Dance injury monitoring, strength and conditioning training for decreasing injury incidence for Chinese pre-professional dancers
Authors
Dang, YananAdvisors
Wyon, MatthewKoutedakis, Yiannis
Chen, Ruoling
Issue Date
2024-04
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The high prevalence of dance injuries affects elements of training, rehearsals, performance, and even the daily lives of those involved. Therefore, reducing and preventing dance injuries is an ultimate goal. Previous studies have evidenced that greater levels of physical fitness have been linked to decreased injury incidence and improved dance performance, whilst they had not been reviewed. The systematic review, for the first time, systematically reviewed the efficacy of physical fitness training on dance injury. It included 10 studies that met the inclusion criteria from an initial 2450 publications. These studies offered physical fitness training for professional (n = 3) and pre-professional dancers (n = 7), participant sample size ranged between 5 to 62, ages from 11 to 27 years, and most participants were females. Assessment scores were classified as Fair (n = 1), Limited (n = 7), and Expert Opinion Only (n = 2) and risk of bias scores ranged from 22.7% to 68.2 %. After physical fitness training, 80 % of studies reported significant benefits in injury rate, the time between injuries, pain intensity, pain severity, missed dance activities and injury count. This review suggests that physical fitness training could have a beneficial effect on injury incidence in dance. The evidence is limited by the current study methodologies. Based on this evidence, the following studies (studies 1-4) focused on improving the level of evidence in study design, dance injury tracking methods, physical fitness training content and load, and dance injury reduction. In addition, previous research has mostly focused on Western populations, with only a few studies examining Chinese dancers. Therefore, using exclusively Chinese dancers, the aims of this thesis were fourfold: (a) to investigate and compare injury prevalence, causes, and risk factors before and during the COVID-19 lockdown, (b) to develop a dance injury monitoring tool on a weekly basis and examine its efficacy of weekly reporting and respondent compliance, (c) to determine injury incidence and injury severity of Chinese full-time pre-professional dancers using the injury monitoring tool, and (d) to examine the efficacy of strength and conditioning training on dance injury, physical fitness, and dance performance. Study 1 investigated dance injury in 2086 full-time Chinese pre-professional dancers pre- and post-COVID lockdown. Self-reports revealed that injury prevalence dropped significantly from 39.6% to 16.5% during this period (p<0.01). During the lockdown, the injuries on the lower back, feet and shoulders decreased significantly (p<0.01), but the knee, ankle and groin joint injuries remained the same. Fatigue and the recurrence of an old injury remained reported as the top two perceived causes of an injury between the two periods. Study 2 developed a weekly online dance injury monitoring tool and examined its efficacy. A total of 756 respondents from 16 different Chinese dance schools engaged in the survey. Over a two-semester period, the dropout rate was 70.1%, with student respondents under 18 years of age having a slightly lower drop-out rate than adult respondents (69% vs 71%). It was concluded that the researchers would need to weigh reduced completion rates (<100%) against data efficacy to achieve generalizability. Study 3 determined dance injury incidence and severity in full-time Chinese pre-professional dancers using the injury monitoring tool developed in Study 2. A total of 450 individuals’ data from 11 different schools were included in the analyses. The injury prevalence was 64.9%, and the injury incidence was 5.51 injuries per 1000 hours. Forty-eight percent of the injuries were minor severity and 41% were of moderate severity. Female dancers are at a higher risk of injury and reported higher levels of injury severity than male dancers (p<0.001). Study 4 examined the effects of a strength and conditioning training intervention on dance injury, physical fitness and dance performance. A total of 89 full-time pre-professional dancers participated. Sixty-seven dancers volunteered for a 12-week strength and conditioning training intervention (2-session/week, 40-60-min/session), and 22 dancers acted as controls. The injury was self-reported using the dance injury monitoring tool (Study 2). The intervention group significantly increased physical fitness (p<0.001), but their dance performance data remained unchanged (p>0.05). The intervention group reported lower injury prevalence (28% vs 15%, p<0.001) and injury incidence (8.09 vs 5.16 injuries per 1000hrs, p<0.05) than the previous year. In conclusion, this thesis examined dance injury epidemiology following the COVID-19 arrival for a sizable sample size of Chinese pre-professional dancers and then determined injury incidence at a higher level of evidence using an innovative self-developed dance injury monitoring tool. Building on this, this thesis reinforced the positive effect of strength and conditioning training on dance injury incidence. The thesis has contributed to moving one step closer to reducing and preventing dance injuries and enriching the diversity of participants in dance injury studies.Citation
Dang, Y. (2024) Dance injury monitoring, strength and conditioning training for decreasing injury incidence for Chinese pre-professional dancers. University of Wolverhampton. http://hdl.handle.net/2436/625586Publisher
University of WolverhamptonType
Thesis or dissertationLanguage
enDescription
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Sponsors
China Scholarship Council.Collections
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