Customer Reviews

Dancing Longer, Dancing Stronger: A Dancer's Guide to Improving Technique and Preventing Injury

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Dancing Longer, Dancing Stronger is for anyone who desires
to understand their body and how to make it work more
effectively. Along with detailed anatomical descriptions
of all the bones and muscles in the body and how they
interact, are exercises for both strengthening and
lengthening each muscle set.

You don't have devote a fortune in expensive equipment
or a large amount of time doing repetive, boring movement.
Suggestions in
the Question and Answer sections help you define your
structural weaknesses and suggest exercises within the
program for overcoming them. Plus you never have to count
past 8! Each exercise is done to one of four 8 count rhythms with most exercises being either
4 or 8 reptitions each.

As a figure skater, this book has provided me
with the best off-ice training I've found to date.
Even my coach wants a copy!

This book is the most comprehensive guide to the physiology of dancing. It answers important questions about what is normal and what can cause problems. It also deals with correcting technique problems and preventing injuries by proper strengthening exercises. It covers the entire body from head to toe. In my opinion every dance teacher should read this book so they can responsibly develop young dancers. This book should be reprinted --- anyone who dances should read it and keep it handy as a valuable resource.

When I first got this book, I loved it. However, when I started to learn more about human anatomy & physiology, and exercise science, I began to realize that the approach to strength-conditioning presented in this book is not as useful as I originally thought it to be, with my main complaint being that the exercises aren't as useful as what the book would like you to believe. There are much better, more natural movements that work the same muscle groups presented in the book.

There has been more general research done on exercise physiology and dance since this book was written. Although I have yet to find a book that does a good job at taking exercise physiology and applying it to the subject of dancing, I would recommend reading general exercise physiology (text)books, Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain, and "The Dancer's Way: the New York City Ballet Guide to Mind, Body, and Nutrition by Linda H. Hamilton. I DO NOT recommend "The Dancer's Body Book" by Allegra Kent as much of the nutritional dietary information in it is inaccurate and IMO promotes eating disorders.