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Dr. Leilani Padron, PT, DPT, CSCS

@_leilanipadron

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Dance Medicine Physical Therapist | Pelvic Health | Strength Coach
Building resilient strength for dancers, moms, & athletes 🩰💗🤸🏻‍♀️
Work with me ⬇️

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Build a better backbend—Part 2. 🤍

If you’re not seeing progress in your backbend, improving shoulder mobility, thoracic extension, & hip extension can make a huge difference. These may be the missing pieces in your training.

Here are a few of my favorite drills to help you build a stronger, more comfortable backbend by addressing each of these areas.

🌟 Save these drills for your next training session!

#backbend #mobility #strength #strongerdancers #flexibility by @_leilanipadron

Saturdays are for fun things 🤸🏻‍♀️🤍 by @_leilanipadron

Strength is a skill.

One that supports movement, confidence & performance.

Comment STRONG if you want guidance towards your goals this year.

#Strong #strengthtraining #2026 #strongerdancers #dance #postpartum #pregnancy #acro #calisthenics by @_leilanipadron

A little bit of everything, a whole lot of effort. 💗

First APEX in the books! Had so much fun training for this, challenging myself, and trying new things along the way. Huge thank you to @apexathlete.official for putting together such an incredible event. Already looking forward to the next one!

Strong girls do hard things ✨ by @_leilanipadron

Last one of the Strong Enough series with our amazing guest @_leilanipadron — here she is performing the 12-minute Cooper Test.

The VO2 Max test…

This is the one with the strongest evidence behind it. Cardiovascular health, cardiovascular risk, all-cause mortality — the validity here is high and it isn’t close.

I’ve facilitated over 300 of these across every modality:
• No equipment — the 12-minute Cooper test or the mile and a half, like you’re seeing here
• Minimal equipment — a treadmill and a Bruce protocol
• Full metabolic testing — mask on, measuring your actual gas exchange

Different levels of precision. Same purpose: finding out what your engine can actually do.

You don’t need the expensive version to get a number worth acting on.

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Hey — if we haven’t met, I’m Jakub Szylak, founder of Signature Strength. We work with executives and young entrepreneurs on building the full picture: coaching, a vetted referral network, and concierge-level care.

The Strong Enough benchmark is live — seven tests, free, link in bio. Find out where you actually stand. by @_leilanipadron

The objective isn’t to lift as much as you can. It’s to understand how much you need.

That’s what translates to functional capacity — your ability to move through your environment. Bending down to tie your shoes. Picking up a suitcase. Picking up your kids or your grandkids.

Doing it without that thought in the back of your head: I hope I don’t hurt myself.

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@_leilanipadron lifting heavy things and making them look effortless ‼️

Make sure to give here a follow for a all strength and rehab related things for dancers 👯 💃🕺

Deadlift strength doesn’t correlate with all-cause mortality. But the capacity to grip something and pick it up off the floor is a direct expression of posterior chain strength.

Your posterior chain is what:

• Keeps you upright — spinal stability through your whole day, not just under a bar
• Drives hip extension — walking, standing up, climbing stairs, running
• Protects your low back when you load it, intentionally or not

Same pressing pattern as the dip, different plane. The dip loads you vertically. The bench loads you horizontally.

What it asks for:

• Upper body pressing strength — chest and arms
• Shoulder stability under load
• Full body stability against the bench — your legs and back are working whether you feel them or not

Same disclaimer as the deadlift: bench press strength doesn’t correlate with all-cause mortality.

What it gives you is a clean read on horizontal pressing capacity — how much you can push away from your body, and whether your shoulders are stable enough to do it under load. by @_leilanipadron

If I find a place to dip, when I dip, you dip, we dip.

Dips are in the Strong Enough battery, and this one has the weakest direct link to longevity of anything in the series. There’s no big mortality study behind it.

What it is: a clean completeness marker for upper-body pushing capacity. Relative pressing strength plus shoulder stability under load.

Why it’s in there anyway:

- Pushing strength is what lets you get yourself off the ground and out of a chair
- It’s what carries your own bag, pushes your own door, moves your own furniture
- For women especially — this gets framed around not wanting to get “bulky,” and that misses it entirely

Upper body strength isn’t about size. It’s about not needing to ask.

That’s physical independence. Nobody gives it to you and nobody can lift for you.

Hey — if we haven’t met, I’m Jakub Szylak, founder of Signature Strength. We work with executives and young entrepreneurs on building the full picture: coaching, a vetted referral network, and concierge-level care.

The Strong Enough benchmark is live — seven tests, free, link in bio. Find out where you actually stand. by @_leilanipadron

Stronger, faster & slightly less angry after every med ball slam

9 days out from @apexathlete.official 🔥 by @_leilanipadron

My turn to take @_leilanipadron through another exercise in our strong enough battery.

Leaving the floor with both legs let alone one legs is a skill acquisition we want to keep for as long as possible.

The single leg jump is a step up (get it) from the balance test since now we’re asking those stable muscles to not only produce force but also absorb it on the way back down to the floor.

Testing : Single leg strength, stability, proprioception, coordination. Force absorption and production.

Great not for only muscles but also our bones too!

@_leilanipadron
@signature.strength

How to not cheat your shoulder mobility. Lay against the wall or the floor, as shown here.

See how much external rotation and overhead range you actually have.

In cases where someone can’t be in an upright position and press their arms overhead due to pain, finding positions like this can be a great entry point. by @_leilanipadron

So much sitting, and hunching over on a desk all day can really take a toll on your posture over time.

Had @_leilanipadron take me through a few bendy spine exercise progressions to focus on promoting rotation and extension through one of our most mobile sections of our spine… the thoracic!

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Share this with someone you know may need to get up out of that chair.

@_leilanipadron
@signature.strength by @_leilanipadron

Part 2 of the Strong Enough series — Lani putting me through her back bending work.

A loaded progression of a couch stretch. WOH

Hip flexors, quads, extension through the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine, plus stability and balance — all at once.

My big three takeaways:
- find your range of motion
- Find control in your range of motion
- Breathe

Those come from the hierarchy underneath it all:
range of motion → control → stability → strength

Make sure to follow @_leilanipadron

Two more exercises coming this weekend!
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#crac #dancer #stretch by @_leilanipadron

The sit-to-stand test is one of the strongest predictors of mortality we have. And it costs nothing to run.

Here’s Lani going through it. No issues up or down, on two feet or one. no surprise for a strong, active person in her 20s 💃

Why it’s in our benchmark battery:

- What it measures: — strength, power, flexibility, balance,

Ages 46–75, followed 12+ years.
The risk— scoring 0–4 meant nearly 4× the risk of death from natural causes, 6× from cardiovascular disease, vs. a perfect 10.

Per point— every single point lower was linked to a 33% higher risk of dying from natural causes.

Why we target 8, not 10— at a score of 8, the increased risk vs. a perfect 10 wasn’t statistically significant.

The drop-off happens below 8.

Who it’s best for — anyone over 40, especially someone coming out of a sedentary stretch.

That’s what strong enough means. The point where you’ve captured the protection. Ten is a bonus.
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Click the 🔗 in our bio to take yourself through the StrongEnough™️ battery test!

Make sure to follow @_leilanipadron for all things strength and rehab related for dancers 💃🕺 by @_leilanipadron