Timetabling in full-time training

Dance schools, conservatoires and companies have a responsibility to care for the overall health and well-being of the dancers they work with. This means on top of technical training providing measures for injury prevention, fitness training, nutritional support, psychological support and a measured approach to workload. Training frequency and scheduling is often waylaid due to other concerns; timetabling tends to be based on what is convenient for studio space or teacher availability, rather than what makes the most sense for the dancers. Scheduling of training can have a significant effect on the dancer's performance and well-being and it is important that companies and schools recognise the implications of their timetabling.

Research Update: Warm Up & Stretching

A new study has been published in the Journal of Dance Medicine and Science looking at the effect of varying stretching protocols during warm-up on dance performance. Warm-up is a much neglected are of dance research and it's great to see work being conducted in this area.

Nutrition and Injury Recovery

I'm currently typing this one-handed, sitting banged up at home with my first serious injury in about 4 years. I dislocated my elbow at the start of the week and will be spending the foreseeable future in the world's least stylish full-arm cast and not lifting anything heavier than a teacup. Awesome. So it seems as good a time as any to discuss options for injury rehab, recovery nutrition and finding some way to not just bow down and give up for several weeks.

Dance Science Resources

Dance science is still very much in it's infancy and as such steady sources of reliable information - whether peer-reviewed research, journals, books, magazines or websites - can be hard to come by. As a dance educator, facilitator, choreographer, director, or artist, you have a duty of care to yourself and to those you work with, and the most important part of that is educating yourself.

Below is a short, non-exhaustive list of some of the most useful resources for reliable dance science information; some are dance-specific, others are more general in areas of sport, exercise or health but all are applicable and useful to those working within dance.

Improving jump height in dance training

Jump height is an area that I'll freely admit I largely neglected during my training years; my jetés didn't cause me particular problems and so I paid little attention to developing them. So more recently my training patterns changed, and after stopping performing I moved into training in martial arts. Within 2 months I could jump higher than I had ever been able to before, fast-forward 6 months and it's higher still. Now when I go back to dancing, my sautes, jetés and grand jetés are the highest they've ever been,  my leaps are more powerful and my elevation is significantly more impressive than it was when I was training and performing full-time. Since jump height is such a fundamental aspect of dance performance, serious provision for maximising it should be included within training. The fact that for it isn't provided for in various schools and companies makes little sense, when simple changes to training programmes are liable to elicit substantial gains.

Supplements use in dancers

Dietary supplements are taken by athletes to supplement their existing nutritional intakes and address any insufficiencies or deficiencies that may affect their health or performance. While some are taken for performance and others for health, others are completely pointless, occasionally dangerous, and all cost a considerable amount of money. Individuals with low caloric intakes may need to consider supplementation in order to ensure their nutrient intake is adequate. As many dancers use calorie restriction in an attempt to control weight and body composition, they are an at-risk group for nutrient insufficiencies/deficiencies and so it is worth considering where insufficiencies may arise.

Disordered Eating in Dance

When it comes to discussing eating disorders in dancers, I seem to spend all my time either trying to convince my non-dancing friends that the majority of dancers do not have an eating disorder, or trying to convince my colleagues who do work in dance that it is a serious problem that needs addressing. While to non-dancers the image of the anorexic ballet dancer is at least familiar if not cliched, to many dancers there is a denial regarding the degree to which disordered eating is a serious and wide-spread problem and there is a sense of many people and companies being in denial about the severity of the issue. In reality the scope of the problem sits somewhere between the two outlooks - disordered eating is a serious problem for a significant minority of dancers.

Research Update: Vitamin D status in ballet dancers

A new study carried out by Roger Wolman of the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, along with colleagues at the University of Wolverhampton, has looked at the vitamin D status of professional ballet dancers in winter vs summer months.

(c) Koji Aoki  

The 6 month cohort study contrasted high sunlight months (summer) against low sunlight months (winter). The study looked at 19 professional ballet dancers within the UK and considered their vitamin D status through serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels within the body, as well as recording parathyroid hormone (PTH) and blood serum bone turnover markers (CTX and PINP). The dancers all danced 6-8 hours a day, for 38 hours a week. The Company's doctors recorded injury instance over the 6 month period.

Significant differences were found in levels of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D, PTH  and blood serum bone turnover markers between summer and winter months. Although levels of 25-hyrdoxyvitaminD were higher in summer months, only 3 of the 19 dancers achieved "sufficient" levels during the summer period, with the rest being considered either insufficient or deficient in vitamin D. All dancers' vitamin D levels were found to be insufficient or deficient in winter months.