Have you ever spent the night dancing? Checked into the club around 10 AM, and staggered out some six hours later, hair spiked with sweat, body flushed, legs completely worn out, ears ringing? Or have you ever been out swing dancing, jump jive and wailing as you spin your partner and twirl them around, snapping your fingers as you work up a healthy sheen of sweat? Tango, ball room, hip hop—there’s no end of options and styles, but all of them involve your body, with moving, grooving and enjoying yourself. Ever wondered exactly what benefits are being accrued by your body, what the health benefits of dance are? Wonder no longer—just read on.
First off there’s flexibility. If you’re doing any kind of formal dancing, from ballet to modern jazz, you’ll start off with a stretching session, and then after you’re warmed up let it all go. Even if you’re just enjoying in with your friends by the bar, dancing involves a wide array of movements, asking for a full range of motions. The more you dance, the more your muscles flex and extend. Most forms of dancing involve bending and stretching, with the final result that you’ll naturally end up being more flexible as a result.
Most people associate strength training with the gym, with lifting weights, but many people forget that your own body can act as its own weight for your muscles. Strength, after all, is defined as your muscles ability exert a force against resistance, and gravity provides all the resistance you need. Many styles of dance involve jumping and leaping high into the air, an exercise which requires tremendous strength. If you think about all the exercise your thighs, calves and core must do to control your body as you dip, turn and sway, it’s a full on workout.
Endurance. Unless you’re dancing for ten minutes, any length period of dancing is a full body workout that will do much more for you than thirty minutes on a treadmill. All night dance sessions will leave you drenched with sweat, and when’s the last time a gym workout left you so soaked? Even if you’re taking breaks to get a refreshment at the bar, you’re still moving and dancing for hours, and that kind of exercise is excellent for your aerobic engine. If you’re dancing professionally, or doing a formal style of dance, than there’s no doubt that all that rehearsing will give you a killer workout.
Finally, dancing can bestow an incredible sense of well being. It’s primal, it’s an ancient form of social interaction, it’s fun and moving in time to rhythmic music is as basic a form of enjoyment as there is. Dancing with friends, being out in the world, meeting new people, performing, joining dance groups, any of these forms of social interactions are incredibly healthy for your self esteem and your sense of well being
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