Ballet Dancers’ Injuries
Why is it that dancers continue dancing when they have an injury, which risks making it more serious?
Truth be told, there are all kinds of reasons why dancers won’t to “give in” when injury threatens.
Most dancers are taught that pain is good, because muscle soreness after a workout is seen as a good thing. If you do a ballet class and don’t ache the following day, you didn’t try hard enough! The problem is, it means we dancers learn to have a high threshold for pain, so when bad pain comes along – due to an injury – we (mistakenly) interpret it as manageable.
Suunto t4d Women and Heart Rate Monitors Personal Fitness Coach Watch (Black Frost)
- Suunto Coach mapped out a precise timetable for when to train and then to rest the basis of measurement training effect as a guide
- Includes Suunto Dual Comfort Belt, the use of interference-free digital ANT transmission
- Real-time Training Effect, the accurate measurement of how hard You have trained
- Measure your speed, distance and cadence with optional Suunto PODs
- User-replaceable batteries and straps, two-year warranty
Suunto t4d have the enhanced Suunto Coach feature to evaluate your condition and give a personal five-day training program to help you effectively reach your goals. Suunto Coach gets you quickly back on track by making intelligent training frequency, duration and intensity of your workouts. Use t4d with the included Dual Suunto Comfort Belt to monitor your real-time heart rate or calorie consumption, or calculate your real-time training effect to see if you train at an optimum level. If your schedule suddenly changes, Suunto Coach adjusts by making a new plan that will advise you which days to work out…
Suunto t4d Women’s Heart Rate Monitor and Personal Fitness Coach Watch (Silver Frost)
That’s especially the case when it comes to pointework – which even when it’s going right, can be painful for some dancers. I’m lucky that I have a square foot so I tolerate pointework well, but not every girl is so lucky.
For professional performers, there are other reasons to resist taking a break for an injury. Professional ballet is a competitive business – if you take a break to recover, other dancers will land that plum part or perform that coveted solo, and you may have an uphill battle to break back in when you get back to fitness. Anyway, some dancers are paid by performance – if you don’t perform, you don’t get paid!
The final explanation, and a fundamental one, is poor nutrition. There’s plenty of debate in the major ballet schools and companies about fostering healthy body image – but in reality, there’s not much indication that the culture has changed. There’s still pressure on girls to be skinny.
Many female ballet dancers are chronically underweight, to the point where their menstrual cycle ceases (as happens in anorexia), and it’s not only because they exercise so intensively. Often their diets are restricted or unbalanced, with insufficient protein or fats to keep muscles and bones healthy. Far too many girls eat like a sparrow at mealtimes, and snack on chocolate between classes to keep themselves going.
