Return to Salsa Dance Post-COVID

Scrolling through my social media, I see studios getting ready for re-opening. There is the familiar 6ft away stickers on the floor, please wear you masks signs, and a few more hand sanitizer bottles around the studio. What I don’t see though, is advice on how to get back to class - and I want to fix that.

Working in the clinic, I’m seeing A LOT of new people right now…and I’m hearing three similar story arcs. They go something like this:

“So I was going to the gym and then……… pandemic. I couldn’t work out and I started feeling pain again”

or

“My back started hurting one month into working from home and it’s only gotten worse because I’m home sitting all day.”

or

“ I wasn’t doing [insert activity] because of COVID and when I tried to go back to it, my [insert body part] started hurting.”

The first two stories, ok, there was probably a root cause that was never addressed properly and it crept up after inactivity. Fine. The third story, however, is something that can be prevented. However, you need to be smart about how to return to salsa dancing after months of little to no dancing. I recommend the following:

1) While tempting, don’t jump into the highest level class you were taking pre-pandemic. While it might hurt your ego, drop a level, start there, and see how your body feels after taking that class. If nothing bothers you, or you’re not intensely sore 1-3 days later, then jump back up to your highest level. This piece of advice, more than anything, will protect your body from disuse injury. Remember, you have not taken a dance class, consistently, for 6 months!!! That’s plenty of time to detrain your muscles from what you’re used to. If you follow this advice your body will thank you, even if your ego is a bit bruised.

2) Before going back to a physical class, take an online class! So many great benefits to this! You can take that lower level in the comfort of your own home. You can ease into dancing on the balls of your feet again. You can take class with your favorite dancer from Italy, or California, or NY without spending money on a plane ticket! I recently took a class from Johana Villar in Quito, Ecuador. It was fantastic!

3) Bring out those dance shoes, dust them off, and start wearing them! Remember when you first started dancing and you thought you would die dancing in your shoes for the entire class? Then, after a few weeks, you got used to it? Well, it’ll happen again unless you ease yourself back into them. Unfortunately, detraining muscles is a lot easier than training them. So start with wearing them half the time you’re used to. Dance a song or two in them, see how you feel. Feels ok? GREAT! Next time, try dancing another song. And so on and so on.

These are my top three but there is definitely more to do to make sure your body is ready to dance salsa again. Let me know how else you’re preparing for a return to class in the comments below.

As always Pura Vida, mi gente!