Episode 3: eliminate the Excuses and
Love your craft

International Principal dancer for São Paolo Ballet Company, Yoshi has enjoyed a tremendous 19 year career. Here he shares his story about eliminating excuses to achieve your goals and the importance of building your body intentionally to perform your best. Finally, loving your art and yourself will enable you to tap into your best performances.

Episode Description

What does it take to sustain elite physical performance and remain virtually injury-free across a 19-year career in one of the world's most demanding art forms? In this episode, Sam sits down with Yoshi Suzuki—a Principal Dancer with the world-renowned São Paulo Dance Company in Brazil.

If you think ballet is just about aesthetic beauty, Yoshi breaks down the intense, athletic reality behind the curtain. He shares his unconventional journey of starting formal ballet training "late" at 14, teaching himself via VHS tapes, and eventually performing over 100 shows a year across 23 countries. Yoshi opens up about the crucial biomechanics of dance, how a single physiotherapist revolutionized his approach to using the correct muscles, and why extreme self-awareness is the ultimate key to injury prevention.

Whether you are a dancer, an athlete, or a coach, this conversation provides a fascinating look into individualized training regimens, managing the grueling stress of a 44-hour physical workweek, and the mental frameworks required to push for perfection while maintaining a deep love and respect for yourself.

Key Takeaways You’ll Learn Inside the Episode:

Defying the "Late Start": How Yoshi transitioned from tap dancing at age 10 to starting ballet at 14, using intense observation and VHS tapes to catch up and secure a spot in a premier dance company by 18.
The Biomechanics of Injury Prevention: Why elite ballet requires an intricate understanding of gravity, spatial awareness, and muscular efficiency to prevent compensation and avoid overuse injuries.
The Grueling Reality of the Stage: A behind-the-scenes look at navigating a 44-hour training week, memorizing up to 27 different choreographies, and executing over 100 performances a year.
Individualized Preparation & Recovery: Why generic fitness advice fails dancers, how Yoshi developed a personalized full-body mobility routine, and the absolute necessity of compression, ice, and sleep during high-volume touring seasons.
Balancing Ambition with Self-Love: Yoshi’s advice to the younger generation on avoiding toxic frustration by appreciating daily progress, respecting your body, and never losing the passion that brought you to the art form in the first place.

Memorable Quotes from Yoshi Suzuki:

"It's about having all your muscles like being able to do something to express what you want to say, what the piece wants to say, because more than like here we do express our feelings by our bodies."

"If you are teaching someone, you need to understand what is the part in the body of that person that is using too much force... it is very important to know especially for teachers who are forming young students to see in an individual way."

"I see a lot of dancers who get very frustrated with themselves... I would say like try to see yourself with love, so you can appreciate what you are doing and the effort that you are doing."

Resources & Links Mentioned:

São Paulo Dance Company: Explore Yoshi’s work and upcoming performances with the São Paulo Dance Company (SPCD).
Follow along with Yoshi's career and performances on his Instagram

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