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Core strength, core stability, lean and mean, lengthened not bulked: these are buzz words now in dance conditioning. What do they mean? How do they apply to you? It's all a matter of getting to know your inner unit.

To begin with, we know that all movement emanates from the torso. We've heard that in beaucoup dance classes, right? Every time we imagine a movement prior to executing it, our brain has already done enormous calculations to stabilize some body areas in order to move others. That's why having a thought rehearsal can be quite effective.

The center of gravity of a dancer's body lies in the bowl of the pelvis, generally accepted to be around the second sacral fused vertebra. You can find it by placing both your hands on your hipbones and sliding your thumbs down floe back of your pelvis, heading toward making a letter V. Think internally--your center's not on your back but actually a couple of inches inside the bowl of your pelvis. This inner unit is "computer central." If you can manage it well, you have better control of your torso, spine, and head, and you're in business.

So what exactly is the inner unit? It's a term used by Canadian researcher Diane Lee, PT, in her informative book The Pelvic Girdle (1999; Churchill Livingstone). She has done groundbreaking work with Scandinavian orthopedic researcher Dr. Andry Vleeming to better understand how the pelvis functions. What she's discovered is that the inner unit has four elements. There's the deep abdominal layer (transversus abdominus); the muscular sling of the pelvic floor at the base of the pelvis; the muscular respiratory diaphragm, which cuts the torso top from bottom; and the small but prolific multifidi postural muscles of the lower back.

So how do you work it? Get familiar with all parts individually, and then integrate them. First acknowledge that breath uses the diaphragm. In Pilates, we say to think of the breath coming from the expansion of the sides and the back of the ribs. Dancers need the stability of the lower back while they're moving. Exercises like those taught in Pilates knit the ribs to the pelvis in front, and then percussively use the breath, inhaling through tire nose and out through the mouth, to train the diaphragm to work like a piston inside the muscular cylinder of the torso.

# posted by Medical Information : 6:06 AM