 the male dancer
written by Tom             on 12.09. at 22:00:44 - as answer to: Knees & Ankles by Todd at> Hi guys. I was somewhat disturbed to recently hear that the stresses on a dancers joints when landing from something like an entrechat can be up to fifteen times his own weight. This is incredible. I would imagine that training strengthens the muscles but can't do much for knee and ankle joints. Is injury therefore inevitable? People who run for exercise will spend a fortune on expensive running shoes to absorb the impact, but ballet shoes offer, I would say, virtually no protection. Can joint damage be avoided or is it something all dancers should expect? This is why every class begins with plies. The whole point of pliesis to make them second nature so that any time you land fromanything you will do so in a plie without thinking. The bending ofthe joints in a plie provides a cushion so that the decelerationupon landing will be limited to something your body can handle. The stress depends on the acceleration. (Remember Newton: F = ma,force is mass times acceleration.) When you come to rest after ajump, that's negative acceleration, but it's acceleration just thesame, and the less acceleration, the less stress on your body. Butthe less acceleration, the longer you have to go before your bodycomes to rest. That means *deep*, "juicy" plies. The deeper theplie, the softer the landing & the less stress on your body. Areally deep plie will provide lots better cushioning than the bestrunning shoe can. Not sure your plies are soft & deep enough? Listen when you land.Do a bunch of changements. Can anybody hear them? If not, you'vegot nice, juicy plies, because the same forces that make noise arethe ones that stress your joints. Tom Parsons Answers to this message:
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