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PhD Academy Award
The art of load management: optimising training to mitigate injury risk in professional ballet (PhD Academy Award)
  1. Joseph W. Shaw1,2
  1. 1 Faculty of Sport, Allied Health and Performance Sciences, St Mary’s University, London, UK
  2. 2 Ballet Healthcare, Royal Opera House, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Joseph W. Shaw, St Mary’s University, London, TW1 4SX, UK; joseph.shaw{at}stmarys.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2023-107394

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    What did I do?

    The aims of the PhD were: to understand the training load demands experienced by professional ballet dancers; to explore the relationship between training load and musculoskeletal injury in professional ballet and to develop and validate measures of internal and external training load, providing ballet companies with practical tools and recommendations for training load management.

    Why did I do it?

    Ballet dancers incur injuries at rates comparable to professional sportspeople (3.5 medical attention injuries·1000 h⁻¹), with the majority affecting the ankle (20%), foot (16%), lumbar spine (15%) and lower leg (11%).1 2 Of injuries assigned a classification, 72% of medical attention injuries, and 56% of time-loss injuries are considered gradual onset, while jumping and landing is associated with 25% of medical attention injuries, and 32% of time-loss injuries in which there was a clear mechanism.2

    Even among lay populations, ballet dancers are known to work extremely hard and push their bodies to the limit in the pursuit of artistic excellence.3 This is evident in injury epidemiology research, however, has not translated to a significant body of high-quality scientific research investigating the demands and implications of a ballet dancer’s training load, …

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    Footnotes

    • Twitter @JosephShaw_

    • Contributors This PhD Academy Award is a summary of JWS’s PhD thesis. JWS was the sole author of this submission.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.