In 2023, The Royal Ballet School and the University of Essex launched a research project to identify optimal strength training provisions for pre-professional ballet dancers. The research sits at the cutting edge of performance science and could prove pivotal to the development of healthy, strong, resilient dancers.
The Royal Ballet School’s Strength and Conditioning Coach for Upper School, Jamie Harding, is leading this research for his PhD. His studies examine how targeted weight training can help dancers improve their strength and performance while minimising the risk of injury. University of Essex scientists are studying Royal Ballet School students to collate data that will inform Harding’s PhD.
Harding is leading five studies, which are now well underway and will run until early 2025. The studies will uncover the ways that strength training can best support dancers as they mature.
The Importance of Harding’s PhD at The Royal Ballet School
Harding notes that ballet holds a unique position as an aesthetic art that doubles as a high-performance sport. He explains that dancers “perform feats that are unimaginable” to most people. The research that he is conducting will “make sure their bodies are up to the gruelling demands.”
The Supervisor and Programme Lead at the University of Essex’s School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences adds that elite dancers face similar physical challenges to elite athletes. As a result, strength and conditioning is essential to lower the risk of injuries while enhancing performance.
A Deep Dive Into Harding’s Research Process
The first part of Harding’s PhD research involves a reliability study. This study examines the physical profiling tests the School conducts with dancers at the beginning of each term. These tests measure and monitor a student’s strength, power, and muscular endurance.
Harding has conducted these tests for years and is interested in making sure the results are as accurate as possible. His reliability study compares the results of the same tests completed on two different occasions. The results will help the School understand whether a change in score comes down to real change or an error in the test.
The initial findings of the reliability study show that the profiling tests are accurate. These findings give the School (and other schools and performance settings) peace of mind that changes flagged in the tests are real performance changes, not errors.
The Next Part of the Research: Examining Dancers’ Changing Profiles
Harding’s second and third studies investigate the ways that an elite adolescent ballet dancer’s physical performance profile may evolve during a training year.
There is a lack of academic research into elite 11-to-19-year-old ballet dancers’ normative power, strength, and muscular endurance levels. As there aren’t many studies in this area, Harding’s research could be transformative in the wider ballet world.
Harding’s research team is using data from the reliability study to build a physical performance profile of a male and female ballet dancer. These profiles cover every year of training in White Lodge and Upper School. The Healthcare team will use the profiles to monitor whether they are improving the physical profile of dancers year-on-year.
The School will also share its internal reference values and profiles of each year group with the wider ballet industry. As one of the world’s leading ballet centres, The Royal Ballet School is always transparent with its information so other organisations can use this to guide their practices.
Monitoring Changes in Strength, Power, and Muscular Endurance
Harding’s third study involves testing the dancers at the beginning and end of each term. These tests monitor any changes in strength, power, and muscular endurance. Typically, dancers’ physical performance improves over time. However, some circumstances mean this isn’t always the case.
In fact, a dancer’s physical qualities often fluctuate over a year. So far, the performance data reveals that, in some cases, dancers are at their most tired at the point the Healthcare team predicted they would be at their physical peak.
Given this finding, the School will optimise its training approach by refining its scheduling strategies and adjusting its strength and conditioning programmes.
The Healthcare team will identify why a dancer is physically fatigued when they need to be at their strongest. Key members of this team will then alter their training to ensure the dancer achieves peak performance and avoids fatigue.
Micro Dosages of Strength and Conditioning Training
Harding’s final study explores how different methods of delivering strength and conditioning training can improve dancers’ physical performance. Comparing these methods is helping The Royal Ballet School narrow down the most effective.
For this study, Harding divided Upper School students into three groups. Each group comprises students with an equal mixture of strength, power, and muscular endurance test results. The groups are following three different strength and conditioning schedules:
So far, Harding and the Healthcare team have found that the three 15-minute sessions prove more effective than the 45-minute session. This is because the longer sessions can lead to fatigue and cause scheduling issues.
Harding notes that if splitting strength and conditioning training into smaller sessions can make these sessions more digestible, adaptations may also be beneficial across other areas of strength, power, and endurance training.
How The Royal Ballet School Has Adapted Strength and Conditioning Sessions
Given these findings, The Royal Ballet School has already introduced the 15-minute strength and conditioning sessions to its timetables. Now, dancers often move straight into a 15-minute strength and conditioning session when they finish a class.
At this point, energy is high and dancers are already warm, so they don’t need to warm up and spend extra energy. As they stay in the studios, they also save the time they previously spent walking to the gym and changing clothes.
The School has purchased heavy-duty trolleys so staff can transport all strength and conditioning equipment from the gym to the studios. This equipment includes kettlebells, dumbbells, weight plates, and plyometric boxes.
So far, students have reported that they enjoy the more frequent sessions and feel fresher in the next day’s training. Some students also find they can push themselves harder in each session.
Research To Inform the Wider World of Ballet
When The Royal Ballet School and the University of Essex complete this study in 2025, the findings will be published over the months to follow. The School hopes these results will inform the broader dance industry and other performance disciplines.
The School often works with elite research partners, like the University of Essex, to conduct high-level research that supports the wider ballet world. Research helps the School answer performance questions, develop its practice, and deepen its scientific understanding of dancers’ physical needs.
In this instance, Harding’s research will support The Royal Ballet School’s Healthy Dancer Programme. This programme uses student-specific data to provide each dancer with tailored guidance that helps them protect their physical and mental well-being. Findings from the research will enable the School to further optimise this programme.
Read more about the research into strength training for pre-professional ballet dancers.
About The Royal Ballet School
Ever since Dame Ninette de Valois founded The Royal Ballet School in 1926, the organisation has made impressive contributions to the international dance community. Today, the School is one of the globe’s most acclaimed centres of classical ballet training. Students receive a holistic education that sees them flourish as dancers, academic learners, and young people. Many go on to enjoy careers with The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, and other renowned companies.
