I hate the phrase “no pain no gain”

At least when it comes to dancing. Dancing is not supposed to hurt! If it hurts you’re probably doing it wrong. Most of the technique is there mostly just to avoid injury (not to “look good” or “fit a style” but to avoid injury!). It’s so that you move well so that you can keep on dancing until your 80 or 90 or beyond.

That being said, it is important to understand that there are types of pain that are good and types of pain that are bad. As a dancer you will probably experience all of them at some point. You will grow familiar with them and understand which ones are signals to stop and which ones are signals to do more. And most of that is just listening to what your body is telling you.

Muscle soreness.

This is a good pain. It comes the day after you workout. Often comes more from the time when you workout after you haven’t worked out in a long time. And it’s often a signal more of the connective tissue needing to change than the muscle needing to change. You need to rest (roughly 48 hours for muscles) and give the muscle time to recover, then work it out again. It’ll most likely be gone the second day after you workout.

Muscle tightness or softness.

More often the tightness in our society but sometimes softness. Often accompanying muscle soreness, but not the actual muscle soreness. Again, it will come the day after you workout (or sometimes if you workout in the morning and sit for most of the day). Tightness usually implies the connective tissue needs to lengthen and loosen (more common in our society – we hold too much tension!). Softness implies the connective tissue needs to tighten (sometimes the case if you are adapting to a new sport you’ve never done before). This kind of pain can last much longer than 48 hours. You have to use a bit of good judgment – workout again, but if gets worse back off a bit. It can take several months for connective tissue to change.

Sharp, sudden, or pinching pain.

Bad. Very bad. Stop immediately. You’re probably doing something wrong. Check your technique. Goals are for opening up your joints, loosening them up, nice alignment of the bones, and increasing space in the joints. Lower the weight or stress you are working out with. Better to workout with less than to workout and cause an injury.

Muscle recovery.

A similar pain to muscle tightness, but different. It will feel like tightness in that it restricts the movement. General muscle tightness usually feels even across the muscle, muscle recovery feels more like there are just spots of the muscle that need pulling. Often muscle recovery pain was caused by some injury in the past, and you’re sort of re-straightening out the fibers. Muscle tightness was probably just caused by prolonged holding the muscle in a shortened position.