Tucson Personal Training
Dance Fitness Corner

by Mark Saunders,
AFFA Certified Personal Fitness Trainer

"Planning Ahead"

If you want to be a better dancer, becoming more fit may be one of the tools you can use. Being physically fit will give you more strength, flexibility to pull off more of these moves your instructor teaches you. And not to mention if you lose a little weight, that is less weight you will have to carry with you on the dance floor.

Here are a few tips you can use right away to get you on the right path to a more physically fit body.

1. Plan Ahead, Organize Your Meals and Work Outs- If you don’t have a plan you don’t stand a chance. If you don’t plan on a day-to-day basis, what inevitably happens is that the day takes an unexpected turn, and you blow off a meal, eat the wrong thing for convenience, or skip a workout.

2. Get into a Routine, and be Consistent with Workouts and Meals- You should eat your meals and do your workouts at the same times each day if at all possible.

3. Use Weight Training to Build Muscle and Aerobics to Burn Fat- The majority of people who have been working out for a while come to a point when they want to focus on getting lean. In effort to do this they begin to train with less weight, more reps and for a longer period of time. This is wrong. Workouts should be kept brief, yet taxing enough to elicit muscle growth or maintenance response from your body, depending on what your physique goals are. Increasing the duration of your workouts will only draw from your body’s recuperative ability and lead to overtraining and exhaustion. Instead, add aerobic (or cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary) training to your routine. Remember that looking muscular (toned for the ladies) and lean at the same time is a result from a balance of weight training and cardiovascular/cardiopulmonary work.