Ballet dancing pains like joint pain and pain from dancing in pointe shoes can seem worse in cold weather. If you are doing lots of rehearsals for the Nutcracker or some other holiday season dance concert, you need to take special care of your joints, muscles, and feet. Wool legwarmers, snug sweaters and water-proof snow boots all contribute to a better holiday season if you are a ballet dancer.
Rehearsing classical ballet concerts takes a lot of organization. Most ballet dancers get good at this in their young years. If they haven't caught on to the need for methodical self-preservation in the long process of rehearsing and staging a show, the experience may be uncomfortable to say the least.
Starting with extra ballet wear, packing some sweats to wear in long rehearsal days is a must. Sweaters, shawls and scarves, help a lot to keep cool drafts off neck and shoulder muscles.
Leg warmers save the day to help warm up and to stay warm while waiting for your turn on stage.
In long technical rehearsals, the wait can be exasperating while lighting cues are tested. Fatigue can be challenging when repeated run throughs are needed for the stage crew and stage manager, or for dancers who are thrown into the dance at the last minute because of another's injury, or winter sickness.
Anything can happen! If your mother puts some vitamin pills at your plate, take them! Stay healthy and be smart!
Long hot baths with Epsom Salts followed by icing sore spots will help a lot. Even ice the not-so sore spots, the tired muscles and joints. Give them an extra boost at recovery.
Drink enough water - sip all day. Don't fill up with those frankenstein neon so-called sports waters, or sodas. Green juices and real fruit drinks are so much better, but water is best. Fruits for a snack are great. And one of the best snacks is celery. Celery is full of the mineral salts that you lose in perspiration. Losing those mineral salts decreases your muscle strength and your thinking power! Just the opposite of what you need to dance your best all day long.
You must take care of minor aches and pains, to make sure that they remain minor. Nerves and adrenaline get you through a lot, but be careful not to get drained. Your muscles and nervous system need real fresh foods to be replenished with.
The repetitive motion of rehearsing can lead to joint pain, raw pointe shoe blisters and deep aches in your muscles. Don't let these conditions dull the thrill of your Nutcracker ballet performances.
Go to this online ballet store for last minute ballet wear and dance accessories.
Showing posts with label joint pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joint pain. Show all posts
How to Avoid Developing Chronic Joint Pain If You Are a Dancer Or an Athlete
It is vital to understand the role of inflammation in the body, for anyone, but especially would-be ballerinas, men in ballet, and athletes. Whether you are looking for a career builder or just enjoy the challenge of training, it is important to know how to maintain the soft tissues of the body that get worn out on practically a daily basis. To prevent ballet and sports injuries, good training and good work habits are required. For better rehabilitation, once an injury occurs, adding omega 3 oils to your nutrition is a tremendous help to diminish the natural inflammation response.
Inflammation occurs naturally as a response to injury or immune attack. It is temporary, and we recover. In a healthy body, damaged tissues are removed and replaced with new tissue.
In a body that has a low grade chronic inflammation, in the blood and soft tissues, better recovery may not be as speedy, and may never be complete. Joint injuries are supposed to give you trouble for the rest of your life, although maybe not until you are older, then you are to expect arthritis in a damaged joint, if not in every joint. Why is this?
What causes chronic inflammation in your body? Why would a young vibrant person in a developed country who has access to good food, good water, vitamin and mineral supplements have a low grade (or not so low) chronic inflammatory condition?
Sugar is one issue. And artificial sweeteners. Don't eat them. Sorry.
Bonnie C. Minsky has an excellent article with more detail about this.
Andrew Weil, holistic health M.D., Nicholas Perricone, M.D., an anti-aging expert, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D, an allergy nutritionist, all write about inflammation as a major cause of disease. But you can avoid it.
Think a moment about all the good stuff you eat - lean beef, chicken, cold water fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel, and sardines. Salads, vegetables - are you not doing everything right? How could you not rehabilitate quickly and completely from a minor dance or sports injury? You are eating all the right stuff! You are working out in pointe shoes or shooting baskets daily. Why would you not recover one hundred per cent?
Here's the reality. We eat beef and poultry and eggs from the poultry, that are grain fed. That means that the fats from those foods are predominantly omega 6 fatty acids. They are not bad fats. However, omega 6 oils in the body support pro-inflammatory pathways. They promote inflammation.
But grass fed beef and poultry do not fill us with so much omega 6 fats. And as lean as you want to eat, for weight loss, or weight maintenance, some daily animal fat is crucial for your health. Eat the grass fed as much as you can.
More bad news - fast foods and processed foods contain omega 6 oils. So much for that convenience.
More bad news - you cannot eat too much cold water fish because of the pollutants in them, mainly mercury. But the good news is, you can now get ultra purified or pharmaceutical grade, fish oils as a nutritional supplement.
