Weight Training for Male Ballet Dancers

Ballet dancers are superb athletes. In addition to general physical fitness, they must have incredible flexibility, high levels of endurance and exceptional strength. Male ballet dancer are called upon to lift their female partners many times in a performance, which requires a high degree of strength, stamina and coordination. As the Dance Teacher website explains, "Strength training is essential for building a strong foundation for dancing, especially for partner work." Weight training allows a male dancer to not only lift his partner overhead, but to do so with grace and precision.

Weight training serves a number of purposes for ballet dancers. As MayoClinic.com explains, weight training can reduce the risk of injury, boost your stamina and produce leaner muscle. There are a number of ways to weight train, which might be more accurately called strength or resistance training, since you aren't limited to the traditional free weights or weight machines. You also can use your own body weight for strength training -- abdominal crunches are a good example -- or use resistance bands.

A ballet dancer moves with his whole body, and he lifts by using much more than his arms. So a male dancer must weight train in ways that strengthen his core and lower body as well as his upper body. Weight training exercises that target the large muscles of the legs include lunges and squats using weights. For the thighs and the hips, Dance Teacher recommends a dumbbell split-squat. Assume a lunge position with dumbbells at your side with a 10-inch platform, such as a step, behind you. Put your back foot on the platform. Lower straight down into a deeper lunge position and let your back leg bend until it just touches the ground. Then straighten your front leg and imagine being lifted "like a puppet on a string."

Many athletes train by using exercises that mimic the actions they use in a competition or a performance, and ballet dancers are no exception. An excellent exercise for the arms and back muscles, as well as one that mimics the way a dancer lifts his partner overhead, is the single arm twisting push-press. Hold a dumbbell in your right hand at shoulder level with your elbow tightly at your side. Stand with your left foot 12 inches in front of your right. Dip down while rotating about 45 degrees to the right. Then drive from the hip and explode upward while reversing the rotation to the left. This launches the right hand skyward. Press the dumbbell up until your arm is straight over your head. Lower it slowly to your shoulder. A highly trained male ballet dancer might do four to seven reps with each arm and complete three to five sets.

Proper lifting technique requires strong and stable shoulder muscles. External rotation, to strengthen the muscles at the back of the shoulder joint, and internal rotation, to strengthen the muscles in the front, can be done with elastic bands. For external rotation, hold an elastic band tightly in both hands with your elbows tight at the waist, then pull on both sides of the band. For internal rotation, fix the band to a support structure and hold it with one hand. Pull inward against the resistance band with your elbow remaining tucked at your waist.