Dance Advantage » Health and Wellness

The Fit Dancer: Fueling your fouettes with fabulous fruit smoothies

Lauren Warnecke — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:06:32 +0000

Dancers are athletes.

Just like any other athlete, it’s important that we be conscious about how we are fueling our bodies. The stereotype of the stick-thin waif who dines on lettuce leaves and cigarettes is long gone, and as our field becomes increasingly physical, so too must our fitness and nutrition.

Here begins the start of a brand new series for Art Intercepts. In The Fit Dancer, I’ll discuss principles of exercise physiology, fitness, and nutrition to help you on your journey toward maximum health and longevity in your dance career. To kick the series off, I’m going to let you in on a little secret:

I can be quite crafty in the kitchen!

While you might ordinarily associate my column with dance injuries, pedagogy and miscellaneous ramblings about technique, one of my favorite hobbies is cooking. Dancers are constantly on the go, so we need quick and nutritious meals that can be prepared fast, and/or ahead of time. Since it’s important to begin your long days of class and rehearsals with a good breakfast (and since strawberries are in season right now), it’s only appropriate that I share with you my favorite smoothie recipe. I drink one of these beauties every morning, and should you choose to do the same you’ll never go back to a bowl of cereal.

Lauren’s Fruit Smoothie

1 banana
1 cup frozen strawberries*
1/2 cup frozen other berries (I use blueberries and raspberries)*
1/4-1/2 cup plain yogurt (regular or greek)
juice of 2-3 oranges
spoonful of honey (optional)

Place all ingredients in the blender and puree until smooth. Pour into a glass or travel cup and sip through a straw!

* You can use fresh fruit, but if you do plan on adding a few ice cubes to make it cold and smooth. Better yet, buy fresh fruit in season, wash it, and freeze it yourself!

What’s your go-to quick and easy breakfast?

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Nutrition On The Move: Veggie Muffins

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:00:38 +0000

Veggie muffins are a delicious, portable snack! || Photo by Kelly Wright of sassandveracity.com

You heard me right- veggie muffins.

Get your daily dose of vegetable rich vitamins and minerals in the convenience of a muffin. They are great dance bag travelers!

Veggie Muffins

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 15 minutes

Yield: 6 muffins

Ingredients:(...)

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Is The Snap, Crackle, or Pop of Your Hips Cause For Alarm?

Lauren Warnecke — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:30:21 +0000

Snapping Hip (also called Clicking Hip) is a relatively common problem among dancers.

Generally, snapping hip is characterized by a pop or cracking sound (not dissimilar to “cracking” the knuckles of the hand) as you move from hip flexion to extension - in other words, when going from a position with the knee bent and pulled up towards the torso to the knee extended down toward the other leg.

I first noticed that I had snapping hip when I was about 16 and tried my first Pilates class. Every time one or both legs were extended out a few inches from the floor (while lying on my back), I’d hear a pop in my hip joint. Snapping hip is often a result of a tight tendon rolling over protrusions of the femur or pelvis.

While it can be annoying and a little disconcerting to hear that popping sound, there is not necessarily any cause for alarm.

In an article by Joseph P Garry, MD, he points out that nearly half of the female ballet dancers seeking treatment for hip complaints were experiencing snapping hip, but only one third of those were experiencing pain. A 2008 article in Current Sports Medicine Reports found that (...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Fast Snacking Hummus

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:30:03 +0000

Homemade hummus is great for dipping vegetables or using as a spread on sandwiches.

Garbanzo beans, or chickpeas as you may know them, are the main ingredient in this easy to pack and carry snack.   Many dancers keep fresh cut veggies in their bag to munch on as a quick, hunger buster throughout the day. Having some hummus on hand to use as a dip, will help keep you fuller longer and give your body an additional dose of protein and fiber.

Hummus

Prep Time: 5-10 minutes

Cooking Time: 0 minutes

Yield: 3 cups

Ingredients:(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Power Bar Junkies

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:00:51 +0000

If you are a power bar junkie, this recipe is for you.

