quantity to quality training and reduced performance/competition schedules (their epiphany moment had occurred twenty to thirty years earlier). The forty-hour training weeks with 200 plus performances a year that ballet dancers in the UK were contracted for was in sharp contrast to sport; soccer players, for example, were training around four hours a day and played approximately fifty matches a year. Dance, in nearly all its professional forms, has a culture of striving for perfection through long hours of training reinforced by the ‘10,000 hours to make a dancer’ dogma.

EVIDENCE FOR WHY S&C SHOULD BE INCORPORATED INTO DANCE TRAINING

From the mid-twentieth century, medical professionals working with dance companies were noting a high incidence of injuries and suggested the need for healthcare screening, physical fitness training and special classes for injured dancers returning to dance.2 Subsequent research in the 1980s noted little change in conditions3 and led to the Fit to Dance4 research and surveys. This provided empirical and self-reported data that suggested dancers were not physically or mentally prepared for the demands of their profession.5 Subsequent research has highlighted areas of physical conditioning that have been either linked to injury incidence or performance enhancement. Over a number of studies Koutedakis and colleagues indicated that there is a link between leg strength and injury incidence with weaker dancers being more prone to injury.6 Other researchers noted that there was a mismatch in the stresses placed on the cardiorespiratory system during dance class and rehearsal and the ensuing performance.7 These empirical studies were reinforced by self-reported data from surveys4,8 that indicated dancers felt that the main causes of injury were being fatigued and overworked, a fact that Koutedakis showed when dancers became fitter with rest, an indication that they were overtrained.9 It wasn’t until the early 2000s that research started to provide evidence of the link between physical fitness and performance enhancement. Twitchett and colleagues (ballet)10 and Angioi et al. (contemporary/modern dance)11 showed that fitter dancers were perceived to dance better by external dance experts and the dancers were injured less.12,13

There can be considered to be three main training phases: dancers move from pre-vocational training to vocational or pre-professional training and finally become professional dancers. Each of these phases has a different focus and goals, though there are elements that will flow through all three. ‘Training age’ is an important term; it refers to the number of years you have been training for a particular activity. It refers to the accumulated work and skill built up over a period of time. A professional twenty-year-old dancer who has been training since they were five years old has a dance training age of fifteen years; but if they have only been doing supplemental fitness training since the age of eighteen, their strength and conditioning training age is just two years. An important observation we, the authors, have seen over the past twenty years training dancers is that dancers can learn the correct technique for different strength training moves very quickly. There is often a tendency to increase the resistance too quickly because of the good technique, but this can be detrimental, as the underlying physical structures (muscles, tendons, ligaments) have not developed at the same rate and can leave the dancer vulnerable to injury. Dance is full of long-held beliefs that certain forms of exercise are ‘taboo’ for dancers, that they can cause muscular hypertrophy, develop the wrong muscles or wrong look/aesthetic, decrease flexibility, etc; often top of the list are weight training and running. As part of this book, we will discuss these myths and how supplemental training can be incorporated into schedules that will benefit the dancer.

Unfortunately, the dance world is still lacking in provision in this area and could benefit greatly from it. Over the decades the aesthetic in classical dance has changed and the demands are greater – more streamlined bodies, higher legs, bigger jumps, more extreme positions – but the strength and conditioning levels to be able to perform these have not adjusted accordingly, and herein lies the problem.

In this day and age, S&C training should not just be supplemental training in a dancer’s life but an actual requirement programmed into the season, as this will not only reduce the risk of injury and help with overtraining, it will also, perhaps, help the dancers to have a longer and healthier career.

1

THE FUNDAMENTALS

INTRODUCTION

We are designed to move in a bipedal fashion and our body’s structure has developed to optimize this type of movement with its skeletal structure and muscle organization. But within this uniformity of being human, there is a lot of individual variation that can affect how we move. This chapter looks at the basics of how we move and control movement.

