With summer seasons in full force and fall seasons coming back soon, one of the things we’’ll always encourage dance teachers or coaches to think about is how to think about monitoring student and athlete wellness. How can we support dancers from the get-go with their new season?

In our work as physical therapists for young and aspirational growing dancers, we’re often emphasizing “the human behind the dancer”, but what does this mean?

Healing from injury isn’t just about doing the right exercises – it’s also about rest, recovery, and fueling that you need in order to have the proper building blocks to heal. Since we approach physical therapy for dancers from an evidence-based strength and conditioning perspective, it makes all these human aspects even more important. If you do a quick internet search of anything related to effective recovery, rehabilitation, or recovery, you’ll probably find something like this. Generally speaking, the first two base layers are going to be related to sleep, nutritional intake, and rest.

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Let’s talk tracking your wellness…

How is your sleep quality?
How many hours are you sleeping?
How is your mood?
What are your fatigue levels?
What are your training and rehearsal hours?

These may seem like generic questions, and questions that you probably got frequently in quick, fleeting, side conversations, but how do these parameters impact our performance and recovery?

• Sleep Quality – Sleep quality refers to how well you sleep. Uninterrupted sleep allows you to achieve the ideal amount of restorative sleep, which is essential for athletes.
• Sleep Hours – It has also been noted that individuals who participate in team sports tend to get more hours and better quality of sleep than those who participate in individual sports, due to the individual stress (pertinent with dancers with solos!) Chronic lack of sleep in adolescents is associated with greater risk of sports and musculoskeletal injuries.
• Fatigue – inability to perform or fulfill a recently attainable task. Stress, training load, nutrition, hydration can all play a role in fatigue.
• Soreness – Soreness/Muscle soreness can be an indicator of how efficiently (or not efficiently) a dancer is recovering, particularly during heavy weeks of practice or rehearsal. High levels of soreness may shed light on what recovery tools or behaviors a dancer may need to pay attention to to ensure optimal recovery for performance and healing.
• Mood/Mental Health – Sleep quality, sleep hours, and nutrition can play a role in how the dancer is doing emotionally. Stress and anxiety can definitely affect our performance ability, and also affect our recovery process.

Daily Well Being + Training Load Tracker Template

[DOWNLOAD PDF/GOOGLE TEMPLATE HERE]

As educators, coaches,(and us as physical therapists), I’m sure we’re often asking our dancers to prioritize their rest, their sleep, their recovery… but where does it go after that?

While we’re able to connect with dancers in their healing and recovery, we also know how busy they can get with all the commitments in dance, and the self and self-care often fall to the wayside.

It’s possible that a few of your students may already be tracking a few of their own behaviors. Ultimately, this is about identifying habits, and being actionable about the things that we can change.

It’s important to reiterate that we’re not here to judge or reprimand dancers for not taking care of themselves (they’re doing so much already, they don’t need someone to tell them ANOTHER thing they’re “failing” at).

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The DANCE|PREHAB Perspective

For many young and pre-professional dancers, physical therapy and healing needs often coincide with intense training, scheduling, and ongoing competitive and performance opportunities. While we will always strive to challenge dancers physically to provide good stress, we can only challenge them as much as they are fueling themselves on a fundamental level. When our human foundations can be measured and therefore managed, we can get an honest view of where we’re at, and be intentional about how we’re acknowledging our human selves for our performance goals and for life!

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Citations:

• Gao B, Dwivedi S, Milewski MD, Cruz AI. Chronic Lack of Sleep is Associated with Increased Sports Injury in Adolescents: A Systemic Review and Meta-Analysis. Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine. 2019;7(3_suppl). doi:10.1177/2325967119S00132
• Harrison C, Ruddock S, Mayes S, et al. Self-Reported Wellness in Training and Performance: A Comparison of Professional Ballet Dancers and Professional Athletes. Med Probl Perform Art. 2020;35(4):196-201. doi:10.21091/mppa.2020.4028
• Simim MAM, Souza HS, Cardoso Filho CA, et al. Sleep quality monitoring in individual sports athletes: parameters and definitions by systematic review. Sleep Sci. 2020;13(4):267-285. doi:10.5935/1984-0063.20200032
• Temm, D.A.; Standing, R.J.; Best, R. Training, Wellbeing and Recovery Load Monitoring in Female Youth Athletes. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19, 11463. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811463