Why Lagree Is Great for Dancers
Lagree is an exceptional cross-training method for dancers, focusing on core strength, alignment, flexibility, balance, and muscular endurance, all foundational to safe, expressive, and sustainable dance practice. Its low-impact, high-intensity format uses resistance and slow, controlled movements on a moving platform, requiring total-body awareness and precision.
Key Benefits for Dancers
● Improved Core Strength
A strong, stable core supports balance, posture, and controlled transitions—vital for turns, floorwork, and partnering. Lagree deeply targets the entire core, including obliques and deep stabilisers, helping dancers build integrated strength and control. It also particularly strengthens the hip joints, crucial for maintaining alignment and generating power.
● Postural Alignment & Knee Awareness
Lagree emphasises precise mechanics, helping dancers tune into knee tracking and placement, especially during transitions from plié to straight leg. This is particularly beneficial for dancers with hypermobility or hyperextension, who often need to build muscular control and joint awareness to protect their knees and prevent injury.
● Full-Body Engagement on an Unstable Surface
The moving carriage activates stabilising muscles and challenges balance, training dancers to maintain control in constantly shifting environments, just like on stage. This helps improve joint stability and promotes mobility and strength, especially in the hips and knees.
● Increased Foot & Ankle Stability
Exercises on the Lagree machine improve foot arch control, ankle strength, and overall lower leg stability, essential for pointe work, grounded floorwork, and maintaining strong lines.
● Joint-Friendly Strength Training
Lagree’s low-impact approach allows dancers to build strength and muscular endurance without adding stress to joints, making it ideal during recovery periods or while managing injuries.
● Flexibility & Functional Range
Lagree increases flexibility while simultaneously lengthening and strengthening
muscles through resistance-based movement. This develops long, lean muscle tone and supports functional mobility, allowing for bigger, more expressive movement without sacrificing control.
● Injury Prevention & Muscle Isolation
Lagree strengthens often-overlooked muscle groups—especially the inner thighs, which contribute to core activation and spinal mobility. Dancers learn to activate and isolate specific muscles (particularly useful for working in turnout), gaining the ability to turn them on and off with intention, improving control and reducing tension. This deepened awareness helps prevent overuse injuries and enhances overall movement efficiency.
● Slow-Twitch Muscle Activation & Endurance
Lagree specifically targets slow-twitch muscle fibers, responsible for muscular endurance and stamina. These muscles support long-duration activity without fatigue, helping dancers develop lean muscle tone, sustained control, and the stamina needed for long rehearsals and demanding performances, without bulking or compromising range of motion.
● Mental Discipline, Focus & Active Listening
Lagree builds not only physical strength but also mental resilience and focus. The method’s slow tempo and time-under-tension format require complete presence in every rep. Because movements are held and extended in time, dancers can tune their minds into each phase of motion, developing heightened awareness of how the body transitions, activates, and aligns. This deep mind-body connection sharpens coordination, control, and performance presence—crucially, it also cultivates the ability to actively listen to cues and corrections while in motion, allowing dancers to quickly adjust and refine technique during rehearsal or performance.
Personal Reflection
As a professional dancer living with scoliosis and having undergone spinal fusion, I have found Lagree to be truly transformative. It offers me a dedicated moment to realign my body and focus on precise alignment in a way that many other training methods do not. Beyond that, Lagree strengthens and engages my muscles through new patterns of movement, adding an invaluable layer to my training. It pushes and challenges my body in ways that are especially important as I already train at a high/professional level—it adds that extra spice and variety to keep my practice dynamic and evolving. Very important for people training at a professional level in any field. It supports not just my physical strength and flexibility but also cultivates the mindful control necessary for me to move safely and expressively, despite the challenges of my condition. For dancers facing physical challenges or simply seeking to deepen their practice, Lagree is an exceptional tool for sustainable, empowered movement—it’s like an extra tool to have in your dancer’s toolbox.
Writen by Beth MooneyWritten