I’ve only ever loved one form of movement: dancing. Aside from gym classes and walking laps around my elementary school track, my primary form of exercise since age 3 has taken place in the well-lit, hushed rooms of ballet and performance studios.
This was the result of many attempts by my parents to integrate me into the American Youth Soccer Organization and Little League crowds that kids grow up in. Yet every time my parents brought me to a new activity — soccer, swimming, gymnastics — I detested every second of it.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like exercising or being active, but just that something about the competitive nature of these sports was sour on my tongue, largely due to the early onset of social anxiety in my childhood. It’s terrifying to run into a field, pool, or gym full of kids I didn’t know and test my physical capabilities against them.
Among these failures, the one extracurricular I found myself resonating with was ballet. The orderly, quiet nature of dance, coupled with its footing in both the arts and athletic world, drew me in. Since then, I’ve traded cleats and swimsuits for leotards and tights and spent my evenings competing against no one but myself, striving for perfection with every glissade, jete, and barre combination.
This is the story of many girls and boys who choose ballet and dance over other sports. While I have danced alongside some ballerinas who juggle dance with soccer, lacrosse, and even flag football, others like me have never been able to appreciate other forms of exercise due to the fast-paced, competitive nature of those sports.
I also strongly disliked P.E., in which we ran a dreaded mile every block day. I hated how this otherwise simple and largely individual form of exercise was turned into a competition by forcing all my classmates to run alongside each other in a very public manner, making it easy to identify who could run a mile in less than six minutes and who straggled in the back, struggling to make a mile in nine minutes.
Furthermore, dancing is physically quite different from typical sports. Don’t get me wrong — ballerinas are some of the strongest people you’ll ever meet. But the way we train our muscles is very different from that of track & field athletes or volleyball players.
Instead of running laps or endlessly setting balls to exercise the arm and leg muscles, ballerinas perform intricate barre, center, and across-the-floor combinations on special shoes called pointe shoes. When a dancer is on pointe, she balances all of her weight on the tip of her big toe, requiring immense calf strength, core activation, and perfect posture.
In combinations, every single part of the body must be accounted for. Toes are pointed but not curled over. Hip flexors are engaged and turned out. Shoulders are back. Elbows are lifted. And don’t forget the thousand other minute details that require precision, concentration, and full awareness of one’s own body.
Dancing takes up so much physical and mental space that I’ve never considered engaging in any other type of exercise. Sure, I’ve tried pilates and barre method classes, but I’ve found nothing has clicked the same way ballet does — the way I’m in tune with my body while dancing due to the immense focus it requires has never been replicated in anything else.
But, as is consistent with the theme of this column, I’m a senior, and now is the perfect time to try new things before I’m off to college. So two months ago, for the first time in four years, I did the unthinkable at the gym. I got on the treadmill, and I started running.
I’ve never enjoyed running, but to be fair, it has many benefits. According to WebMD, running can lower your risk of cardiovascular disease, improve your sleep, reduce stress, and strengthen your muscles, among other benefits.
Yet running itself has always been a chore to me. There’s no other way to put it: it’s just not that fun. At least when I’m dancing, there are so many things occupying my mind that it’s like a puzzle to put it all together — the moves, the details, the muscle engagement, the artistry, all of it. With running, you’re literally putting your feet to the pavement and just taking off, with only a throbbing in your chest and your own thoughts to accompany you.
However, on this fateful day, I found myself miraculously continuing to run after the second minute. And then the fifth, and then the tenth, until I realized I had been running for fifteen minutes without stopping or lowering the speed. Once I turned the treadmill speed back down to a walking pace, I placed my arms over my head, took a deep breath, and actually felt incredible.
I always thought the only type of exercise I would ever enjoy was dancing, which led me to feel like I was pigeonholing myself into a corner about how I got my daily movement. But I was also letting myself define how I exercised based on other people’s expectations, not my own.
Who said I had to run a sub-seven-minute mile around the Carlmont track at 8:30 a.m., and no way else? Running at a pace that actually matches your physical ability, at a time and place where you feel more comfortable, and with your favorite playlist blasting in your ears, makes it all the better.
Since then, I’ve integrated running into my gym routine. No matter what muscle group I want to work out that day, I’ll force myself to hop on the treadmill and run for at least 10 minutes. It helps me build stamina, push my threshold past what I thought it could be, and takes my mind off other worries for just a little bit each day.
Another great thing about running is that it does not involve your phone at all, which has been a goal of mine with all my new senior year hobbies. It truly is something that is very in tune with one’s own physicality and limits, causing you to really be comfortably alone with yourself, a commodity rare in a digital world.
So if you’re a single-sport athlete, or a dancer, or just someone who really hates running (or like me, all of the above), then give running a try! When you show up for yourself on your own terms, it doesn’t matter if you give 50% or 110%; at the end of the day, moving your body is the goal we should all strive for.
