How Dancing Changes Your Body

Dancing can have so many benefits for your physical and mental health but it can also make you look pretty good! If you’ve heard of a “dancer’s body”, you know that stereotypically, dancers have enviable bodies. They tend to be lean with visible muscle tone, slim, and graceful. We can’t all be naturally small but even if you aren’t, your own dancer’s body can still be well within your reach. Let’s take a look at what dancing can do for your body.

1) Dancing helps you lose weight

Dancing is a cardio exercise and if you want the exercise you do to help you lose weight, then doing cardio is key. The more calories you burn exercising, the more fat you can lose (along with a healthy diet, of course). Dancing can actually burn a surprisingly high number of calories – around 350-400 calories per hour (depending on the type of dance). Dance forms like ballet can burn even more than that again. For reference, that level of calorie burn is around the same as jogging and cycling. So dancing can be a great tool in your weight-loss journey that can help you to burn fat much more efficiently.

2) Dancing makes your body more toned

Dancing isn’t just a cardio exercise, it also incorporates a lot of strength training. Strength training can help to increase your calorie burn (because muscles burn more calories than fat) but it also helps to grow your muscles. And when your muscles become more visible, your body looks more toned.

Muscles groups targeted by dancing: legs, glutes, hips, lower back, abdomen, arms (for some forms of dance), upper body (for some forms of dance).

As you can see, dancing targets every muscle group in your body, and they will get stronger and bigger over time. For them to be visible, you will also need to lose some of the fat that surrounds them. Which, of course, is something else dancing can help with. So if you’re looking for an exercise that will tone your entire body, then dancing is perfect for you.

3) Dancing improves your posture

You could have a killer body but if you hold yourself in a hunched position, it is never going to look its best. The great thing about dancing is that it can also help you to hold your body with proper posture. Some of this is through direct training in your dance class, depending on the type of dance, but some of it happens naturally because of the changes that are happening in your body.

Good posture relies on the position of your spine. Your head should be directly above your shoulders (not hunched forward), your legs should be straight, your tummy tucked in, and your shoulders back. All of these positions need decent spinal and back support, as well as a strong core. Dancing can help to improve all of these things. All types of dance will increase your core strength and will increase the strength of the muscles and fibers in your back. Once that happens, your back and core will have the strength to be able to hold you up in the correct position and you will naturally develop a better posture.

4) Dancing changes how you move

How your body looks doesn’t just depend on what it looks like when you’re standing still. The way you move around is also an important part of how your body looks. Dancing increases your flexibility because of how it stretches your muscles, and this shows itself in an improved range of motion throughout your body. It also helps to improve your balance and coordination. So you will begin to move in a more self-assured and coordinated way, and you will appear more confident and graceful.

The bottom line

Taking up dancing can make a big difference to how your body looks. Not only can it help you to lose fat, but it can also build your muscles to make your body more toned, and it can improve your posture and help you to move in a more confident and graceful way. All of these elements combined are what makes a dancer’s body look so good, and these changes are achievable for anybody who makes dance a part of their life.