Who wouldn't want to learn choreography while getting a dose of cardio workout? Musical theater performance is an athletic skill that requires a lot of training and muscle memory. You put your stamina and skills to the test every time you step on stage.

Unlike traditional workout classes like Zumba and Aerobics, musical theater isn't about pushing yourself to get a shredded body. Instead, it's an occasion to express yourself and break a sweat in the most fun way.

That said, the athleticism in a musical theater is no less intense. Musical theater is a physically demanding art, from dance breaks to stage combat scenes to repeatedly running the same sequences to perfection.

The "athletes" in a musical theater are fine-tuned into performing back-to-back numbers without breaking the character, swinging a broadsword consistently, or playing an acrobatic character without losing the balance.

Music Theater Involves Dancing

Dance is a catch-all exercise that engages both the mind and body. Learning choreography keeps your memory centers alert while engaging your heart, blood circulation, muscles, and joints. Dancing strengthens your lower and upper body through repeated contractions. Plus, it improves your balance and coordination.

Dancing Provides Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercise

With running, you only target aerobics. With resistance training, you only get anaerobic. On the other hand, a theatrical performance combines anaerobic and aerobic for maximizing physical fitness.

You achieve aerobic exercise by moving, jumping, and twirling when you dance. The anaerobic comes in the form of holding positions like squatting and balancing.

Musical theater strengthens your muscles.

Dancing Enhances Your Flexibility

Since dancing is an integral part of a musical, your body is stretched in ways no other form of exercise accomplishes when participating in a musical theater production. This helps develop a flexible body, resulting in fewer chances of injury in a fall or sprain. Besides, flexibility speeds up your recovery by reducing your time to heal after a workout.

Musical Theater Strengthens Your Muscles

While you can't expect to get similar muscle development as deadlifts, a musical still substantially hones your body. It takes muscles to pull off techniques like lifting, leaping, and twirling, making it a part of theater's daily routine.

Dancing Helps Burn Calories

Studies suggest that a quick-paced dance routine can burn about 200 calories in 30 minutes. A musical theater provides a fun way to burn calories—much more fulfilling and enjoyable than, say, treadmill running.

Music Theater Involves Singing

Dance is one thing that makes musical theater an excellent fitness activity. But, when singing enters the scene, a musical turns into a profound form of exercise. What makes this highly rewarding is that singing extends your lifespan, reduces stress, and improves your overall health.

Singing Improves Respiratory and Cardiac Function

Singing is yet another aerobic activity if done for extended periods. In other words, it improves the efficiency of the body's cardiovascular system.

Since you need a significant amount of oxygen to project your voice, singing also improves your blood circulation.

Singing Enhances Lung Function

As you hold music notes for more extended periods, it uses your lung's capacity for air intake to the fullest. Even when seated, singing engages major muscle groups in the upper body.

Singing enhances your lung strength by engaging your muscles around the ribcage and spurring breathing action. This is why singing has been used to rehabilitate people undergoing lung diseases and, more recently, those suffering from COVID-19.

Singing Improves Your Posture

According to Harvard Health, a good posture prevents having inflexible muscles. Not only does it unlock a range of motions, but it also promotes better breathing.

Singing improves your posture because it takes a good posture to adopt the correct singing technique. In order to breathe and hit high notes, you need to maintain a better posture. As a result, it improves your overall posture and strengthens your back muscles.

Singing Gives You Toned Facial Muscles

As you know, singing engages many of the different muscle groups on your face. Controlling and working facial muscles makes singing a natural facial workout, resulting in a toned and younger appearance.

How to Make the Most of a Musical?

Despite being a great exercise, musical theater can test the limits of your strength and stamina. Research found that music has varying cardiorespiratory demands since it is an intermittent activity. Besides, the physical demand of actual performance can be much higher than the classroom training.

We recommend a supplementary workout that emphasizes extra load during training and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to avoid injuries and fatigue. Something energy-intensive and choreography-focused like kickboxing or Zumba should do the trick.

Enroll Your Kids in Our Summer Program

Want your kids to take advantage of all of the health benefits of musical theater? Get them registered for the summer program at SMC in Acton, MA.

Learn more about our summer camp. Or contact us for more information!

Musical Theater as Exercise