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Tangent but, I am quite suspicious of ideas that fit into the;
"{Unrelated activity} is actually better for preparing for {activity} than {related activity} because {philosophical reasons}" mold.
And I am suspicious of it because I am actually quite good (99.99 percentile) in a specific game and I got good by grinding at that game relentlessly. And every other person who was good at that game did the same, they grinned on that game for 12 hours a day. And this is what almost literally every other person good at the game does.
It's not that the idea is without merit. It's quite idealistic and romantic that the best warrior is actually the best dancer. My (experienced) priors say otherwise, that is all. Were any of the potential philosophers who might have made that quote actually good generals?
And said advice does apply to beginners who lack lack some kind of intuition that can be trained easier in some other sort of activity. But I don't think it applies to people who are actually good at what they do. A fighter might benefit from studying a different martial art than the one he knows, but he damn well won't become a better fighter because he knows how dance.. How different of an activity dancing is from fighting is up for debate. But you get my point.
Fair enough!
Your objections to this are actually hilariously off-base. Taking the second first
Thalatta, Thalatta! Xenophon* is on the shortlist for greatest general in classical antiquity**. If you have never read the Anabasis you should, but at least watch The Warriors it's just as good. Xenophon was elected to command of a group of 30,000 Greek mercenaries, trapped in hostile Persia after the side that hired them lost the civil war they were hired to fight in before they could arrive. He lead them in a fighting march across hundreds of miles, facing enemies on all sides, with no home base. He knew warfare about as well as anyone could.
I assume because you said "Game" rather than "sport" you're talking about something in the Vidya or Chess range? Yeah, physical sports just don't work like that. You can't just make the same explosive movement over and over all day. You'd end up with overuse injuries, you'd overtrain and retard physical progress, and you'd fatigue yourself and practice shittier and shittier reps of precision movements. And in a contact sport (phalanx warfare is the ultimate contact sport), you can't train full speed often at all without injuries. We still aren't really sure what Phalanx fighting looked like, but we can look at analogues.*** Taking the Medieval Tournament, a scrimmage in terms of battle, and fatalities were constant whatever the precautions. You simply can't do very much fighting when you're training for fighting, so you have to do other things to build your skills. Professional fighters today spar only a few hours a day, a couple times a week. NFL teams practice full contact only once a week. It's not practical to "grind" away at fighting 12 hours a day.
But, my use of the quote was some rhetorical sleight of hand. It's likely that the "dancing" Xenophon referenced was more like the single-sex group dances common at traditional celebrations. Less Dirty Dancing and more like a college Bhangra competition or a high school colorguard. And Phalanx combat was notoriously more about group coordination than about individual strength or courage or prowess. So almost nothing would train you for that better than practicing high speed complex coordination among pretty much the same guys who would stand in the phalanx next to you because the Polis isn't that big. So Xenophon's/Socrates' point is actually pretty mundane mechanics of the phalanx: Coordination is more important than individual strength or daring.
*I'm skeptical that we can really say much about Socrates, there is the Platonic Socrates and Xenophon's Socrates, in addition to The Clouds Socrates and some likely false but more contemporary than us interpolations. Socrates himself was noted as a hardy and stoic, but not extraordinarily athletic, soldier.
**It's reasonable to discount Xenophon because he was his own best publicist, as was Julius Caesar (Alexander paid his professionals). If we're going by that though, Hannibal is the clear winner. Not only was his history written by his enemies, his entire culture was wiped out before his body was cold. Still gets the rep for GOAT.
***If I were a mad scientist in Mengele mold, I'd force prisoners to attempt some pre-modern fighting methods, for the purpose of simulating how it would have actually gone. Of course, a phalanx on phalanx fight would require minimum 128 prisoners for two 8x8s
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Unfortunately with war, especially in ancient times, you can't just 'grind' your way to victory. Sure you can practice sword fighting etc, but the ancient Greek city-states especially knew that those types of practices were nothing similar to the actual brutal reality of war.
Dancing can give you quite a few important skills when it comes to the ancient style of fighting. You have to learn to keep a solid center of gravity and understanding of where you need to step to contort your body in certain ways. This could directly translate to if you need to move quickly or get knocked off balance in a battle, and is not easy to simulate in sparring
You also have to learn what's called 'floorcraft,' or situational awareness of where people are around you to avoid bumping into them. Again something that isn't obvious when sparring or necessarily easy to recreate in a sparring environment.
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