Dance helps pro athletes including Kobe Bryant
March 23, 2020
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Toronto Raptors guards Kyle Lowry and Matt Thomas made their dance debut this past December with the National Ballet of Canada’s production of The Nutcracker. Those efforts were in part comic relief, as the Raptor teammates had no training and served as celebrity guests. But there is a history of professional athletes having been trained in dance – including one future Hall of Fame basketball player.
After the recent tragic death of Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash along with his daughter and seven other passengers, Dance Magazine noted that tap dance had played a part in Kobe Bryant’s training. The legendary Laker, in fact, took tap dance lessons with the aim of strengthening his ankles after suffering a sprained ankle in the 2000 NBA finals. This wasn’t public knowledge, and Bryant said that it was “kept secret for obvious reasons.”
Bryant couldn’t just walk into a dance store and purchase size 14 tap shoes. Rather, he had them custom made. In Bryant’s autobiography, ‘The Mamba Mentality: How I Play,’ he describes how tap lessons helped to keep him free from injury. In 2018, Bryant spoke with late night host Jimmy Kimmel about how he walked into a dance studio filled with young students’ questioning looks, but that he persevered, and it aided his game.
It has also been reported, over the years, that ballet has helped many football players, as well, to improve their balance, flexibility and cross training to effectively help their game. It is well known that Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, who starred in the 1980s and 90s, took ballet lessons to become a better all-round athlete. Lynn Swann, a Pro Football Hall of Fame wide receiver, recognized the benefits of ballet even before that (Swann starred in the 1970s and early 80s).
Former running back Eddie George, another Heisman Trophy winner who was a standout in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was also a proponent of ballet, while current 300-pound New York Jets tackle Steve McLendon has also enjoyed the benefits of ballet.
Figure Skating has always been know as a graceful art and sport. But maybe you didn't know that all figure skaters take Ballet. It is the reason they are so graceful on ice! The stretching and conditioning also keeps them free from injuries and strengthens their ankles for gliding on a single blade. Just ask any world champion figure skater and you will find that Dance is always a part of their training!
Steve McLendon: Ballet is 'harder than anything else I do'
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Steelers nose tackle Steve McLendon started ballet when he was a senior college. He hasn't given it up yet.
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JSteve McLendon likes to get his dance on. (USATSI)
If you like your ballet dancers built like NFL nose tackles, we have got the ballet dancer for you.
That would be Steelers nose tackle Steve McLendon, who says that he’s been taking ballet dancing since his senior year of college ( I almost wrote that he “admitted” he’s been taking lessons, but in reality, it’s awesome that McLendon is macho enough to talk about his other hobby -- of course, it’s not like anybody’s going to pick on McLendon. He’s 320 pounds, for gosh sakes).
But strapping on those slippers isn’t an easy task.
“It's harder than anything else I do," McLendon told the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
Which is not what he expected when he first started taking ballet, in essence to earn some so-called easy credits in his final year at Troy. His instructor told him that learning and practicing ballet could keep him in football, and apparently, he believed it. Enough so that he continues it to this day.