There are many options for nutritional bars on the market, but the bottom line is that most are still processed food. They are also incredibly expensive!

Give your body the whole food nutrition it needs by following this easy protein and fiber rich recipe.

Homemade crunch bars are healthier for your body, more nutritious and less expensive than store bought power bars. || Photo by Iriskh

Wheat-Free Sunflower Crunches

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 10-15 servings

Ingredients:(...)

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Developed By Dancers, Barre Makes Healthy Snacks

Nichelle (admin) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:00:49 +0000

www.realfoodbarre.com

Barre makes healthy snacks for dancers and anyone who wants to perform their best!

In the spring of 2010 Julia Erickson, Principal Dancer with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, was rehearsing for the lead role in Swan Lake, Odette/Odile, and needed a convenient, healthy snack to power her through tough swan rehearsals.

Julia and her partner, Aaron (formerly with PBT) had both given up on eating “energy bars” many years prior due to the fact that most of them were glorified candy bars. So Julia pulled out her Cuisinart and some ingredients from the cupboard and set about making her own nutritious snack designed specifically for the needs of a dancer.

Julia took her concoction to work at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and ate it before class and rehearsals. Her colleagues at PBT and the students at PBT School tried it and liked it —can you say light bulb moment? Shortly thereafter Barre began supplying dancers all across the country with healthy snacks.

Barre donates a portion of its profits to arts education and currently offers their real food bars in two delicious flavors, Black Swan Chocolate Berry and Pirouette Cinnamon Pecan. Keep a look out for their next flavor, White Swan, coming soon!

Read more of the Barre story in our review here.

The Giveaway

Barre would like to give away a box of 12 bars to THREE Dance Advantage readers.

Barre real food bars are made from all natural, whole food ingredients. Unlike some other bars, you can pronounce all of the ingredients that make up Barre. Barres real food bars are specifically designed for dancers as a pre-class or rehearsal snack.

A box of 12 Barres retails for $27.48. Winners will receive 6 Black Swan Chocolate Berry and 6 Pirouette Cinnamon Pecan bars.

The Barre giveaway is open to U.S. residents (including Hawaii and Alaska) to those 18 and up and closes at Midnight EST on Monday, February 20.

How To Enter

This giveaway is closed but learn how and where to purchase these healthy and tasty snacks at www.RealFoodBarre.com

(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Germ Fighting Greens

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:44 +0000

“]
Pack a daily dose of Vitamin C filled greens to go. [Photo ©Rachel Blumenthal
You are gone from morning to night with your jam-packed schedule. How in the world are you supposed to get your daily dose of greens without having to spend a fortune on purchasing food to go?

Greens that have been cooked the night before are surprisingly still tasty as leftovers. (Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it!)

Broccoli Rabe (pronounced rahb) gives you half of your daily requirement of vitamin C. This powerful antioxidant is going to help your body fight off dangerous free radicals – a defense you are going to need when your ballet partner comes down with a cold!

Broccoli Rabe(...)

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Protecting Your Toesies For Pointe

Lauren Warnecke — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:22:17 +0000

I started pointe at age 9 –

(too young by some teachers’ opinions, but that’s another article), and my teacher was thoroughly set on having all of her students wear pointe shoes without padding. Her philosophy was that if shoe fit correctly then there wasn’t any need for padding.

That’s a nice theory but, unless you have a custom-made shoe, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a shoe out there that will mold exactly to your foot. The other problem with this particular teacher’s point of view is that she required all of her students to wear Capezio brand pointe shoes. There’s nothing wrong with Capezio shoes, it’s just that if you’re going to make dancers dance on pointe without padding and request a “perfect fit”, then you had better give her as many options as possible!

Still, I walked out with my shiny new size 3 Capezios and a year later I had ingrown toenails, the beginning of bunions and bunionettes, and nearly constant abrasions and blisters. There just wasn’t a Capezio shoe that fit my foot with enough efficacy to wear it without padding.

