Shoulder Placement

It’s rare to find people with nice shoulder placement in their bodies in modern society now a days. Most pro ballroom competitors have it, many pro ballet have it, and many modern dancers have it. The average amateur or person on the street does not.

Good shoulder placement allows for a stronger and more confident look on the floor. It allows for easier movement of the arms allowing them to move quicker, easier, and more expressively. And for ballroom allows for much better connection with your partner – less noise and stronger, clearer leads/follows.

Bone Placement / Alignment

For many years early in my dancing I looked at different people with different body types and thought of it as just that. They had different body types, and there was nothing to do about it. But as I’ve learned over the years, it’s not really so static. There is a lot of change to the body and how it holds itself.

Any single bone in the body has multiple muscles pulling on it in different directions. If those muscles are misbalanced in their work and one is tight and it’s opposing muscle is weak the bone eventually gets placed in a location that is “easy” feeling but not efficient for the body to work. The joints around then function with less range of motion and weaker. Over longer periods of time the connective tissue itself can change to adapt to the new position.

There are lots of bones / joints in the body that effect our over all look and function, and it might be easy to look at them and think, “oh it’s just the way someone is shaped.” And it is the way someone is shaped, but with proper muscle training the joints and bones can be moved to a more pleasing or attractive look for the entire body.

Things to observe in people… The natural direction of turn-out in their feet. The shape of their foot – are their toes curved inward (the big toe very common, and sometimes the pinky toe). The shape of the curve of the back (is it a natural S? and note it’s relationship to the intercostal angle – the angle made by the bottom of the breast bone and the two bottoms of the rib cage in front – is that angle a nice 90 degree angle?). The straightness of the legs – bow-legged-ness or knocked-knee-ness. The shape of the spine on the back – is the spinal bones bare to the world or do they sit in a nice valley. Any unusual bumps in the spine.

Many of these things are all just the way we hold our bodies. And they can all be cleaned up and realigned with some simple training. Is it that all the top dancers have a certain body type and that you need a certain body type to be a great dancer? Well, yes, in a way, but it’s not that it’s given to them, most of them have earned it with lots of physical work, whether they were conscience about the muscle training or not, their bodies went through it.

The Shoulder Blade

The shoulder blade should really slide nicely flat against the back of the body. No protruding sides or edges. The shoulder blade itself really isn’t connected to the body with joints. It kind of free-floats, like a weight floating in space and it floats in space by being pulled in all different directions at the same time by different muscles. if the muscles are mis-balanced in strength or just improperly trained then the shoulder blade ends up in the wrong position. Often with many people these days, pulled inward toward the spine and pulled up – which totally restricts the movement of the upper spine and blocks some of the free movement of the arm because the rib cage blocks it in front.

Different muscles pull the shoulder blade in different directions. The trapezius muscles pull the shoulders inward and up. The romboid muscles pull them in toward the spine. The latissimus dorsi (the “lat” muscle) pulls toward the spine and can pull up, just toward the spine or most importantly downward. The serratus muscle connects on the inside edge of the shoulder blade and wraps around the rib cage and can pull the shoulder blade out – away from the spine.

The serratus muscles and the lat muscles are probably the ones weakest in most people and need the most development on average. They will bring the shoulder blades down and out and flatten them against the back for most people. When balanced out it will give someone this nice trapezoidal shape to their upper body (it’ll make you look thinner!). People who did gymnastics or swimming in high school often have this nice shape already because those muscles trained.

When the shoulder blade is properly placed and the muscles around are strengthened the shoulder becomes more stabilized and connected to the core of the body. Force from the center can more effectively be distributed to the arms.

The Scapulo-humeral Joint

The scapulo-humeral joint – the shoulder socket, once the shoulder blade is more stabilized, the scapulo-humeral joint can then be worked to be looser and more mobile. Often this joint is over worked and actually limited in range of motion because it is over worked because the shoulder blade is not stabilized.

If we can stabilize the shoulder blade and allow for freer movement at the scapulo-humeral joint then we get nicer arm positions in ballet, and nicer, easier, and thus quicker movement for all our dancing.

Weight Lifting

By far this is one of the fastest ways I’ve seen to train people to get the shoulder blades into proper position. Significant progress can be made in a simple 3 work out a week (for about 1/2 hour) for 6 to 8 weeks that will have a long lasting effect.

