Dance Legs

Ahh, the legs. Those marvellous stilts upon which we totter around, those pegs which are celebrated in paintings and porn; those poor things that are supposed to be sculpted out of creamy marble, waxed smooth, and bronzed to a lustrous sheen.

Ha! It’ll be a frosty day in hell before a waxing strip or a tanning bed comes close to my thighs, but I will boast to you all that I’ve got a lovely set of legs. What’s more, I only partially have genetics to thank for that.

I’ve got fabulous legs because, to be blunt, I need them to be that way for dance. It isn’t the need to have a lovely, well-shaped leg peeking out of the slit in my chiffon skirt that drives me to work on them. A dancer must have powerful legs if they: expect to have a smooth and effortless shimmy, wish to glide across the stage in relevé for five straight minutes, to do flawless standing-to-crouching-and-back level changes, or to (may the gods have mercy) draw themselves out of that Turkish Fold as though lifted by strings. These things take raw lower-body power, girls, and more than just a small amount of it.
So what sort of things should a belly dancer do in addition to her regular practice to whip those legs – and by extension, the glutes - into shape?

Well, you could follow Arnold’s example:


Arnold Schwarzenegger Legs Training - Watch the best video clips here

I, however, am both lazy and very selfish with my time. Thus, I have no intention on slaving away at a gym when I could slave away in the comfort of my own home with the company of my husband and his computer game related antics. So here is a series of targeted leg strength moves I use:

1. Bulgarian Split Squats
There are loads of squats you can do, from your regular standing squat where you move up and down, to you junior-high gymclass nightmare squat where you hold your back against the wall and come down to a sitting-in-a-chair position, and many, many more. I don’t usually do these squats. My personal favourite is the Bulgarian Split Squat.

This move is the granddaddy of all my leg workouts. They will blast your quads and glutes into shape like nothing else. First, find a couch, chair, bench, or something sturty of around seat-height. Stand with it behind you, close enough that you can rest one foot on it with your instep resting against the seat and your raised leg bent 90 degrees at the knee. Your supporting leg should be slightly in front of your body so that when you squat down it also bends at a 90 degree angle at the knee. To do the squat, bend until your front leg forms that 90 degree angle, then straighten back up. Do not bend your back. Do 3 sets of between 8 and 12 reps, depending on what you can handle.

For an easier squat, leave your arms by your sides or resting lightly on an object to help with your balance. When I first started doing these, I needed to use a dresser for balance, otherwise I’d fall over. To increase the strength workout, place your hands on top of your head (keeping your balance, of course!). To go even further, hold a pair of dumbbells/free-weights at your hips or – if you have one – a weight bar across your shoulders. To really pump things up, do the squats slowly: 3 counts down, hold for 2 counts, 3 counts up.

Here are some handy-dandy illustrations, courtesy of the Men’s Health website:
Bulgarian Split Squats Explained.

2. Pliés and relevés
These are a basic mainstay for dance training for a good reason. They work your quads like squats, but with proper posture and non-exaggerated turnout, also work the complex clot of muscles around your hips, glutes, inner thighs, and as an added bonus, your calves.

If you are uncertain what a plié or relevé is, check out the following website and video. It gives a pretty good run-down and demonstration of the move:
A Dancer’s Legs.

Lots of benefit can be gained from practicing pliés and relevés with varying stance widths. Widening your stance from heels together to shoulder width, to one-and-a-half shoulder widths and completing sets of repetitions in each is very beneficial and will target different areas in your leg. Always maintain correct posture: glutes and abs strong and engaged, back straight, shoulders down, knees bending over the centre of the toes. Like the squats, you can increase the difficulty of the move by changing arm positions, adding hand weights, and slowing down the movement.

3. Cycling
Okay, so this isn’t an at-home type of exercise. But part of the reason why I love it is that it turns my daily commute into a great cardio and leg-targeted workout.* Multitasking commutes and workouts is fantastic, and due to traffic I actually get to work faster by cycling than by driving.** Plus, it doesn’t involve going to the gym, unless you cycle there, and there’s a whole lot of people with an bike rusting away in their garage, lamenting its lack of use.

4. Sitting to Kneeling Rises

There must be a better name for these, but I don’t know what it is. Essentially, you start by kneeling on the floor with your legs spread apart a bit and sitting on your heels. Then, with your back very straight and still and your arms out at shoulder level, you rise from sitting to kneeling, then lower back down again. Do this slowly, and do it many, many times. This is the single best move to building up enough strength to lower into and rise out of Turkish Folds.

Once you build up some strength, you can change from lowering into a sitting position to holding your back in line with your hips, and your hips in line with your knees, and lowering your entire torso into a backwards lean (like a plank that’s hinged to the floor), and then rising up out of it. If you have knee problems, be very careful – there is no pretending that this isn’t hard on the knees.

So there you have it: a toolkit to lead you towards marble-sculpted legs and improved strength for dance. Don’t forget to stretch afterwards, kids: it’s hard to shimmy when your hips and knees have fused to your femurs!


*Okay, I admit that I don’t cycle every day. If I have an appointment to run to after work or if I’m not feeling well I will drive in and walk the 8 blocks from the closest free parking spot to my office. Once the snow flies, that’ll be the end of cycling until the ice melts, so I’ll have to bus in earlier and make up for the lost exercise by going to the campus gym (membership fees are mandatory through our union dues, so I might as well use ‘em).

**I also feel as though I’m doing the morning commuters a favour by providing roadside entertainment. I’m a phenomenally clumsy cyclist and the results of my efforts are akin to a moving sideshow. I’ll tell you about it in a future post.