Passion for Dance

It's the first guest interview episode of the Passion for Dance Podcast, with Katie Groven of Dancer-Fitness.com! Katie is an ACSM certified personal trainer, holistic health coach, and two-time world champion dancer. She is the creator of dancer-fitness.com an online exercise database designed to optimize dancer's skills with strength training. She has combined her 25 years of dance and her expertise in fitness to empower dancers of all ages to view themselves as athletes and give coaches and teachers the tools to increase their strength, endurance, injury prevention, and overall performance.

In this interview, we talk about the importance of strength training specific to dancer's needs and goals, why it doesn't take as much time as you think, our views on whether dancers are athletes, and so much more.

Katie Groven

Website: Dancer-Fitness.com

Email: [email protected]

Instagram: @dancer_fitness.com_

Episode Sponsor: National Dance Coaches Association

Website and conference information: https://nationaldancecoaches.org

Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me on instagram @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode.

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/10

Did you know I have virtual and in-person workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

How do you become a confident dancer? Are some dancers just born as more confident people while others have to struggle with self-consciousness? The short of it is, yes some people are naturally more confident but no matter what, you can learn to be more confident. There are specific things you can do to train your brain to see the world differently and feel more confident every time you take the stage. But even if you are usually a confident person, no one feels confident 100% of the time. It's natural for confidence to fluctuate a little and everyone needs a boost now and then. So in this episode, I share 5 specific strategies to boost your confidence as a dancer.

Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me on Instagram @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode.

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/9

Did you know I have virtual and in-person workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Many of us have seen the dancer who freezes when they try to do a hard skill. It could be a new hip hop trick, new jump, aerial, just about anything. But it's common when dancers are trying to learn a new challenging skill that they freeze up and absolutely can't do it. OR maybe it's a skill they've had before but something happens like they miss it during an important competition or they get injured and now they have a mental block and can't perform the skill anymore. As a teacher, you want to keep encouraging them and say "you can do this! Just go for it!" But they are frozen in place. How do you help a dancer get over their mental blocks? In this episode, I share with you the simple 4 step process to overcoming a mental block.

Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me on Instagram @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode.

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/8

Did you know I have virtual and in-person workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Have you ever choked under pressure? Let the nerves get to you and ruin an audition or performance? What about as a director or coach, have you watched one of your dancers get so nervous that they freeze and you get that deer in headlights look? You know what I'm talking about, and it's devastating. In this episode, I share a very simple one-minute breathing exercise that will help you calm the nerves in order to perform.

Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode.

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/7

Did you know I have private workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Dance educators work for the love of dance. But it certainly helps if we have a group of dancers we adore and want to work with every day. This episode is a conversation about creating a positive culture and it will apply if you coach a school team, teach at a studio, own a studio, or really any situation where you are working with dancers or other dance educators. Team culture is what keeps us going. If you work with good people, you stay. Dancers work harder for a team they feel a part of. Dance teachers stay loyal to a studio with good culture. It's what makes a lot of the hard stuff worth it. So how do you create a positive culture? I'll share the two key elements of creating a positive culture, values and communication.

Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/6

Did you know I have virtual workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

As educators, we are trained in the skills of our sport. We know how to teach our athletes to clean up a routine, improve their turn technique, or achieve a new hip-hop trick. What we don't always understand is how to coach them to prepare for competition day. Or lately, how to coach through a pandemic. If you never talk to your dancers about mindset and spend time specifically training your athletes to deal with unpredictability, you're allowing for the unexpected to clutter their minds and pull their focus to the wrong place.

In this episode, I share my #1 mindset mantra that usually functions as a competition day mindset, but lately, it's my whole mindset for the pandemic. It's the mindset you need to stay motivated and accept the uncertainty: "Control the Controllables."

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Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/5

Did you know I have virtual workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Many of us choose to teach our dancers with the same disciplinary approach we grew up with and that often includes punishment when dancers don't follow the rules.

Why do we use punishment? Because it usually works and provides the desired short-term result. But is it the best thing for the long-term goals of your program and the psychological health of your dancers?

In this episode, I want to let you know about the research in psychology around punishment and performance, discipline, and mental health. Hopefully, you can take this information and use it to guide your own teaching style based on the age of your dancers and your overall approach to education.

Because punishment is necessary sometimes, but there are important guidelines to how you implement punishment that will help protect your dancers' mental health.

And if you have struggled with punishment and how to handle it in your specific dance context, send me DM on Instagram, I'd love to chat with you more about it!

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Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Check out the full show notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/4

Did you know I have virtual workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Let's talk about that terrible emotion ... disappointment. Disappointment is normal, and everyone goes through it, but it can be really hard to get over. There's probably something in your dance past that haunts you. I know I do have plenty of things I'm disappointed about over the years!

In this episode, I share the six steps to dealing with disappointment, the story of my own biggest disappointments as a dancer, and how I wish I had used these strategies to get over it.

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Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to the episode. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/3

Did you know I have virtual workshops for dancers, teams, studios, and teachers!? I love working with dancers and dance educators by creating a workshop that is custom to your dancers. We can talk about motivation, goals, resilience, confidence... any mental skill! Find out more about my workshop offers by going to https://chelseapierotti.com/servcies

Dancers train our whole lives for only a few minutes on stage. Just a few minutes under the stage lights, just one opportunity to show off what we've worked so hard on. And sometimes we leave the stage feeling like it wasn't enough.

I want to make sure if your dancers leave the stage and feeling like they made a mistake, or wishing they had a chance to do it over again, that you'll know how to support them.

Because dancers have to learn to be resilient. We need to teach them how to bounce back after bad news and how to pick ourselves up and try again when we lose.

Resilience is one of the greatest life lessons we can learn from dance. But it won't happen automatically. That's why in this episode we talk about how to build resilience in dancers.

Why are some athletes resilient in the face of failure and others lose hope? In short, It takes resilience training. And in this episode, I share a 3 part resilience training, including the READ method for building resilience.

Also: if you have ever had a hard time coming back after a failure, come over to Instagram and DM me. I'd love to hear from you.

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Did you enjoy today's episode? Please leave a rating and review on Apple podcasts!

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening to this week's episode. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and more: https://chelseapierotti.com/2

Plus you can download your free copy of the R.E.A.D. resilience method recap sheet. That way you'll have it at your fingertips the next time you need it!

In this episode, we are going to talk about motivation. It's one of the biggest questions I get: How do we get our dancers to be more motivated in class?

Don't worry, I've got you covered... I'm going to tell you about the 3 basic needs behind motivation. If you can incorporate these 3 needs into your classes and practices, you'll be able to motivate everyone.

Check out the full Show Notes, including episode highlights, key takeaways, exclusive resources, and the free download: 15 Ways to Be a Motivational Coach https://chelseapierotti.com/1

Be sure to snap a screenshot and tag me @dr.chelsea.pierotti as you're listening this week. Remember to use the hashtag #passionfordancepodcast so I can share it on my stories!

Rate, Review, and Subscribe to the show, then send me a dm @dr.chelsea.pierotti and share your biggest takeaway!