How To Create A Great Dance Fitness Warm Up

If you teach dance fitness then the warm up is often the part of class that gets overlooked when planning what you’re going to teach.

We know you’ve got amazing choreography coming up and you can’t wait to get into it, or maybe you’re stuck in a warm up rut, teaching the same thing over and over again without any real understanding of what your warm up is supposed to achieve.

Full dance classes that last over an hour often have a warm up component that’s more than 20 minutes long, but when you’re teaching dance fitness it’s important to make sure that your warm up is appropriate and does what it’s meant to do.  Ready to uncover the keys to a perfect warm up? Read on….

WHY WARM UP?

Most fitness professionals or certified dance instructors know that the warm is there to prepare the body for the work it’s about to do, to prevent injury and to slowly raise the pulse and increase the blood flow around the body and synovial fluid to the joints.

However, the warm up can be so much more than that with a bit of careful planning.

As well as creating a safe dance fitness class experience for your clients, you can use the warm up to set the mood, tone and expectations for your class.

A great warm up will not only help new clients feel comfortable, supported and confident by giving them some easy wins under their newbie belt, it will also help your class to practice some of the skills they need throughout your class.

(Don’t be that teacher who’s copying your own teacher’s 10 year old warm up without really understanding how it’s affecting your clients’ bodies.  Make your warm up count and become a stand-out dance fitness instructor!)

So remember, a great warm up not only prepares the body for the work to come, it sets the tone, mood, creates confidence, connection and enhances your clients basic skills for your class.

HOW LONG SHOULD A WARM UP BE?

Always consider your class when planning your warm up and make sure that your warm up is long or short enough to achieve the outcome you’re after.

For example, a warm up for a pure dance cardio class may be 3-5 minutes and the first routine might be an easier track so that warm up flows into the class.

For a strength or conditioning workout, your warm up might be 5-10 minutes of activation exercises for the muscles that will be targeted in the coming time.

For a fat loss workout, a warm up should be about 8 minutes long to ensure that the body is drawing energy from the preferred energy system within the body by the time the full workout begins.

(When we teach our Corio Method classes, the Moves and the Shapes we have two different warm up formats that both serve a different purpose, since the aim of the classes is to train our clients in different modalities.)

DON’T CHOP AND CHANGE

You might be bored to death of your warm up routine but your students will love having something familiar to start the class with.  Avoid the temptation to wing your warm up and throw in new moves each week. Instead, try sticking with the same or highly similar warm up routine to build confidence and to ground your clients into to your class.

Save the show-off moves for your advanced choreography class and keep the warm up fun, simple and easy to achieve. Your clients will appreciate being eased in gently and you’ll start your class with your best foot forward.

WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT DANCE FITNESS CERTIFICATION WITH CORIO?

Corio certified instructors are given access to our library of warm up moves, combinations and advanced warm up samples so that they can be confident that their warm up is enjoyable, effective and easy!  To find out more register for your FREE Corio Academy account here.