Week 4

Hello again! In this week’s blog post, I would like to share and discuss a couple more articles as I finish up my literature review for this project. 

Let’s get started! In a 1995 article by B. Tajet-Foxell and F. D. Rose, pain and pain tolerance thresholds were studied in professional ballet dancers. Findings show that compared to matched controls, the dancers demonstrated higher pain and pain tolerance thresholds. The study also notes how “the dancers experienced the pain encounter more acutely than the controls,” which may be a reflection of the dancers being more aware of signals of pain and more familiar with their own bodies’ responses to pain as opposed to the controls. The combination of these factors supports how learning more about how dancers respond to and cope with pain is important, especially in the case of adolescent dancers such as the ones I intend to survey in this project, as these dancers likely do not have as comprehensive of an understanding of their own changing bodies and their personal limits as professional dancers may have.  Steinberg’s 2010 article “Injury patterns in young, non-professional dancers”2 studies injury in this (similar) population of dancers. Although the age range of 8-16 spans to younger ages than the intended age range of 12-16 in my project, it is interesting to note that the observed most common injury in the younger cohort (ages 8-9) of dancers, tendonitis, is a different category from that of the adolescent cohort (ages 14-16), knee injuries. Noting this observed pattern of most common injuries could be an insightful topic to discuss after analyzing this Senior Project’s results, as educating young dancers on injury prevention and treatment could perhaps be more targeted to dancers’ needs by incorporating this specific topic. 

1. Tajet-Foxell B, Rose FD. Pain And Pain Tolerance In Professional Ballet Dancers. Br J Sports Med. 1995;29(1):31-34. Doi:10.1136/Bjsm.29.1.3. 
2. Steinberg N, Siev-Ner I, Peleg S, Dar G, Masharawi Y, Zeev A, Hershkovitz I. Injury Patterns In Young, Non-Professional Dancers. J Sports Sci. 2001;29(1):47-54. Doi:10.1080/02640414.2010.521167.