Dancing to New Heights: Laura's Journey to World Championships with Atlas High Performance

Dancing to New Heights: An Irish Dancers Journey to World Championships with Atlas High Performance

​Irish dancing is a highly competitive and demanding sport, requiring strength, agility, and endurance. For Irish Dancers, achieving success on the world stage means finding the right balance of training, nutrition, and support.
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Meet one of our long term clients, a talented Irish dancer in her early 20s studying at University. She recently competed at the prestigious World Championships in Montreal, Canada, a testament to her dedication and passion for the sport. Juggling her busy schedule of college, work, and intense Irish dancing classes, she sought a comprehensive solution to enhance her performance and achieve her goals.

Her primary goal in mid-2022 was to qualify for the World Championships, a milestone she successfully reached with the help of Atlas High Performance. Prior to working with our team, she had faced several challenges, including uncertainty about her gym routine, time management, and disappointing past experiences with coaches and events. She was unsure if her journey with Atlas High Performance would yield different results, but she was determined to give it her best shot.

To help reach her full potential, she attended personal training sessions with Stephen, our head of performance, twice a week. On weeks when she couldn't make it to the personal training sessions, she used our RYPT app to access her personalised training plan and nutrition guide. The app also provided her with educational content on nutrition, allowing her to make informed decisions about her diet and fuel her body effectively, with the help of our coaches as well.

Our approach, which is our standard approach for all Irish Dancers starting with us, began with a thorough testing procedure using the Output Sports sensor. This allowed us to assess her lower body power through various double and single leg jumps, identify any discrepancies between legs, and determine if direct attention was needed. We also tested her reactive jumps – a crucial performance indicator for Irish dancing.

Our primary KPIs (key performance indicators) for irish dancing are:

• Relative strength => how strong you are compared to your bodyweight.
• Lower body power
• Upper body strength
• Robustness => a general terms for how resistant you are to common injuries sustained during your sport

We test these regularly in the gym in all of our sessions. You can see some of the results.

With this baseline information and her primary goal in mind, we designed a program tailored to her needs and based on training twice a week. We continued to use the Output Sports sensor during every session to monitor her progress and adjust the training load accordingly. In addition, we collected wellness data through the RYPT app to gain insights into Laura's day-to-day well-being, ensuring her overall health was not compromised while striving for high performance. Her training sessions were progressed as needed every 5-10 weeks.

A long term look at her readiness to train throughout the month of February.

Her journey with Atlas High Performance led to impressive results, both in her athletic development and her achievements on the dance floor. As you can see from the progression graphs above.

Most specifically she improved her CMJ by 18% and her reactive strength by ~30%. What isn't shown here is her extraordinary strength improvements. She has now been able to perform an unresisted chin up (important for posture in irish dancing) and she can trap bar DL 1.4 times her bodyweight at 75kg+, this is a phenomenal achievement.

Laura's experience with Atlas High Performance has been nothing short of transformative. In her own words:

"Since beginning PT sessions with Stephen I have not had to worry about whether what I was doing was enough to reach my goals as I could physically see and feel the improvements week after week. I was confidently able to put all my trust in Stephen to make me a fitter and stronger dancer. Stephen has always accommodated me as much as possible with times that suited me around my busy schedule, rescheduling PT sessions and trying to find what best suited me around my college work and dancing classes."

Laura's success story demonstrates the power of a personalised and comprehensive approach to athletic development. If you're an Irish dancer or athlete looking to reach new heights in your performance, Atlas High Performance is here to help.

Explore our website or contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can support you on your journey to success. Don't wait – unlock your potential with Atlas High Performance!