Dance physiotherapy is a specialised form of physical therapy focused on preventing, diagnosing, and treating injuries related to dance. It combines traditional physiotherapy techniques with an understanding of the unique demands of dance, such as flexibility, strength, coordination, and posture.
Services typically include:
- Injury Rehabilitation: Treatment for acute or chronic injuries like sprains, strains, joint issues, tendinitis, and stress fractures that dancers may experience.
- Prevention: Educating dancers on proper warm-up and cool-down techniques, posture, body alignment, and movement patterns to avoid injuries. This can involve personalized exercise programs aimed at improving strength, flexibility, and body awareness.
- Pre-pointe Assessments: A screening to determine if dancers who are considering starting to dance en-pointe have sufficient range of motion, strength and technical control to safely begin pointe work.
- Core Strengthening and Flexibility: Targeting areas that are critical to a dancer’s performance, such as core stability, hip flexibility, and ankle mobility.
- Injury Prevention Strategies: Recommendations for footwear, dance technique adjustments, and recovery routines to minimize the risk of overuse injuries.
Posture and Alignment: Helping dancers maintain proper body mechanics during rehearsals and performances, which is key to both injury prevention and improving dance technique.
When you have a physiotherapy assessment at On Path Physio, you can rest assured that your assessment, diagnosis and tailored rehabilitation will be conducted with a thorough knowledge and understanding of the unique demands of technique, strength, and range of motion that is required from dancers.
