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).