Nikki Naab-Levy is a massage therapist, fitness educator, and pilates teacher. Nikki’s philosophy is very different from the rest of the fitness industry, which preaches “No pain, no gain!” (She calls it the “yelly, screamy side of fitness.") Instead, Nikki believes that your fitness routine should be supportive of the activities and sports that you love and that it doesn’t have to hurt.

A lot of athletes, including dancers wear their injuries like a badge of honor and power through. Nikki gives the analogy of the fire alarm in her house: the battery is low and it keeps beeping. It drives her crazy, but instead of changing the battery, she just closes the door so she can't hear it. Not good if the house catches on fire! It’s the same thing with our bodies- when we ignore the small pains, it can add up until suddenly the house burns down.

Some of the most common injuries for dancers come from the need for mobility. Nikki points out that we can take a lot of different pathways to achieve a certain shape or movement, but if we are more mobile in one area than another, it can be easy to overuse the same joint over and over.

To prevent injuries from hypermobility, Nikki encourages training for stability in the joints that move too much and mobility in the joints that don’t move enough. For example, stabilizing deeper muscles in the low back and then working on mobility in the upper back so that it can also be part of the backbend.

The nervous system is an important part of this. It protects us by tightening muscles that feel unsafe. This means that simply stretching a tight muscle can be counterproductive.

Lots of dancers get ready for a show by amping up their fitness or class routine. However, being sore from a workout can inhibit performance and actually increase your risk for injury. Nikki recommends scaling back on the workouts and increasing gentler activities such as yoga.

She talks about the difference between the pain from being sore and pain from an injury. Giving yourself 24-48 hours to recover from a hard workout that makes you sore is totally normal and acceptable. But pain in a joint could be a warning sign telling you to slow down.

Pushing yourself to be sore after every single workout continues to create microtears in your muscles. Short-term, this isn’t a bad thing. But if repeated over a long period of time, this stiffness and soreness can inhibit performance.

We all get injured from time to time no matter what we do to prevent it. Sitting on the sidelines sucks, but it doesn’t mean you can’t move at all. It just means you have get a little creative about what activities you choose.

A pattern for dancers seems to be bouncing back and forth between PT and the dance studio. (I've been there!) Nikki points out that being functional is not the same as getting to the point of strength to support all the things you’re doing in dance. Being able to walk on two feet is not the same as being able to dance at a high-performance level.

One way to help mobilize, strengthen, and stabilize is through myofascial release, which can be done at home with a ball or foam roller.

Nikki describes fascia as the “fabric of the body,” or a 3D matrix of tissue that contains a bunch of sensory nerves. One way to accomplish myofascial release at home is with a foam roller. You can stimulate the tissue by compression (along the grain of the tissue) or stretch (working across the grain.) For more specific exercises, check out the link to Nikki’s foam rolling guide at the end of the show notes!

Function is not the same as being specialized in a certain area. While you don’t want to take yourself away from your specialty, you also need to train outside of the studio in a way that brings your body closer to balance. For all the big, hard things you do, add other things that balance it out so you are not constantly working on the same joint.

Nikki’s inspirations are Janet Sunderland, who is her friend, boss, coworker, and Judith Aston, who is a former dancer and rolfer.

You can find Nikki at naablevy.com. She has a ton of great information. We barely scratched the surface in this interview, so if you want to know, definitely checkout her stuff and subscribe to Moving Well Podcast. She has also offered listeners a FREE FOAM ROLLING GUIDE!

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