Thoughts after teathcing Danish Dance Theater - Part 2
Tired? Drink an extra cup of coffee and it will likely be an effective pick-me-up. Do this 4 days in a row, and that extra dose of caffeine will no longer be as effective. .
So for it to be effective again you need to up the dose one more time or decrease it, waiting for your tolerance to reset.
The same goes for your training load, for the purposes of increasing work capacity (performance) or decreasing injuries.
Our bodies adjust to the solutions we give to it. Your capacity for “X” will eventually adjust to the new baseline and every tool and solution becomes the new ‘status quo’.
In the same way, dancers are constantly trying to find the solution for fatigue and injuries rather than applying variation and cycling their tools for recovery.
Dance schools, companies, choreographers and/or dancers themselves, cope by trying to find the “perfect”, constant balance in terms of workload, finding a static compromise between workload and time off - I will refer to this as The Static Balance.
The Static Balance, generally speaking, consists of a warm up, 5 - 10 hours of daily work, and one to two days off per week.
I do not believe this to be a very good long term solution, neither in terms of minimizing injuries, nor in terms of sparking inspiration or creativity. .
Instead of trying to find the perfect compromise/the static balance, just like with caffeine, I would recommend a Dynamic Balance: Cycling between work that is intense and a bit heavier than we would choose intuitively and lighter work with a bit more rest than what what feels productive. Both in smaller cycles and bigger cycles.
In a lot of ways, very basic sports science/physiology but often overlooked or not applied. .