Attack, Stamina & Power | Part 3 - Stamina for Irish Dance

While getting through your full hardshoe round may feel like running a marathon, the way our bodies function to utilize fuel and oxygen to generate energy is very different between these activities. Irish dance is more like a sprint--you use extremely high amounts of energy over a relatively short amount of time. Both “low and slow” activities, like long runs or bike rides, and “high and fast” activities, like Irish dance or sprinting, might feel equally challenging, but they actually create energy in two very different ways. Both systems are always “on,” regardless of what kind of activity you’re doing, but under different conditions one will create more energy than the other.

These two energy pathways are called the aerobic system or the anaerobic system--literally meaning with oxygen or without oxygen. This means that the aerobic system uses oxygen to create energy for you to use, so it works best under conditions where there’s