BODY COMPOSITION

Body composition is often viewed as a controversial topic within dance and this section aims to remove some of the ‘politics’ associated with it and focus on some of the important issues. Individual differences are due to our stature, frame size, age, activity levels, genetics and nutritional practices. Our weight can be ‘divided’ up into a number of different categories that can include muscle weight, bone weight and fat weight (this can be sub-divided into storage and essential fat).

At a basic level, Body Mass Index (BMI) has often been used for the general adult population to indicate health.14 This is calculated by dividing body mass (weight in kg) by height (metres squared) and provides a score that if between 20–25 is considered healthy and above 30 to be obese with increased health issues. At the other end of the scale, scores below 18 have been linked to ill-health as well (amenorrhea for females and osteoporosis). For children and adolescents there are growth charts to use for comparison but again these are designed for the general population. BMI is a crude measure as it doesn’t look at what the body weight is comprised of and often, muscle mass accounts for most of our weight and, depending on the activity a person is involved in, can lead to large variations in weight; elite athletes can be classified as clinically obese due to large amounts of muscle (rugby players) or underweight with comparatively little muscle mass (distance runners).

Our skeleton can account for 12–15 per cent of our total body weight. The variation is often due to the load it has to support with both increased muscle mass and fat mass requiring increased density and therefore weight. Skeletal growth is usually finished by eighteen to twenty years old, though minor accumulations in bone mineral density can still occur until thirty years old.15 The bone density can also vary throughout the body: generally our lower body has greater bone mineral density than our upper body as it has to cope with the impact of moving and these areas are protected to the detriment of less stressed areas. This is certainly an issue for dancers; numerous studies have reported that dancers have similar or greater bone mineral density (BMD) in their femur, pelvis and lower back than the general population but much lower densities in the upper body with a greater fracture risk.16 Interestingly, increasing stress through these regions through supplemental fitness training can increase the BMD.

Males

Females

Height

172 cm

165 cm

Weight

70 kg

56.8 kg

Muscle

31.4 kg (44.8%)

20.5 kg (36%)

Bone

10.5 kg (15%)

6.8 kg (12%)

Total fat

10.5 kg (15%)

15.4 kg (27%)

Storage fat

8.4 kg (12%)

8.5 kg (15%)

Essential fat

2.1 kg (3%)

6.8 kg (12%)

Table 1 Example body composition comparison for the sexes.

Both males and females have essential fat, encompassing protective fat around organs (the heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, intestine, muscles and reproductive organs), the fat in bone marrow and throughout the central nervous system; females have a higher percentage than males, mainly to do with the protection of the uterus and ovaries and breast content. Storage fat comprises the rest of our body’s fat component and again a certain amount is essential for our health and daily living but in the general sedentary population, it is the amount of storage fat that people carry that has negative health implications. Very low body fat levels can have major ill-health effects for both males and females; for both sexes there is an increased risk of asthma,17 ‘run-down’ illnesses such as coughs and colds,18 and also increased risk of injury and time it takes to recover from an injury.19 For females the implications are heightened, with low body fat leading to amenorrhoea20 (irregular or total loss of menstruation) and increased risk of osteoporosis.20,21

MUSCLES

Muscles have four behavioural properties: extensibility, elasticity, irritability and tension. The first two refer to a muscle’s ability to be stretched or increase in length (extensibility) and the ability to return to its normal length after being stretched (elasticity). A muscle’s elasticity also helps with the smooth transmission of tension from the muscle to the bone. A muscle has two types of elastic component: parallel (PEC) and series (SEC). PEC is provided by the muscle membranes (endomysium, perimysium and epimysium) and provides the resistance when a muscle is passively stretched. The SEC is from the tendons and as we will examine later can act as a spring, storing elastic energy during the stretch-shortening cycle of locomotion. Both SEC and PEC are primarily made up of collagen which has a viscous property that allows stretch and recoil but can also be lengthened over time if the correct stimulus is applied to it. Collagen is found throughout the body and its properties change over time; when we are young it has a wavy formation with few cross bridges between fibres (this is what allows it to stretch) but as we get older the wavy formation lessens and more cross bridges appear, thereby reducing its extensibility. This ageing effect can be mitigated by continued activity that promotes stretching muscles.

