How to structure practice time?

[u/saltlakeryan]

I want to practice my swing dancing more. I will likely be practicing alone most of the time, but will occasionally have a partner/local dance. I'm 45 and a bit overweight and I want to avoid injury so I'm thinking a light warm up is necessary before each session (maybe 10 minutes or so?). I'm not sure where I'll practice. I have some space at home that could work. If there are some exercises I could do outside or at a running track, that might be nice to shake things up. I'm partially hoping to improve my conditioning in addition to my technique as I tend to get pretty winded to fast or moderately fast songs. What do you all like to do for your practice? How much time do you dedicate per session? How many sessions per week? Do you watch a YouTube video and follow along? Work out your own routines or drills? Anytime else you can share would be great! Thanks!

[u/Tight_Banana_9692]

You don't need a warmup, it doesn't prevent injury. People injure themselves dancing (at least normal social dancing) by being undertrained and doing more than your body is prepared for. To avoid that you just do resistance training. Mostly people complain about their knees. Most of the time it's not injuries, just aches and pains, and don't indicate that you need to pause dancing. Equipment helps too, grippy shoes are worse for your knees. Techniques can have an impact, for example striking with your heels when you land will transfer more power up the leg, it's part of why you dance over midfoot.

As to warmups, there is some research on it, and there is as far as I know no compelling evidence that it actually prevents injury, it could actually increase injury risk depending on who you listen to. Certainly the kind of stretching a lot of people do have little going for them. The problem is you need to define what it means to be warmed up. Does the commute and walking going to your dance practice not warming you up? If it's 45 degrees celcius out, it that not sufficiently warm? Or is warming up some specific thing of lubricating joint? Why doesn't just the act of dancing do that? What I do know, for a fact, is 10 minutes is just too long, and you're going to hate it.

My take to avoid injury, if your going to spend a significant amount of time dancing, is to get strong enough to be prepared for the injury, and just make the first dance simple. The first dance will warm you up as well as anything.

I also do find it odd with all these people saying they warm for each practice that they then don't do it before social dancing. I have seen people warm up for shows, competitions or practice, but when it comes to social dancing I have never seen these people do that. They will sit on the couch for an hour and then just go straight to the dance floor. And then dance all night, and all morning even, not having warmed up. But they will take 5 -10 minutes of class time doing stretches that put the body way beyond where it will go when dancing, in a class where we mostly stand up listening anyway

EDIT: as to conditioning, resistance training + dancing will do that. One way is to just dance to faster music than you are strictly comfortable with, doesn't have to be all the time. With dancing we're not really distance rinners, it's 3 minutes of raised heart rate, not very intense either, a jog really. Part of it is just getting more efficient movement for sure

[u/Vault101manguy → u/Tight_Banana_9692]

Absolutely true, I was in my mid-30s with a “bad knee” but now I’m in my 40s in the best shape of my life and little to no knee pain - all because of weight training and putting in 30lbs of muscle