Training Optimization for Dancers
Carolina Dancer Wellness, in partnership with Cary Ballet Conservatory, are proud to be the first to bring cutting-edge dance medicine and training analysis to pre-professional dancers in the United States.
What is training optimization analysis?
A dancer’s physical performance is the result of more than just the number of the hours they spend at the studio. Performance can be influenced by a wide range of factors that include soreness levels, stress, sleep, and even the menstrual cycle. Understanding these factors can help dancers and instructors optimize the time in training as well as decreasee the risk of injury.
This has long been recognized in the sports science world and sophisticated analysis systems designed to recognize patterns in an athlete’s day-to-day reports are used in every elite athlete’s training. Professional and pre-professional dancers train at a similar level as do Olympic Athletes. For this reason, through partnerships between sports science and dance medicine specialists, these concepts and technologies have been customized to address the unique ways a dancer trains and performs. The result is a powerful tool that can help detect when dancers may be most prone to injury, allowing dancers and their instructors/health care team to adapt training methods and techniques for optimal training and performance. This is particularly effective in reducing the risk of overuse injuries, the most frequent type of injury in dancers.
This has become an integral component of planning a dancer’s training for companies including Royal Ballet, Scottish Ballet, Dutch National Ballet, Boston Ballet, and the Australian Ballet. Royal Ballet and Australian Ballet have also begun to use these tools with their professional training schools.
How do I use it?
An easy-to-use morning and evening questionnaire covering basic aspects of health and well-being will be sent to dancers each day. This should be completed before they arrive at the studio and after they have finished dancing for the day.
If a dancer shows signs of overtraining, an alert is sent to the dancer along with recommendations of adjustments to make over the next few days.
How will the studio/company use it?
Rather than seeing responses to individual questions, studio staff will see a consolidated analysis report that can guide decisions as to when to push and when to pull-back in a dancer’s or group of dancers’ training.
This can mean adjusting class intensity, areas of focus, training load, or rehearsal schedules to help dancers achieve peak physical ability during performances, competitions, or auditions and avoid overuse injuries and burnout.
The Questionnaire
Each morning questionnaire has four questions about sleep quality, sleep quantity, stress, and soreness. Female dancers will also have a question about menstruation. (Responses to menstruation are optional, but encouraged as the hormonal fluctuations can have a significant impact on a dancer's physical status.)
Evening questionnaires have four questions about fatigue, exertion levels, participation, and enjoyment levels.
The questionnaire can be completed by clicking to select your response and should take about thirty seconds to one minute to complete.