Basic work-out: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps of horizontal push and pull and vertical push and pull. Horizontal pull: rowing actions, rowing machines, etc – works the romboids and the middle range of the lat muscle. Horizontal push: a bench press, push-ups – works the pulling of the shoulders forward with the pectorals in the front and the serratus. Vertical pull: a pull-up, lat pull down machines – works the lat muscle pulling down. Vertical push: a military press, shoulder shrugs – works the trapezius.

Focus on technique: get aware of the muscles you want to train – it does no good to go on the lat pull down machine and use your biceps and triceps to pull with. Focus on the larger muscles around the shoulder blade first. Then in time work to balance effort along the entire chain of muscles of the arm – all the way from the spine to the hand.

Ballet

Ballet class or any other formal training type of dance, if the teacher is knowledgeable, can be a great way to get the proper placement and movement in the arms. I find this usually takes longer to get to the right placement of the shoulder blade (often 2 to 3 years of class 2 to 3 times a week) (but keep in mind you’re learning lots of other really good stuff at the same time too).

Being Sold

Do you think that your teacher is “the one”? Has he (or she) convinced you to only take lessons from them? That they have the only RIGHT way to teach dance? Ballroom dancing in America (more so than Europe) has a long history of being part of the hard sell. To the point where it is even considered on the same level as used car salesman.

Now I know you’re thinking, I’m not gullible. I’m not easily manipulated. Social psychology professor Robert Cialdini has done a lot of research into this topic (and has a great book: The Psychology of Influence). Part of his research involved being a used car salesman, a door to door encyclopedia salesman, a waiter, and yes, even a ballroom dance instructor. (His book is required reading for most Marketing majors.)

So, what do you think… out of someone who has a strong will, someone who has an average will and someone who is weak willed, which one of them is most manipulatable? Most people say it’s the weak willed one. But the actual studies point to the fact that it’s the average person that is more manipulatable. (Partially because they think they’re not vulnerable.)

Things people fall for

Or perhaps “things I’ve fallen for”

Or perhaps “things you can use to get more students”

Teachers with a heavy sense of “Right” and “Wrong”. Some teachers will fill their lessons with “always do this” and “never do that” and “this is right” and “that is wrong”. The simple advice is this: don’t walk away from those teachers, RUN! That style of teaching fulfills a certain sense of security people are looking for. In a way it’s feeding on people’s insecurity. In the long run, there really aren’t any absolutes in dancing. It is art, it is about learning rules and then breaking rules. It’s about creating style, not boring robots. It’s not about learning right and wrong – that’s a waste of time! It’s about doing the work – training the body to physically move well – it takes time and physical effort, muscle building and learning muscle coordination. Classic sales line: “Oh you should take lessons from teacher ABC, because you don’t want to learn it wrong do you?”. Bonus points for wording questions with negatives or double negatives because that’s been found to be more effective manipulation.

Emphasizing style over technique. Classic Sales line: “Oh don’t take from teacher ABC, because they competed in (American Style/ International Style/ Smooth/ Ryhthm/ Standard/ Latin) and not (insert whatever style you want to sell here)”. People use this all the time in the ballroom world. I fell for this a couple times and avoided taking lessons from some really awesome teachers that really knew their stuff. The underlying technique of good movement is the same across just about everything. You might as well take lessons in ballet or modern or african or hip-hop. I often encourage my students to diversify. Do you really think that just one teacher has cornered the secret on understanding dance? I mean, really? Who do you think they learned from? Or how do you think they developed a unique style themselves without studying from multiple different sources?

Teachers that over compliment. Again, it’s feeding into something the student is looking for. (Acceptance? Acknowledgement? Desire?).

Teachers that over criticize. Some students will think, “Oh how wonderful, I have something to shoot for, I have work to do, I have a challenge.” This is a spot were a strong idea of work ethic can get you into trouble. Like I said earlier, It’s about the work. It’s about understanding the muscle development, the exercises to get there. It can actually be done very plainly and simply. Need to criticize? Not really. Need for guidance, yes definitely. Over criticalness can actually lead to worse performance, a lack of expressiveness, and a lack of play. All things that we really want more of in dancing.

Core Training: Getting Aware of the Transverse

Sure people talk about training the core, and dance teachers talk about moving from the center, but what does that really mean? And what do you really do to train for it? And why train for it in the first place?

