Ballet on the Beach

For thanksgiving my family does it a little different. Every year we travel around the world to tropical place to avoid the first signs of winter. This year we decided to go to Jamaica. When ever you travel you can spot the dancers right away because usually they are contorting their bodies on the beach or doing tricks for a camera. As you can guess I am also guilty of this.

Photo By Me

Dance is pretty much like an addiction. Once you start you can not stop. I commonly find myself dancing in my living room, in the grocery store and pretty much everywhere I go. So although my training hours add up to about 19 hours a week I am dancing 24/7. On my break from dance I went on many adventures. I went river tubing in the black river and zip lining in the forrest. I also went hang gliding and on a bike tour. I was supposed to go scuba diving and parasailing but the weather took a turn for the worst leaving me to tan at the beach and pool in the rain. Normally I hate rain but this was the warm tropical type of rain that was really refreshing. My favorite part was the swim up bar with piña coladas. (non-achaholic of course)  Being a dancer and being in shape really helped me be able to complete these activities easily. I still stretched everyday to make sure I wouldn't fall behind the curve.

The week after a break is usually pretty difficult but there some ways to prevent that. Here are 6 tips to stay in shape over break.

1. Exercise of the break.  Even if you are not dancing you can still go for a run or do an activity. This really helps because then you still have stamina when you come back. If you just sit around you become lazy and getting back into the swing of things much harder.

2. Stretch as much as possible. Flexibility is weird because some thing you loose easily that took a long time to get. The less time you have been able to do something the quicker it goes away.  Just make sure a week away doesn't effect you the week back.

3. Balances. One good easy way to stay on top of your game that doesn't require a ton of space is to practice balancing. If you are in your room or on the beach you can practice retiré and extensions.


4.Harm up your feet. Stretching your feet is so important because when you come back you don't want your feet to cramp up. Some stretches you can do are just rising up and calf stretches. If you have a foot stretch for your class this is a good thing to go over a couple times.

5. Eat healthy over the break. You can kinda let your self go on break but don't eat so unhealthy that you feel sick. Keep in mind it takes three days for your weight to adjust from your eating patterns so stay healthy!

6. Catch up on your sleep. This last one is possibly the best one. Sleep in! If you are a dancer you are probably sleep deprived and this will help you feel better than ever before. Make sure you don't oversleep though or your schedule will be really messed up.

So, over all have fun over break and let loose but remember that Ballet never takes a break from your life. Even if you don't try to practice dance it probably will happen so just relax and look for the other dancers next break and keep up.