The Physical Preparation Of Elite Ballet Dancers - Adam Mattiussi

The Progress Theory

Hello and welcome to The Progress Theory where we discuss how to implement scientific principles to optimise human performance.

On today’s episode, we have Adam Mattiussi, S&C coach and researcher for the Royal Ballet where we find out just how the greatest ballet dancers in the world physically prepare for their performances.

People don’t normally associate strength and conditioning and ballet. However, elite ballet dancers have an intense rehearsal and performance schedule, which can consist of 6-8 hours per day of training and practising. That is a serious number of jumps and landings, and if the dancers are not physically prepared, the risk of injury or poor performance increases. In this episode, Adam gives us an insight into how elite ballet dancers train, what the common injuries are, and how he physically prepares all the dancers to ensure peak performance.

1:08 - Introduction to the podcast

2:20 - An introduction to Adam Mattiussi and his journey to delivering S&C to the Royal Ballet

12:30 - A typical week of training and rehearsing for a ballet dancer (all depending on their role)

19:22 - How S&C support is structured at the royal ballet

24:23 - An individualised approach to Ballet S&C delivery

26:31 - Types of S&C training used at the Royal Ballet

32:34 - Common injuries in Ballet

35:17 - Does the artistic nature of jumping and landing in ballet derive specific injuries?

37:40 - Changing S&C support due to injury

40:22 - Career advice to those wishing to get into S&C delivery for Ballet

42:50 - Questions from the listeners.

(42:59- 46:09) - How do you optimise recovery when you have so little time for recovery?

(47:11 - 48:55) - Is there any targeted additional conditioning alongside performing?

Final Thoughts

It was great to truly understand the commitment and how much training an elite Ballet Dancer does for their art, and even more interesting to see how the set-up at the Royal Ballet works in order to provide them with the support they need to ensure peak performance.

I just wanted to provide some final thoughts on some key areas which really stood out to me.

Firstly, just how much training the elite ballet dancers do, especially if they are a principal dancer, often doing multiple rehearsals for multiple shows throughout the week. On top of that, the principal dancers may have performances that consist of sequences involving an intense number of technical jumps in a short space of time. This just makes you appreciate how elite these athletes are and how robust they need to be to tolerate that volume of jumping and landing.

Secondly, because of differences in the schedule between dancer rank, every dancer needs their own individualized approach to support coming from the staff. This seems like a difficult balancing act but I love how Adam has categorised the different approaches each dancer takes for S&C support. He clearly knows his athletes, knows when to provide support and when to try and help work with the team to change a dancer’s schedule to ensure they get enough recovery.

And finally, Adam’s research into an injury at the Royal Ballet has been incredible and I highly recommend checking out his research which I have linked in the show notes. I find it fascinating how certain injuries appear to be more common and can be influenced by the role of the performer and possibly due to the technical demand of the artistic style of jumping. This highlights how important it is to understand your sport and its culture if you provide rehab or S&C support as this knowledge is essential for bringing dancers back to full fitness after injury.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed this episode and if ballet performance is a career you wish to pursue, there is plenty of information here to help you head in that direction and achieve your goals. As always, please follow @theprogresstheory on Instagram and youtube and. It would be awesome if you could also leave us a review and share this episode on your insta story to help the show grow. Also, head to our website theprogresstheory.com and listen to our other episodes. We’ll see you at the next one.

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• @thepricep
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Explore these Resources or Items Mentioned in the Show

Organisations

• The Royal Ballet
• St Mary’s University
• St Mary’s S&C BSc
• St Mary’s Sports rehab MSc
• Harlequins RFC
• London broncos
• London Welsh
• GB Weightlifting

Academics and academic work

• Adam’s research
• Alex Wolf trunk training paper
• Jon Goodwin
• Dan Cleather
• Gregg Retter

Mentioned in this episode:

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