I eventually changed studios and, at age 14, I essentially started over. I was asked to go to a professional pointe shoe fitting by a woman named Sylvia.

Sylvia, a purest in her own right, always started with Grishko and very rarely strayed to other brands, only allowing lamb’s wool as padding. This time, however, I got a bit lucky and wound up with the Grishko Elite, which happens to be the best shoe out there for my foot.  I haven’t bought another shoe since.

I’ve recently been working on developing an e-course about pointe preparation and came across Nichelle’s great article on pointe readiness during my research.  I found all the comments and differing opinions about shoe types, brands, construction, and padding options really interesting.

Even when I found “my perfect shoe”, I still needed padding.

So, the focus of this post is to break down your options and help you get to the bottom of the pointe shoe padding conundrum.

I’ve tried pretty much everything in my shoes, including:(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: A Nerve Calming Salad

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:15:07 +0000

Soothe those pre-performance jitters with this cooling and calming salad. // Photo by Janet Hudson

Its opening night and the butterflies are about to explode out of your stomach!

You know you should eat something but can’t handle anything too heavy. Before you grab a packaged, processed food, remind yourself that your body won’t recognize that as real food and it’s going to consume more energy to break it down and figure out where in the world to store it. This salad is light, fresh and the mint will help settle those pre-show jitters.

Break a leg!(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Breakfast Of Champions…Or Dancers!

Joanie Johnson — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:00:55 +0000

A bowl of sugary, processed cereal is not going to energize you for the day. Start your morning off right with a whole grain like kasha.

We all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s not all that effective though when we are scarfing down a bowl of sugary or processed cereal before we run out the door. Mix up your morning routine with a whole grain. The complex carbohydrates will slowly feed your body energy and keep you fuller for longer.(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Ball-O-Energy

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:00:58 +0000

These little snacks travel well in your dance bag and give you the perfect combination of nutritional energy to help you last until dinner.

Ball of energy. That is probably is how most of your friends and family describe you. They can’t imagine having the amount of energy that you do in order to make it through your day as a dancer. Little do they know, you are armed with secret dancer, nutritional advice.

Pack these and eat them when you need something that is going to hold you another hour or so until your next meal. The sugar in the apple juice will give you a quick boost of energy while the combo of complex carbs, fats and proteins will go to work to help stabilize blood sugar, release sustained energy.

Ball-O-Nuts

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Yield: 10-15 balls

Ingredients:(...)

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Is Cross-training A Good Idea?

Lauren Warnecke — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 13:46:42 +0000

The question of whether or not to cross-train has been a controversial one among the dance community. Ask five experts and you are likely to get five different answers.

My take on cross-training:   Do it!

Athletes of nearly every discipline from long-distance runners to gymnasts to curlers integrate cross-training as a part of their preparation. Professional sports teams often employ Strength and Conditioning Coaches to prescribe and monitor cross-training activities that are specifically designed to enhance their performance.  Many dancers, too, belong to gyms to stay fit during layoffs and breaks, and as a diversion from the monotony of their regular dance schedule.

Types of cross-training (in a nutshell):

Yoga and Pilates are a typical choice for cross-training among dancers, however there are benefits to incorporating other types of activity such as running, swimming, and weight training. Generally speaking, exercise can be broken into two main categories: aerobic/ low-intensity and anaerobic/high-intensity. In the field of exercise science, there is increasing debate over these labels and how accurately they describe exercise, but for the purpose of this article we’ll go for it.

Aerobic conditioning(...)

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Burnout, Obstacles, and Overcommitment

Nichelle (admin) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:27:39 +0000

Chantale Lussier-Ley is a mental performance consultant based in Canada who has worked extensively with dancers. I interviewed her to get some professional insight on how parents should respond when their child says, “I want to quit dance.”