The irritability and tension properties of muscles correspond to their ability to respond to a stimulus. These can be either mechanical or electrochemical. The former refers to how a muscle responds to an external blow by contracting to prevent potential damage if it is stretched. The electrochemical stimulus denotes the action potentional from nerve stimulation.

Muscle anatomy

A muscle’s gross anatomy comprises of muscle fibres covered in endomysium (connective tissue that also contains capillaries and nerves) bundled together with perimysium (more connective tissue) to make a fascicle; these in turn are bundled together and encased by epimysium, a fibrous connective tissue, to make a muscle. All these connective tissues (endomysium, perimysium and epimysium) are continuous with each other and the tendon and make up what is often referred to as the fascia.

Fig. 1 Anatomy of a muscle.

At a micro-level, muscle fibres are made up of bundles of myofibrils and this is where muscle contraction actually occurs. Along the length of a myofibril there are a series of Z-lines (named because of their shape) and attached to these are actin filaments (I-band). Between the Z-lines are M-bands made up of myosin filaments; where the actin and myosin filaments overlap is referred to as the A-band. As the actin and myosin slide together the A-band gets bigger and the I and M bands get less, and the length of the myofibril shortens. When this is extrapolated across thousands of myofibrils, across thousands of muscle fibres and fascicles a muscle shortens or contracts. As the actin and myosin ‘slide’ together by forming, releasing and reforming a series of cross-bridges the A-band increases and it is this, the number of cross-bridges between the actin and myosin filaments, that determines the force or tension a muscle generates.

Muscle fibres

There are a number of ways of categorizing muscle fibres; at its most basic, muscle fibres are either fast or slow twitch. This relates to the speed at which they contract, fast twitch (FT) approximate 100m.s–1 and slow twitch (ST) 50m.s–1, which in turn is determined by how quickly energy is made available for the cross-bridge cycling. The composition of FT and ST fibres in a muscle is predominantly determined genetically by the DNA given to you by your parents and can’t be changed.22 Fibres can be further categorized according to a variety of characteristics (Table 2).

Table 2 Characteristics of the three main muscle fibre types.

As can be seen from Table 2, FT-A fibres can take on some of the characteristics of ST fibres and these adaptations occur due to the training stresses they are exposed to.23

Fibre architecture

Fibre architecture refers to how muscle fibres are organized in relation to the tendon. Different arrangements influence muscle function including the amount of force it can generate and the amount it can stretch (range of movement). There are two main arrangements: parallel, where fibres are orientated in parallel with the longitudinal axis of the muscle and can include sphincter/circular muscles; and pennate, where the fibres lie at an angle to the longitudinal axis. Parallel arrangements have more extensibility potential but can generate less force than pennate arrangements (an example is the bicep). Muscles that are required to generate a lot of force mostly have a pennate arrangement. This is because more fibres can be packed in, thereby generating more force. The angle of attachment is important: if it is greater than 60 degrees then only around 50 per cent of fibre force is transmitted to the tendon. There are a number of pennate arrangements: unipennate, where fibres are arranged solely on one side of the tendon (e.g. extensor digitorum); bipennate, where fibres are arranged on both sides of the tendon (e.g. rectus femoris); multipennate, multiple pennate muscle configurations (e.g. deltoid). The pectoralis major has a slightly different fibre arrangement than is covered by pennate or parallel; it is known as ‘convergent’ as the fibres are in a fan arrangement converging onto a single tendon attachment.

Fig. 2 The architecture of different muscles (with permission from PE.com).

MOVEMENT CONTROL

In its most basic form, movement is achieved by signals being sent from the brain causing specific muscles to contract; this reduction in muscle length causes bones to move around joint axes and movement is achieved. This is an extremely simplified description of a very complex task that is referred to as motor learning (ML) and although this is not the focus of this book it is important to understand some of the basics. From birth we start to learn to co-ordinate movement and as we get older our movements become more refined and accurate.24 Within dance this is taken to an extreme, but the underlying principles are the same.