I often use this analogy with my students. Imagine you’re in the middle of a pool of water, if you push directly out, you have nothing to push against. You end up just moving water around and not going anywhere. If you’re at the edge of the pool, the wall is there, it’s solid, it’s not going anywhere. If you push against the wall you can send your self drifting off in to the water pretty far. Your core is like your natural internal wall for your body, if it’s toned, the rest of your body can work off against it. Your arms can push stronger from a strong center. Your legs can push out as well, allowing you to move with more stability, speed, and strength.

Without a strong core our centers are like jell-o. If you push out with the arms or legs to move half of that force just goes into counter-acting inefficient wiggly noise absorbed by the rest of your body. It can also cause lots of sheering type forces in the other joints in the body which just lead to injury. A strong core not only gives us more efficient movement, it prevents injury. (In fact, I’d say good movement and unhealthy injury prone movement are really opposite ends of one continuum – what you need to learn to get better movement – whether it’s dance or sport or yoga or whatever, is the same as what you need to learn to prevent injury).

The search for understanding

At one point I just got annoyed with some of the teachers out there. Many would talk about using your core, or moving from your center, but none of them would give any description of what that really was! One instructor was just like, “Got belly?”. That just wasn’t good enough for me. I had to seek out more information, I needed to find somebody who knew more about what was really going on. Dance people had a lot of the training ideas and exercises but lacked actual understanding (and thus lack consistency in the success of the training), yoga people also had some knowledge, had better understanding but again lacked enough understanding. It was with fitness people that I finally found the answers to the questions about core and center that I was looking for. (Check out the work of Paul Chek among many others.)

Transverse Abdominis

The transverse abdominis (or TVA) is a large surface of muscle that wraps around the sides of the body through the belly region. If you’re standing it’s fibers line up parallel with the ground and pull the front of the body around the sides to the spine in the back like a built in corset. It has the action of pulling the belly button in toward the spine. Cough. (Go ahead take a moment and cough, I’ll wait for you. That action is also a contraction of the TVA).

Contracting the TVA as an explicit exercise is taught in many movement types, you’ve probably already experienced already and just didn’t know it was the TVA that you were activating or supposed to activate. Ballet teacher telling you to “zip up”? Pilates teacher tell you to pull your belly button to your spine? Sports teacher tell you to pull your belly in like you’re about to get punched? Martha Graham style contraction? Belly Dancing actions… yoga breathing…  the list goes on and on…

The TVA pulls on connective tissue surrounding the lumbar region of the spine (the low back). Not only creating protection for the low spine but also creating a center – a place for the rest of the body to work off of. Not only does this connective tissue wrap the spine but also wraps the lats (latissimus dorsi) going upward in the body to effect the arms, but also the iliopsoas muscles going downward in the body to effect the legs, and also the erector spine to effect the rest of the spine going upward. This wrapping effect around the muscles can even act as a multiplier effect on the efficiency of those muscles by squeezing them tighter.

Simple Exercise

Lie on the floor face down. Lift your belly button up off the floor, and hold if for as long as you can. Don’t cheat the exercise: when first doing this, it’s easy to cheat by lifting your belly button up by pushing into the floor with your legs or arms or shoulders or something else. Try to relax your limbs. Only lift your belly button by using the TVA (cough again just to get the feel for it). Can’t hold it very long? That’s ok, relax, and try again. Do 10 repetitions. Try to get to being able to hold it for 2 minutes straight. (Paul Chek says that’s just for good healthy movement in everyday life, if you’re a professional dancer, go for more!)

You don’t have to do the exercise everyday, 3 times a week is pretty good. Do it at the end of a workout instead of the beginning – if the core is weak from being tired, you’re more likely to injure yourself during normal exercise.

Integration

Ok, got awareness of your TVA? Got it stronger? Start integrating it into other movements you do. Could be anything. In advanced athletes the TVA is measured to activate several milliseconds before any other muscle activates in any action they do. Going to take a step across the floor? Contract the TVA before you push off your leg. Going to lift your arm? Contract the TVA before you do it. Going to make a connection with a dance partner (as lead or as follow or as just general partnering)? Contract your TVA before you connect. Even just going to lift your Starbucks coffee up to your mouth? Contract your TVA! :)