Conditions

Although she doesn’t dance professionally anymore, she still practices. In her personal training, she was fortunate not to acquire injuries, but has seen a lot of professional dancers struggling to heal their injuries. She did endure the normal aches, pains, and soreness from rigorous dancing, but at that time, she did not know how to take care of herself and accepted them as normal. On a google search, Dr. Namrata Chansarkar was surprised that there were few professional resources to support professional dancers with training and injuries, whereas there were numerous resources available to support professional athletes.

Dance is a beautiful form of expression which involve bodily movements, expression of emotions and in some forms a tribute to spirituality. Dance may look effortless, but it requires a lot of strength, flexibility and stamina. Essential to the beauty of dance is the demanding biomechanics of the dancer particularly of foot, ankle, knee and hips.

It also comes with a high risk of injuries. Whether you are a dancer, the parent of a dancer or a dance teacher, you should be aware of the most common dance injuries and learn how to avoid them. Dance injuries have a considerable impact upon the lives and careers of the dancers impairing their training and performance and potentially resulting in long term chronic pain or even disablement.

Most common dance injuries:

The most common dance injuries are from overuse or trauma of joints and muscles. Majority of these injuries involve an ankle, leg, foot or lower back. Some common dance injuries are listed here:

1. Ankle Injuries: Achilles tendonitis, trigger toe (Flexor Halluces Longus Tenosynovitis), ankle impingement.
2. Knee Injuries: Patellofemoral pain syndrome, Meniscus tear, MCL tear, ACL tear, Patellar mal-alignment /dislocation, Patellar tendonitis.
3. Hip injuries: snapping hip syndrome, hip impingement, labral tears, hip flexor tendonitis, hip bursitis and sacroiliac joint dysfunction.
4. Stress Fractures of metatarsal, tibia, sesamoid, and lumbar spine.
5. Arthritis of ankle foot, knee, hip.

What kind of pain is a concern?

In most cases, the pain experienced after dancing is muscle soreness due to lactic acid build up in muscles. This pain usually subsides within 24 to 48 hours or after everyday training for 3-4 days. Muscle soreness is not a sign of concern. However, if you experience the following types of pain, you may have suffered an injury:
  • Pain that wakes you up at night
  • Pain that is present at the start of an activity
  • Pain that increases with an activity
  • Pain that makes you shift your weight or otherwise compensate your movements
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