A common trend in dance this October? Injuries :(

This happens for a wide variety of reasons. Some dancers took the whole summer off, and are jumping back into long hours of dance full-throttle without a proper introductory period. Many dancers are also returning to school at the exact same time as returning to dance, potentially meaning increased stress and decreased sleep compared to summer months. Some dancers may have just spent the entire summer dancing and never actually had a break. Training for a full calendar year without proper rest and recovery is a recipe for injury. 

Going from dancing very little over the summer to dancing 8 hour days in a week-long intensive, then returning to school (and homework and stress and decreased sleep) AND THEN returning to regular studio hours (which for some dancers, is most weeknight evenings AND weekends) is a recipe for fatigue and injury. It’s common for injuries to pop up 3-4 weeks after a significant increase in training load, which is why October is such a popular month for injuries. 

So what should we do? 

At the studio level, the programming needs to gradually return our dancers to their full workload without going from 0-100. This means not having a jam-packed schedule with intense technique and choreography classes right off the bat, and watching the hours that your dancers are training every week. 

At the class level, while teachers may also be eager to get back into the studio and jump right into things, the smarter approach is to gradually build up class content and difficulty. There’s nothing wrong with starting with foundations/basics the first few weeks back to ensure dancers have a strong technical base before delving into more difficult, demanding concepts. 

At the dancer/family of the dancer level, encourage REST. Dancers should have at least one full day off of training per week. Daily, dancers (and their families) should be prioritizing quality sleep, balanced nutrition and a healthy water intake. Dancers also need to feel comfortable telling their parents and/or teacher when something feels wrong - it’s much easier to prevent an injury when it’s just “a little sore” than to wait for it to become a more serious injury and then try to rehab it. 

As studio owners and educators we need to take into account that a lot of kids are coming back from the summer and being thrown into full school days with the homework and stress that comes with it, are likely sleeping less or having lower quality sleep, and are back to dancing most weeknights and for some, weekends as well. This is a huge change in their routines and nervous systems, and is why we need to be on the lookout for changes in our students that indicate fatigue and pain. 

Dance teachers - keep an eye on your students! Don’t encourage them to push through pain and notice if they’re favouring one side - they won’t always want to come forward with an injury but it’s better to catch it now than to let it get worse and affect the rest of their season.