With the Fred Astaire Franchised Dance Studios National
Dance Championships only a few weeks away, many dancers are already starting to
prepare for the competition. In order to be fully ready for competition, you
want to make sure you are treating your body right for the next few weeks so
you are able to handle the demands of competing. Follow these nutritional guidelines
to help yourself have the best performance possible!
1. Drink Plenty of Water
Drinking plenty of water
throughout the day is essential when it comes to your health and your
performance. Once you feel thirsty, dehydration has already begun to set in. Even
being slightly dehydrated can lower your ability to concentrate and impact your
performance. You must drink water regularly throughout the day, especially
leading up to competition.
The amount of water
you should drink per day is based on your body weight. Take the number of how much
you weigh and cut it in half. That shows you how many ounces of water you
should be drinking per day. For example, someone who is 150lbs would need 75
ounces of water per day. Divide the number of ounces by 8 to estimate how many
cups of water per day you need, and you get 9- 8 oz. glasses of water. Drink
up!
2. Do Not Focus on
Losing Weight
With the pressure of having to fit
into costumes, it is understandable to experience some anxiety before a
competition. The last thing you should do in the weeks leading up to
competition, though, is go on a crash diet. That would drastically change what
your body is used to and would deprive your body of the fuel it needs to
strongly perform. Your strength and stamina will decline as your muscles and
body lose the nourishment needed to keep up with the competition.
Instead, only adjust your diet to
make sure it includes a balance of various healthy foods and leave out the “junk”
foods. If you make this adjustment while also increasing your water intake, you
will feel noticeably better and may even drop any extra weight you may feel you
have in a natural way that won’t deprive your body.
3. Eat the Right Types of Food
Many styles of dance can cause the
muscles to fatigue at a fast pace due to the short bursts of intense movement
required for the choreography. During these types of activities, your body
relies on blood sugar and your body’s stored carbohydrates to get through.
To avoid that feeling of
exhaustion after a routine, introduce foods with complex carbohydrates into
your meals for the weeks leading up to the competition. These include whole
grain breads, pasta and fruit. These will give your body the energy it needs
while keeping your blood sugar level consistent. Foods such as candy and soda
will spike your blood sugar and should be avoided because after the initial
short burst of energy it provides, it then causes you to crash quickly with
little to no energy left afterwards.
4. Don’t Try to Drastically Change
your Diet
You want to make sure you are
eating healthy leading up to a competition but doing a 180 degree turn with
your diet will do more damage than good! Your body has adjusted to your day to
day diet so changing too much, too fast can have a negative effect on your
strength and stamina. A bigger potential risk is not knowing the type of
reaction your body could have to a newly introduced food. Having an adverse
reaction to something this close to competition could potentially put you OUT
of the competition!
Instead of completely changing
your diet right away, slowly make healthy adjustments in the weeks leading up
to the competition. A healthy diet for dancers consists of 50-65% Carbohydrates
such as pastas and baked potatoes, 12-15% Proteins such as lean meats and
legumes and 20-30% healthy fats from foods like avocados, nuts and seafood. Keeping
this balance will help increase your stamina, energy and help to repair and
build muscles.
For 24-48 hours before a
competition, it is also probably a good idea to avoid foods that are salty and
that can cause bloating such as beans, cucumber, cabbage and cauliflower.
Bloating triggered by these foods could cause pain which will pull your focus
away from your performance.
5. Portion your Meals Correctly
It is easy to notice that over
time, food portions have gotten larger and larger. Many times, you may not even
realize that you are unintentionally consuming numerous unnecessary calories.
Even if you are eating the right types of foods, eating too much of them can
still have a negative impact on your body.
A simple way to determine an
appropriate portion size for your body is by actually using your own hand as a
measurement. By cupping your hand and imagining how much food you could hold in
it (a level amount, not heaping) is considered one handful. If you use that as
a measurement and base your portions on serving yourself approximately two
handfuls of carbohydrates or grains, two handfuls of fruits or vegetables and a
portion of meat or protein the size and width of your palm, you will avoid
overeating.
Another way to avoid overeating at
a meal is to make sure you eat small, healthy snacks in between meals if you get
hungry. Beginning a meal when you are very hungry will make it easier to go for
the second or even third portion. By curbing that hunger beforehand with a
healthy snack, you can make sure to choose your portions based on health
instead of hunger.
6. Eat on Performance Day
It’s normal to be stressed before
any performance but make sure you don’t let that stress keep you from eating on
the morning you are supposed to perform at the competition! When you skip a
meal before performing, you set your body up to fatigue quickly and you risk
experiencing the side effects of low blood sugar. These side effects can
include shakiness, nausea, dizziness, or even blurred vision, all of which
could very much lower the quality of how you dance.
Even enjoying a few healthy snacks
leading up to your performance such as a banana, yogurt, a handful of nuts, or
a classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread will help curb
the side effects. It could also help calm your stomach if you tend to experience
that ‘butterfly’ feeling before going on.
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