The Dangers Of Implementing Dance Conditioning

Among a discourse community of trained dancers, one expects to find individuals who are healthy and active athletes. Aside from technique and movement, health and cardio are underlying factors that play a huge role in a dancer’s career. Many dancers take on a healthy diet in order to maintain their body weight. Something that has been looked down upon in the trained dancers’ community is what it

For high school dance teams, the sport is quite competitive just like any other school sport. Dancers practice six days a week for at least two and a half hours each day, and these practices are far from easy. When it comes time to compete, we do not get any do-overs. So, if someone gets injured, and it is not an extreme case, the dance continues. Dancers are also built and trained to do things their bodies were not naturally born to do, this means dancers have to participate in strength training and conditioning. Having strong and

Dancers go through a lot of pain. On average dancers get hurt about once every two weeks. That means that dancers, on average, get hurt about 26 times a year. Whether it is a tiny fall or breaking a bone, dancing is a foolproof way to hurt at least something in your body. Especially if you are on pointe. In a pointe shoe, you

Along with other sports, dance involves physical exertion and requires skill. It can be inferred that when athletes undergo physical activity, they push themselves to their limit, which results in them becoming sore, and possibly even injured in some cases. This also pertains to dancers. Dancers can pull a muscle by overstretching or by not stretching enough. They can also break any bone by doing turns, flips, jumps, and tricks. In Ronald Smith’s article, he proceeds to explain

Dance therapy is nowhere close to being a therapy for injury, it is a therapy for a mental illness or just to relieve of something that someone is carrying heavily on their shoulders.“One of the most fun forms of anxiety therapy I can think of is dance therapy. So despite your possible misgivings about looking goofy and or falling on your face you shouldn’t be afraid to get on a dance floor. This is because there is real evidence to suggest that dancing can help improve your mood and serve as an excellent anxiety therapy” (Dooley 1) . One of the things that people are carrying heavily on their shoulders is anxiety. Dance is a great therapy for anxiety and has helped many children, teens, and adults over the

Dance demands the same physical skills that are required in other sports. Flexibility, strength, and endurance are key characteristics that most dancers need to posses. As with other “athletes,” most dancers are not born with these abilities but must establish them through practice and repetitive training. Similar to traditional sports practices, dance rehearsals are extensive and require diligence, dedication, and patience from the dancers as they will have to repeat exercises and stretches to perfect their technique and stay on

c) Balance is a vital part of dance. Dancers must have strong core muscles. Men need strong shoulders for lifts, since they must not only support their own body weight but also their partner's. “Dancers are some of the toughest athletes in the world,” claims Dr. McNitt-Gray.

Three laps around the gym, minute long planks, crunches, sit-ups, and pushups in a matter of thirty minutes. As a dancer, experiencing and realizing the strength that needs to be present in order for an athlete to grow is vital. We go through long hours of choreography sessions, pain and strain on our bodies, and vigorous training. Many people will disagree on the status of if dance is a sport or not. Both Mary- Elizabeth Esquibel, in her article “Why Dance Will Always Be a Sport” and the infographic entitled “Is Dance a Sport?” attack this controversial dilemma. Even though these arguments use different formats, they use rhetoric similarly.

Injuries happened whether playing a team sport, in the weight room, or participating in an exercise class. The YMCA has partnered with many healthcare providers to help implement prevention, therapy, information on injuries, and chronic disease. There are injury screenings, disease prevention, and in many YMCA’s there is also injury rehabilitation available. When compared to any other gym the resources at the YMCA are truly unique. Combating chronic disease and injuries is an area that most gyms do not

However, dance often requires the body parts to move in ways beyond what they are naturally meant to do” (Martin). If the rules of dance aren’t followed almost perfectly, devastating injuries occur, which can result in jeopardizing a dancer’s career. Furthermore, a dancer most definitely has to follow rules; even when just

I have personally experienced frustration with doctors’ lack of knowledge of dance. Every time I went to the doctor to evaluate my source of pain, I was given a rehabilitation schedule that was unrealistic for the dance world. With my trigger toe, I was

The participants were thirty-two females from a college’s modern dance program who had no history of injuries for the previous three months. The authors did not select these participants; the program recruited them. The non-dancers were randomly selected amongst the university’s population. The participants had to be in compliance with the study’s minimal inclusion physical activity criterion. Therefore, physical activity data was collected from all the participants. The authors received consent from the university’s Institutional Review Board to conduct the study. They also gave the participants a consent form to read and sign. The researchers used a push-up test to measure the

Due to the high levels of perfectionism many dancers possess (Quin, Rafferty, and Tomlinson, 2015) injury due to overtraining is a common occurrence (Ibid). A recent study conducted by Nordin-Bates, et al., (2011) found one in seven dancers will continue to dance during an injury and one in five do not seek any professional help for their injury. These results may signify the high amount of pressure that can be placed upon dancers to continue dancing, even whilst injured. It may also demonstrate how certain types of perfectionism such as self-oriented and socially-prescribed perfectionism, may dictate and impair a dancer’s judgement and the decisions they make regarding their health and well-being, such as recognising when

“Injury Prevention for Dancers- just like elite athletes,” discuss the importance of treating dancers like athletes since artists go through similar rigorous stress on the bones, muscles, joints, and ligaments of the body as would a football player. However, sometimes it starts at an earlier age than athletes. Gulf Coast Physio and Sports Health suggest a “dance assessment [to] provide the dancer with an individualized program to strengthen or lengthen the body (or both) and to fine-tune technique.” It is a forty-five-minute assessment which allows for specialists to point out possible injuries that might occur in the future, and be able to answer dancer-specific questions as to why they are unable to achieve a certain stretch or technique.

Dance is said to have existed prior to the invention of written languages, and was perhaps an essential aspect of storytelling for the passing of knowledge and information from generation to generation. And it has been, since time immemorial, a part of every culture and religion as a means of self and collective expression.