Our brain, referred to as the Executive in ML language, receives input from our surroundings, previous movements, etc., to determine what it needs to do next; this is the Response Period. It then chooses a ‘motor programme’ to carry out a specific task based on this evidence and sends signals to the appropriate muscles to cause a movement, the Effector Phase. During the movement, minute adjustments are made through feedback mechanisms such as muscle reflexes and ambient vision. All the while the brain is receiving Proprioceptive and Exteroceptive feedback on what the movement ‘looked’ like. Proprioceptive feedback refers to the internal feedback systems we have, including muscle spindles (information on how long each muscle is), Golgi tendon organs (feedback on the amount of force a muscle is exerting), cutaneous receptors (measuring pressure, temperature and touch), joint receptors (measuring forces within the joint), the vestibular system (detecting movements of the head and its relationship to gravity). Exteroceptive feedback is the information we receive from outside of the body. The main one is vision and we use both the focal (what it is) and ambient feedback to provide information on our environment (spatial and temporal aspects of our own movement, anticipation of upcoming events, movement of objects/people). Our auditory senses deliver information such as sound, movement of other dancers and verbal feedback from others.

We use all this information to compare what we thought the movement should look like, with what it actually looked like. This information is then used to adjust the motor programme to reduce the error within the movement. One of the issues when we start to learn new movements, is we receive enormous amounts of feedback and an important aspect of learning is deciding on what feedback mechanisms we should ‘listen to’, to help perfect the movement as quickly as possible. Skilled performers and learners have the ability to receive and process this vast amount of information quickly and accurately and to make effective adjustments when needed as they have learned what feedback to filter out.25

Another aspect of motor learning is found at the junction of the nerve and the muscle, the motor end plate. When enough nerve signals reach the end plate, a chemical is released that travels the very short distance between the nerve and the muscle and causes a muscle contraction. This is known as the ‘All or Nothing Law’: unless the threshold of nerve signals is reached at the end plate there won’t be a contraction. Training helps reduce the number of nerve signals required before a contraction takes place. Each motor end plate controls a number of muscle fibres; the ratio of motor end plate to muscle fibres relates to the task a muscle is generally used for. In muscles that are involved with locomotion and gross movements one motor end plate can control thousands of fibres, whilst those involved with precision movements can contain only a few fibres. Through practice the motor programme learns how many motor end plates need to be activated to generate the required amount of muscular force for the desired action. Another important aspect of the motor learning is the timing of contractions over numerous muscles that allows co-ordinated movement. Part of our evolutionary neuromuscular development are agonist–antagonist pairings; these are particularly focused on locomotion. Part of their neuromuscular control means that when one is contracting, the other is relaxed, as its ability to receive nerve signals is blocked.26 The exception to the rule is when one of the muscles in the pairing acts across two joints. An example of this is the quadriceps–hamstring pairing: because the hamstring causes hip extension as well as knee flexion, during a plié both are contracting eccentrically (lengthening under tension) and concentrically (shortening under tension) on the way up.

Muscle roles within movement

Muscles can take on one of five roles within a movement scenario as determined by the motor programme. The prime force generator is called the agonist muscle and opposing this muscle’s action is the antagonist muscle, which can control the resulting movement effect of the agonist muscle by acting as a brake (especially during fast movements); an example is the quadricep–hamstring pairing. Assistant agonists are muscles that are involved in the movement as a force generator but are secondary to the primary agonist (e.g. the brachioradialis to the biceps brachii). Stabilizers are muscles that stabilize a region to prevent force dissipation from the agonist’s action, the rhomboids act as stabilizers for shoulder movements. Finally, there are neutralizers, these prevent unwanted actions from the agonist muscle, for instance if the bicep brachii is contracting it can produce both flexion and supination but if the latter is not required then the pronator teres acts as a neutralizer.

Types of contraction