Why specific care matters for ballerinas and dancers

When I worked on Harley Street, on London’s famous West End, I had the privilege of caring for many professional dancers. Their strength and flexibility are remarkable, but when one area isn’t moving properly, the whole system compensates more than most athletes. Grace demands precision.

If a vertebra in the spine is stuck, other segments overwork to compensate for the lack of motion. In dancers, who repeat movements and have high flexibility, this compensation puts extra strain on other spinal segments, creating disc, soft tissue and nerve stress.

This is why being SPECIFIC when finding the problem and adjusting only the involved segment becomes so important. When trying to correct this, if we simply move multiple segments at once, including both the original problem area and all the compensating hypermobile segments, it will often feel good temporarily because everything feels looser and less restricted. The problem is that all we have really done is make the compensating areas even more mobile, while the original problem segment becomes more stuck, more stressed, and more irritated over time.

Think of a “simple” (Glenn gets eye-rolled by every ballerina) arabesque. There are so many moving parts in this movement and position, that if one piece in that chain isn’t doing its job, everything else must work harder. If the pelvis and lower back can not turn out and extend, the hip joints and higher lumbar vertebrae become the work horses, for example. These are also where we see a lot of degeneration and surgeries in retired dancers.

Gonstead chiropractic is all about precision. We use instrumentation to find nerve pressure, we utilise X-rays to measure the position of a bone and the angle of the disc it sits on, and specifically adjust the exact stuck vertebra without disturbing the compensating areas, ensuring stability, proper nerve flow, and the best performance under all that demand.

Our brain controls everything in our body. This includes strengthening muscles as well as  understanding where we are in space and what movement is occurring in each joint. For dancers to perform at their best and avoid injury, that brain-body communication must be clear. Behind every graceful movement is a body working in balance.

When your body is your passion, your hobby and eventually your job, you want to give it the best chance to function at it’s optimal potential. Peak performance and avoiding injury become essentials. Finding the cause, correcting it and letting your body dance as it was intended is the best short and long term solution.

Dancers demand more from their bodies. Their care should too.

Meet you at the barre,

Hugs,

Glenn