I am a Lindy Hop dancer, and dancing / teaching dancing is a big part of my life. Having a back injury in 2023, which tied me to bed for days, was not the best thing happened to me. At that point I decided to start learning how to prevent injuries in the future and that led me to live a healthier and more active life.

Problem Detected

Since I wanted to take more serious measures I decided to start exercising with a personal trainer. I should say it has changed my approach towards “going to gym” quite a lot. When I realized that we will work on things gradually and we track what we do, that took my attention.

Overcoming the Fear by Doing

I was very much afraid of working with weights. I remember in the first days the exercises on my program was carrying weight on a line back and forth. We started with 4kg kettle bells, I remember I was complaining that it would be too much. Then in couple weeks I was ready to do up to 8kg kettle bells. The same exercises that initially felt intimidating started to feel normal.

Discovering Strength Training

Over time, the training program expanded to include more structured strength exercises such as deadlifts. At first this felt like a big milestone. Deadlifting was exactly the kind of movement I previously believed would be dangerous for my back.

Instead, learning the correct technique and building strength gradually made the movement feel stable and controlled. Below is an example of one of my deadlift training sessions.

How This Changed my Dancing

One of the most interesting things I started noticing was how strength training affected my dancing. Lindy Hop can involve very fast tempos, quick weight transfers, and a lot of rotational movement. As my strength and stability improved, I started feeling more confident during fast dances. Movements felt more controlled, and I experienced less fatigue during long dance nights.

Eventually, after about a year of training, I even won a small Lindy Hop competition in Tartu in 2024. While the competition itself is a small milestone, for me it was a strong signal that the work I had been putting into strength and recovery was making a difference.

Questions I Became Curious

This experience made me curious about the relationship between training, recovery, and performance:¨

  • Does strength training improve endurance in fast tempo dancing?
  • How does sleep affect how ready I feel for dancing?
  • Can wearable data help detect fatigue before it turns into injury?

I don’t yet have complete answers to these questions, but they are the kinds of things I’ve started exploring through personal experiments and by looking at my own health data.