Dance helped Lynn Swann become a Hall of Famer. A researcher thinks all athletes could benefit

Editors note: This story is a part of Peak, The Athletics desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports.

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One day in the early 1960s, a fourth-grader in San Mateo, Calif., walked into a dance studio, clutching a bag with a pair of tap shoes inside.

Advertisement Lynn Swann, a future NFL Hall of Famer who had yet to play organized football, wasnt thrilled to be there.

But his mother, Mildred, insisted he give dance a shot, hoping it would tame his energy.

You know, she told him, dance would be good for you.

At first, Swann felt uncomfortable, even slightly embarrassed.

But the more he danced, the more he enjoyed it.

He especially liked recitals and summer shows such as West Side Story, where he could perform for an audience.

Even when he started playing organized sports, he continued jazz and tap classes, with a little ballet here and there.

In those early years, he once said , he felt more comfortable on the dance floor than the football field.

That changed in high school and in college at USC.

Swann became one of the best football players in the country, a wide receiver who ran sharp routes and made difficult catches.

He only stopped taking dance classes after the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted him in the first round in 1974.

During his nine-year NFL career, he was named All-Pro three times, won four Super Bowls and became known for his elegant play and acrobatic catches.

(He also still danced occasionally, performing ballet on Mister Rogers Neighborhood and tap dancing on TV with Gene Kelly.) If Swann knows anything about his decorated football career, its that none of it would have panned out that way if it werent for dance.

The body control, the balance, the fluidity of movement so much of that stemmed from his dance background.

During his MVP performance in Super Bowl X, Swann made iconic catches.

In one, he leaped for a long pass, hung in the air for a second and fell to the ground with the ball.

In another, he jumped even higher, scissoring his legs midair and making the catch.

I got it from dance, Swann said.

Advertisement Other professional athletes have testified over the years about the benefits of dance.

Detroit Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson attributes his spin moves, flexibility and balance to his background in competitive hip hop and ballet .

Dance has a direct correlation to football, he said.

Kobe Bryant started tap dancing after injuring his ankle, hoping he could improve his rhythm and prevent future ankle injuries.

I worked on it all of that summer and benefited for the rest of my career, he wrote in his book.

Other pros have said their appearances on Dancing with the Stars helped in their respective sports .

Still, a dance background is uncommon in the world of team sports.

At least one researcher with an extensive dance background doesnt think it should be.

Dr.

Alycia Fong Yan, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney in Australia, has been on a quest to study the impacts of elite athletes learning to dance.

Research suggests there are several advantages to taking dance classes: better balance and flexibility, stress alleviation and improved cardiovascular health.

But Fong Yan believes that dancing, especially from an early age, can also help team-sport athletes improve their performance and prevent knee, leg and ankle injuries.

Fong Yans curiosity in the topic stemmed from a personal place.

A dancer since the age of 5, she attended Queensland University of Technology to pursue a two-year dance degree but consistently dealt with injuries.

Injuries also cut short her professional dance career after just 18 months.

Her interest in dance soon turned academic and hinged on a realization linked to her own experience: Maybe I can get to the root cause of why I got injured.

Can I change something in the mechanics of it all? Fong Yan applied and was accepted into the University of Sydneys exercise and sports science program.

She noticed a shift in how dance instructors taught their students to move.

They distanced themselves from old-school techniques of pushing dancers to twist their bodies in unrealistic ways.

Instead, instructors focused on movements and choreography that were healthier for dancers.

The experience left one burning question: What would happen if all athletes learned to move in this way? Advertisement Maybe team-sport athletes could benefit from some of the basic foundations of dance movement without risking the injuries that came with pushing her body to dance professionally.

She knew non-contact landing injuries were more common in athletes than dancers, and wanted to investigate why.

In a study, Fong Yan and her colleagues asked a group of dancers and another group of college-level, team-sport athletes to perform the same task: Jump off a platform using one leg.

Fong Yan wanted to examine which parts of their lower body each group of athletes used while landing.

As Fong Yan suspected, both men and women team-sport athletes were much stiffer compared to dancers.

The team-sport athletes took all the impact in their knees and let their upper bodies fall forward, which poses a risk for injuries like ACL tears.

The basketball players and volleyball players had only really been doing specific plyometric training, like bouncing or jumping, and their drop landings were just always hard landings, then stabilizing, Fong Yan said.

There is no introspection as to, What are my feet doing when they land? What am I doing for my ankles and hips? The dancers, meanwhile, landed with their toes first, then softened the impact with their ankle, then their knee and finally their hip.

They maintained a relatively straight upper-body position throughout the entire landing; rather than putting all their stress on the knee and the ACL, the force was more evenly distributed.

What we saw was these dancers learned how to land from day one, their very first ballet class, Fong Yan said.

Land with your toes, land softly and gently.

The study confirmed a thought that Fong Yan had been grappling with during her research: All athletes could benefit from learning proper dance techniques at a young age.

Swann used to tell his NFL teammates that dance classes could help their flexibility and body control if they just gave it some time.

No one took him up on it.

Swann, like Fong Yan, thinks dance classes can help any athlete.

So much of what team-sport athletes think about while performing has to do with external factors, like when to pass the ball or how to get around a defender.

Unlike dancers, Fong Yan believes other athletes dont have as much awareness of how their bodies move.

Advertisement She noticed many of the team-sport athletes she met or watched never paid much attention to their movements or learned how to land until after they tore their ACL or ruptured their Achilles.

Theyre going through the physio-rehab, Fong Yan said, and its: How do you bend with your knees over your toes? How do you keep your trunk still? Now do it in different directions and add some hopping and bouncing.

And that all looks like dance! Fong Yan believes dancing can benefit basketball players who jump for rebounds, or volleyball players who jump to spike the ball.

She also thinks it can enhance coordination, balance and body awareness in ways team-sport athletes could use as a competitive advantage.

It targets and strengthens different muscles while increasing agility, an important skill in most team sports.

Swann agrees.

In many ways, he can thank the plies and choreographed movements for his acrobatic catches, impressive body control and convincing fakes.

In dance, he said, the end of the first move in your choreography is always connected as the beginning of your next move.

Thats for it all to be smooth and to flow and to seem effortless, and not just a dramatic change in what youre doing.

When youre trying to fake someone out, he added, youre trying to make them move one way or the other.

And theyre reading your body as youre doing it.

Swann is thankful he stuck with dance classes all those years ago.

He remembers leaving a high school football practice with a pair of tights and dance shoes, waiting for the other boys to tease him, but dancing helped give him the confidence to develop his own identity.

My dance training has allowed me to develop a style that is pretty much my own style, he said near the end of his career, something thats different from most of the other players.

There is one more reason Swann looks back on his dance background fondly, and it is as good a reason as any for an athlete to give a class a try.

It was great fun, he said..

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