And she had more great advice for parents in her guest post, How To Nurture Positive Rivalry in Competition and Dance at Home (There are more positive rivalry posts to come, by the way! Look for an installment especially for teachers and for students.)

This time, we asked her a few quick questions on Burnout, Obstacles, and Overcommitment.

Here’s what Chantale had to say:

DA: Burnout has been defined as:

“an exhaustive psychophysiological response exhibited as a result of frequent, sometimes extreme, and generally ineffective efforts to meet excessive training and competitive demands” (Weinberg & Gould, 1995).

Can you help us better understand burnout?(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Lasting Energy With Lentils

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:00:31 +0000

Long days call for long, lasting energy. Lentils will give you a nutritional boost.

It’s only 10am, you’ve got a hard day of rehearsals ahead and you are already feeling lightheaded from your sugar dropping. Save yourself by prepping a quick, lentil salad the night before.

The iron in lentils will give you long lasting energy while their source of soluble fiber will help stabilize your blood sugar.(...)

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Nutrition On The Move: Flavor Boost Your H2O

Joanie Johnson — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Cucumber Water is the perfect way to boost your electrolytes after a class.

H2O is the absolute best thing for you to drink during class or a performance. Sports drinks contain too much sugar and energy drinks are pumping you full of caffeine and a laundry list of ingredients that you can’t begin to pronounce. But sometimes you are craving something more than water to quench that post plié thirst.

Try mixing it up with cucumber water. In the less-than-5-minutes it takes to prepare, you’ll be feeding your body vitamin K for bone strength, Vitamins A and C for fighting germs, and you’ll be getting a healthy boost of potassium and electrolytes as well!

CUCUMBER WATER

Prep Time: 5 min       Yields: 2 Servings

Ingredients:

(...)

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Dance Advantage » Health and Wellness

The Fit Dancer: Fueling your fouettes with fabulous fruit smoothies

Dancers are athletes.

Lauren’s Fruit Smoothie

What’s your go-to quick and easy breakfast?

Nutrition On The Move: Veggie Muffins

You heard me right- veggie muffins.

Veggie Muffins

Is The Snap, Crackle, or Pop of Your Hips Cause For Alarm?

While it can be annoying and a little disconcerting to hear that popping sound, there is not necessarily any cause for alarm.

Nutrition On The Move: Fast Snacking Hummus

Hummus

Nutrition On The Move: Power Bar Junkies

If you are a power bar junkie, this recipe is for you.

Wheat-Free Sunflower Crunches

Developed By Dancers, Barre Makes Healthy Snacks

The Giveaway

Barre would like to give away a box of 12 bars to THREE Dance Advantage readers.

The Barre giveaway is open to U.S. residents (including Hawaii and Alaska) to those 18 and up and closes at Midnight EST on Monday, February 20.

How To Enter

This giveaway is closed but learn how and where to purchase these healthy and tasty snacks at www.RealFoodBarre.com

Nutrition On The Move: Germ Fighting Greens

Protecting Your Toesies For Pointe

I started pointe at age 9 –

Even when I found “my perfect shoe”, I still needed padding.

Nutrition On The Move: A Nerve Calming Salad

Its opening night and the butterflies are about to explode out of your stomach!

Nutrition On The Move: Breakfast Of Champions…Or Dancers!

Nutrition On The Move: Ball-O-Energy

Ball-O-Nuts

Is Cross-training A Good Idea?

My take on cross-training: Do it!

Types of cross-training (in a nutshell):

Burnout, Obstacles, and Overcommitment

This time, we asked her a few quick questions on Burnout, Obstacles, and Overcommitment.

DA: Burnout has been defined as:

“an exhaustive psychophysiological response exhibited as a result of frequent, sometimes extreme, and generally ineffective efforts to meet excessive training and competitive demands” (Weinberg & Gould, 1995).

Nutrition On The Move: Lasting Energy With Lentils

Nutrition On The Move: Flavor Boost Your H2O

CUCUMBER WATER