You can also decrease your ingestion of omega 6 fats by avoiding all the bottled salad dressings and most bottled vegetable oils that you find at the grocery store. Except for olive oil, avocado oil, walnut oil and flaxseed oil, (and I'm only including here the more typically available oils, there are more), vegetable oils too are omega 6 oils and will promote inflammation in your body.
This sounds pretty hopeless, but here is the good news. Omega 3 oils are anti-inflammatory and are also readily available. If you are willing to make a small lifestyle change, or get your mother/child/wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/cook, or whoever does the shopping and food prep at home to do so (they will thank you big time), you can switch to omega 3 oils,
If your current training is a career building plan, this information is crucial. If you are training for personal enjoyment, it is important for health too. Being athletic doesn't make arthritis a given in your future. Joint pain can be relieved by decreasing inflammation. Inflammation can be decreased by diet. It is really pretty simple.
I hope that if you are a young ballerina, among the men in ballet, or a young athlete, that you will have your parents read this article. I can only touch the tip of the iceberg here, in the topic of omega 3 oils and their anti-inflammatory properties. But the facts seem to indicate that balancing omega 6 fatty acids in your diet with omega 3 oils, would affect your family health for the better. Dance and sports injuries may be in their past or present too.
Bonnie C. Minsky's article is at http://www.consciouschoice.com/2004/cc1706/healthconscious1706.html.
For an excellent source of omega 3 ultra purified fish oils, click here.
Inflammation occurs naturally as a response to injury or immune attack. It is temporary, and we recover. In a healthy body, damaged tissues are removed and replaced with new tissue.
In a body that has a low grade chronic inflammation, in the blood and soft tissues, better recovery may not be as speedy, and may never be complete. Joint injuries are supposed to give you trouble for the rest of your life, although maybe not until you are older, then you are to expect arthritis in a damaged joint, if not in every joint. Why is this?
What causes chronic inflammation in your body? Why would a young vibrant person in a developed country who has access to good food, good water, vitamin and mineral supplements have a low grade (or not so low) chronic inflammatory condition?
Sugar is one issue. And artificial sweeteners. Don't eat them. Sorry.
Bonnie C. Minsky has an excellent article with more detail about this.
Andrew Weil, holistic health M.D., Nicholas Perricone, M.D., an anti-aging expert, Jeffrey Bland, Ph.D, an allergy nutritionist, all write about inflammation as a major cause of disease. But you can avoid it.
Think a moment about all the good stuff you eat - lean beef, chicken, cold water fish like salmon, tuna, mackerel, and sardines. Salads, vegetables - are you not doing everything right? How could you not rehabilitate quickly and completely from a minor dance or sports injury? You are eating all the right stuff! You are working out in pointe shoes or shooting baskets daily. Why would you not recover one hundred per cent?
Here's the reality. We eat beef and poultry and eggs from the poultry, that are grain fed. That means that the fats from those foods are predominantly omega 6 fatty acids. They are not bad fats. However, omega 6 oils in the body support pro-inflammatory pathways. They promote inflammation.
But grass fed beef and poultry do not fill us with so much omega 6 fats. And as lean as you want to eat, for weight loss, or weight maintenance, some daily animal fat is crucial for your health. Eat the grass fed as much as you can.
More bad news - fast foods and processed foods contain omega 6 oils. So much for that convenience.
More bad news - you cannot eat too much cold water fish because of the pollutants in them, mainly mercury. But the good news is, you can now get ultra purified or pharmaceutical grade, fish oils as a nutritional supplement.
You can also decrease your ingestion of omega 6 fats by avoiding all the bottled salad dressings and most bottled vegetable oils that you find at the grocery store. Except for olive oil, avocado oil, walnut oil and flaxseed oil, (and I'm only including here the more typically available oils, there are more), vegetable oils too are omega 6 oils and will promote inflammation in your body.
This sounds pretty hopeless, but here is the good news. Omega 3 oils are anti-inflammatory and are also readily available. If you are willing to make a small lifestyle change, or get your mother/child/wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/cook, or whoever does the shopping and food prep at home to do so (they will thank you big time), you can switch to omega 3 oils,
If your current training is a career building plan, this information is crucial. If you are training for personal enjoyment, it is important for health too. Being athletic doesn't make arthritis a given in your future. Joint pain can be relieved by decreasing inflammation. Inflammation can be decreased by diet. It is really pretty simple.
I hope that if you are a young ballerina, among the men in ballet, or a young athlete, that you will have your parents read this article. I can only touch the tip of the iceberg here, in the topic of omega 3 oils and their anti-inflammatory properties. But the facts seem to indicate that balancing omega 6 fatty acids in your diet with omega 3 oils, would affect your family health for the better. Dance and sports injuries may be in their past or present too.
Bonnie C. Minsky's article is at http://www.consciouschoice.com/2004/cc1706/healthconscious1706.html.
For an excellent source of omega 3 ultra purified fish oils, click here.
Labels:
arthritis,
ballerina,
career builder,
joint pain,
omega 3,
pointe shoes,
sports injuries,
training
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
