There are many tango dancers that cross-train in other exercises and physical training to complement their tango training. I’ve tried a handful of them myself and can share what I like and don’t like about each one.
Body Movement, Awareness, and Control:
- Ballet – ballet is so not like tango at all. It’s not even close. If anything, many old school dancers will insist that your dance resemble something more like straight off the street than like something from a studio. But with that said, many of us in the modern era have such bad posture and poor control of our bodies that we need some classical movement training to learn how to put everything back in alignment. Ballet can help tremendously with this. Ballet will also help you think and interpret things more like a “dancer”, and also understand the mentality of other dancers.
- Gyrotonics – developing strength and body coordination through circular movements. I love the kind of body awareness you get from doing gyrotonics. The exercises are really fun and engaging, also develop awareness of your body in ways that no other exercises can do. I also found that gyrotonics instructors tend to be specialists in many other types of movements as well which allowed them to understand me better.
- Modern dance – I haven’t done it very much but it’s great for dancers and loosening up your body. Highly recommended for non-dancers.
- Franklin method – I love it for body awareness. It just simply isn’t dance, that’s all. But so incredibly useful and necessary for your body. You must learn how to use your body if you want to dance well.
Body Conditioning:
- Yoga – many would probably say yoga is the best conditioning for dancers. I personally prefer gyrotonics, but I can see the many benefits of yoga. Lots of stretching, flexibility, mobility, balance, strength, coordination, and overall body control. Yoga really raises your total body awareness.
- Stretching classes – this is probably the much better version of what yoga could have been for dancers. Stretching classes are mainly attended by athletes and dancers, probably some people overcoming injury, and not necessarily as much by the mainstream fitness crowd. It features lots of stretching movements that are useful for people who move their bodies a lot. I hear many tango dancers in BA do this everyday instead of yoga.
- Pilates – an exercise that was probably originally intended for dancers but them became mainstream as a fitness trend. It’s great for core strength and body toning. I think it’s very challenging, almost to the point of being unnecessarily difficult, and only marginally improves your body control. It’s great if you want to strengthen things but I think for dance, coordination is more important than strength.
- Weights – for the most part, weight training is useless for developing tango skills. The only exercises I recommend are doing the ankle weights thing (wearing weights while doing exercises) to help build some leg control.
Waste of Time
- Alexander technique – is a method of removing tension in your body and becoming more mindful of your daily body movement habits. Proponents of AT will say it’s the best thing ever, requires lots of training, and does wonders for the body. I’ve found it to be potentially helpful but not as life-changing as other methods. I hear the training is 3 years and that it’s intense, but the AT instructors I’ve tried didn’t seem to be experts in body movement at all…or at least not anywhere close to the gyrotonics/ballet/pilates instructors I’ve had. I would guess that I connect better with dancers and many AT practitioners are not dancers and therefore not movement specialists in my eye.
- Salsa – this one has a negative/detrimental effect on your tango. Salsa will make your hips too loose. It is however great for the fun and social vibe if you’re not getting that in tango.
- Cross-fit – this is just cardio exercise if you feel like you’re not in shape. I don’t believe it will help your tango, unless you’re a really old tired person who doesn’t move all day.
Are you using any other methods of tango cross-training that I don’t know about? School me (in the comments below).