Prep2Step: A Dancer's Guide To Bulletproofing Your Knees

 

 
Enjoy your dance with less pain. Avoid post-dance muscle soreness and achy joints. Learn the correct “dosage“ for warming up, stretching and cooling down.
How many dancers out there are dancing with pain, expect to have knee pain during or after dance, or are relying on pain meds to “keep the edge off”?
Want to to avoid knee pain, injury and dysfunction?  Want to learn how to self-treat your knee pain and not make it worse from dancing?
 

Dance is a Sport

Dance is an athletic activity and, like any sport, there are certain risks involved. You jump, spin, land and perform footwork, sometimes for hours at a time.  There will be some joint wear and tear, loading, muscle sprains and ligament strains. Keeping injuries down to a minimum depends upon on how well you prep your body for your event.  
 
 
 

Let’s discuss ways of saving and bulletproofing your knees for dance.

During my earlier days of playing organized sports, my teams usually followed a basic protocol of warm-up, stretching, play and sometimes cool-down. This is not a bad plan to follow for dance, since again, it’s all “sports” training. But, we’ll need to tweak this basic program a bit to make it dance-specific.
Based on our fully interactive Prep2Step workshop at this year’s Emerald (Dance) Set, this month we’re presenting a weekly series of blog posts for those who couldn’t be there.
 
Tune-in over the next few weeks as we “jump” into our Prep2Step series, discussing:

• Warm-ups: General to dance-specific
• Stretching: The difference between dynamic and static stretching and when not to do them
• Active recovery: What is it and why athletes keep stationary bicycles on the sideline
• Dance Toolbox: foam rollers, compression sticks, trigger point and other mobilization gadgets
• Cool-downs: Why it’s so important for your next dance

Want more info on Emerald Dance Set? Check out the Emerald Dance Set Facebook page.
 
Coming up: Your Dance Warm-Up. Let’s get Specific!
 
Move. Heal. DANCE. Evolve.