Cycling Helps Ballet Idaho’s Jonathan Harris Push Through the Tough Efforts
Ballet Idaho soloist Jonathan Harris fell in love with cycling as a kid, when he would watch the Tour de France every July with his dad. “I loved the sport—it looked so fun and so hard,” he says. As Harris got older and eventually could fit on a real road-bike, rides with his dad became a special means of connection. In 2015, when he joined Sacramento Ballet (located in what he discovered to be a huge cycling city), Harris found a new community outside of ballet in group rides. While he acknowledges that “it’s hard to be a full-time ballet dancer and seriously train for any kind of race,” he’s participated in two and, while he didn’t take gold, “it was a ton of fun,” he says.
Since his time is more limited during Ballet Idaho’s performance season, Harris relies heavily on cycling during layoffs to keep in shape. But even with lengthy gaps of time between rides, he notices lasting physical and mental benefits in the studio.
Just Like Riding a Bike
Boise’s cycling season lasts from about mid-April through October. “That’s when it gets too cold for my bones,” Harris says. He breaks each 90-minute ride into blocks: First, five sets of 50 seconds at high intensity, followed by 10 seconds at low intensity (the whole block lasts five minutes). He’ll recover at an easy pace for five to 10 minutes, then repeat the block twice more for a total of three. Then he finishes out the ride at a moderate pace.
As he can typically only train during layoffs, usually he’ll do a week or two at the beginning of the break where he bikes at a moderate pace for that same 90-minute block to get comfortable again: “I have to retrain my muscles for what it requires—working and pushing in parallel instead of external rotation.”
Body and Mind
Harris finds that cycling has helped him synchronize his glutes, hamstrings, and calves to work in tandem. “One of my vices in dance is that I have short Achilles, and if things get out of sync, my plié and jumps don’t work,” he says. Cycling is a great way of recalibrating those muscles to work in coordination, in addition to building strength.
Harris also noticed that once he got consistent about biking, even with breaks for the performance season, his in-studio cardio condition was noticeably better. When dancing George Balanchine’s Tarantella—an infamously challenging ballet for stamina—he told himself: “Tarantella is seven minutes long, and I know how hard I can push for a 10-minute effort on the bike. That is way harder.”
Fueling Up
Harris finds his body has different nutritional needs depending on whether he’s cycling or dancing. For a rehearsal day, he eats enough to feel fueled, but not weighed down. But for cycling, he gets more in ahead of time because he knows how quickly his energy will be expended. He feels set up on a rehearsal day with a high-protein breakfast of Greek yogurt, whereas on a cycling day he’ll have a big bowl of oatmeal with “all the goodies”—like peanut butter and maple syrup.
Otherwise, he relies on a balanced diet of fruits, veggies, and midday snacks, like trail mix or a good protein bar, and he doesn’t skimp on carbs (pasta, rice, quinoa, and couscous are musts). He and his partner, a fellow Ballet Idaho dancer, frequently make pasta with a homemade butternut squash and cheese sauce. “Throw some sausage on there and I’m happy,” says Harris.
Rest Is Mandatory
“I’m a big ‘rest and recover’ kind of guy,” says Harris, who admits he’s more diligent about recovery after biking than dancing (something he’s trying to rectify). Days off are fully days off, and he swears by his heating pad.
