4 Games and Exercises That Improve Mind and Body Coordination

Good mind and body coordination are some of the attributes that show a dancer’s skill level as an athletic artist. Before practicing your dance for the auditions of your dream pro cheer team, we at PRO CHEER LIFE highly suggest that you improve these attributes.

This is so that you can easily learn and perform complicated dance routines during your audition prep and the audition rounds. Know what you need to do to increase your mind and body coordination by reading on.

1. Balloon volleyball

Blow two or three balloons with different colors. Don’t use Helium gas. Toss all of them up in the air and prevent them from touching the ground. This little game will train you to keep your attention on multiple visual and auditory elements.

Keeping the balloons in the air will also improve control over your arm’s movements and the effort you exert. In summary, balloon volleyball is one of the best games to make your upper body move accurately when dancing.

2. Hand to foot clap

In terms of full-body coordination, hand-to-foot clap is one of the warmup exercises dancers do before a practice or live performance. To start, stand in place, lift your left foot, and clap your right hand with the inside of the raised foot.

Then alternate it with your other foot and hand. Now, lift your left foot backward and clap it with your right hand from the back. Do the rear alternate version as well. Repeat the entire process and keep on doing the exercise until you feel a little fatigue.

3. Target practice

Target practice games prepare your mind and body for agile responses. This strategy is often used by dancers to stay in choreography with other performers. To play target practice, tape balloons to a wall and hit all of them as fast as possible using a single tennis ball.

By doing this every day, you’ll be able to quickly mimic dance moves from an instructor or squadmate if you forget the sequence of dance routines.

4. Seated hand and foot clap

In auditions and live arena performances, there are routines that would require you to drop on the floor before transitioning to the next sequence of dance moves. This is called floorwork. Amateur and rookie dancers often make a lot of mistakes during floorwork due to wrong arm and leg movements.

The seated hand and foot clap exercise will train you how to distinguish your individual limb movement so you can accurately perform floorwork. At first, it will be easy to perform this exercise. But it becomes harder once you alternate claps. This is a good sign because it shows that you have poor coordination and there’s room for improvement.

There are more exercises and games you can do to boost your movement accuracy as a dancer. Some additional examples are juggling, jumping rope, puzzle-solving, tightrope walking, and tennis ball games. But first, try to master all the games and exercises on this list before moving on to them.

We’ve covered other exercises that would improve your skill as a dancer. Make sure to read them below!

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