The most common pitfall of running is attempting too much too soon. “Dancers are highly fit, so they're tempted push right from the beginning,” says Emery Hill, an athletic trainer with Houston Ballet. You need to build up slowly to get the benefits without risking injury.
The Downsides of Running for Dancers
Running is a high-impact activity, just like dance. That's more strain on your joints, which is not good for longevity of your performance career. And yes, you can lose flexibility. There are other aerobic activities that you can do if running's not your thing.
Yes, running is to be avoided because dancers are trained to rotate their legs outward, and develop the muscles in their thighs to accommodate this turnout. Running, on the other hand, is done with the legs parallel and develops a different set of muscles that are counterproductive to ballet.
It's important that dancers understand that running itself isn't inherently bad, but if they run with alignment or biomechanical problems with their feet, they are more vulnerable to injuries.
Dancers at all levels struggle with poor body image. In fact, research demonstrates that more than 75% of dancers feel pressure to lose weight with stress often originating from: Comparative mirror thoughts. Tight-fitting uniforms (like leotards) and costumes.
Research suggests 36% of professional dancers retire due to a musculoskeletal injury, with 91% suffering pain in later life.
Overtraining – dancing for too long or too often can lead to a wide range of overuse injuries. Shin splints and stress fractures in the feet are common dance-related overuse injuries.
It's difficult to imagine another activity that combines athleticism and artistry as well as ballet does. Ballet dancers are truly incredible athletes—their strength and stamina alone put professionals at the level of Olympians.
Although running is actually gentler than ballet (the force of landing from a leap is equal to about 12 times your body weight; when running, it's seven to eight times), running adds more strain to vulnerable joints.
Dance burns more calories than running, swimming or cycling. Dancers in the 30 minute Street Dance class each burned an average of 303kcal. To put that into perspective take a look at this: If this isn't enough of a reason to ditch the fitness routine you're loathing and head to the dance studio read on…
You use so many muscles when you dance - to balance, bend, stretch, spring and jump. Each move strengthens and shapes the muscles. This reshaping of our muscles is what we call 'toning'.
The answer is: it depends on the leotard. If you prefer to wear a bra with your ballet leotard, you ideally don't want bra straps showing alongside your leotard straps. This means some styles, such as cami strap leotards, aren't preferred.
Despite the fact that women's feet and legs are oftentimes more flexible than men's, according to professionals in the field of dance medicine and science, there is no physical or medical reason that men should not perform en pointe. It is purely an aesthetic choice.
Some people are just born with it! Many people say it is an innate gift and the dancers were created to dance. But even the most talented of the dancers would vouch for regular practice and updating their skills in their quest from good to great.
Said to be the most difficult genre to master, ballet is a rigorous style of dance that is the foundation of most forms of dance training. It is usually set, but not limited to, orchestrated music and is often the first dance style a child will experience as they begin their dance classes.
Pirouettes. Pirouettes are notoriously one of the most difficult ballet moves and it can take years for a dancer to learn how to properly execute a pirouette. One of the most common and widely known dance moves, however, it requires an insane amount of balance and technique.
En Pointe. The “en Pointe” technique in classical ballet is one of the most challenging to execute. In this move, a dancer has to support their entire bodyweight on their feet, which are fully extended.
Ballet has typically favored the body type of a girl who is thin, usually thinner than what is deemed to be healthy, with long, lean limbs, an extremely flat front side, and little to no curves throughout the body other than a small waistline.
At the beginning, both groups definitely struggled with learning a new discipline. Soccer proved to be harder for the dancers than originally anticipated. Many of us were challenged by the constant cardio and keeping control of the ball while we played.
As a consequence, many of them are suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety (Gregoris et al., 2022). Mental health in dance is, in other words, a pressuring matter.
Foot and ankle injuries: Achilles tendonitis, trigger toe and ankle impingement. Knee injuries: patellofemoral pain syndrome. Stress fractures: metatarsals, tibia, sesamoids and lumbar spine. Dancers are also likely to develop arthritis in the knee, hip, ankle and foot.