Movement is important for daily life.

Daily movement is important to preserve our bodies as we age. Whether you dance, practice yoga, participate sports, a regular gym rat, compete in marathons, or pilates. It is important to enjoy moving your body and celebrate the body’s ability to adapt to life’s changes.

Every little bit counts. You don’t need countless of hours of hard training to make movement count to reap the benefits.

The joy of movement is what matters. Movement and exercise should not feel like a punishment. Finding that joy and celebration for movement and mobility should be your zen moment.

I started dancing at a very young age and have a very active life. I love to dance, ski, and figure skate. On my recovery days, I am not quite sedentary. I still walk, clean my home, bike, stretch, foam roll on these days. I have noticed that as I get older, I need to increase my training to sustain my dancing, figure skating, skiing so that I don’t get injured. I don’t always have time to spend hours to do strength training or stability exercises so I try to incorporate it to my warmups because it set my muscles up for optimal training.

Warmups is extremely important. Dancing cold leads to injuries so warmups that incorporates dynamic stretching, stability exercises, balance, and strength training are the best to dancing your best.

Example of a fast but effective warm up:

ankle circles

hip circles

squats

deep switching lunges

arm circles

releves/calf raises on two feet then on one foot

pilates ab work

planks

jumping rope

jumping jacks

hopping one foot

side to side leaps

demi plies in first position and second position

tendus in en croix

passe balance in parallel and turned out positions

leg swings