You have heard both versions. Natural facility, a gift to protect. Or loose joints and a shorter career. Both get said with complete confidence, often to the same dancer in the same week.

This episode covers where the warning came from, what a study of 185 dancers followed for a full academic year found instead, why the older and newer research disagree, and why the test almost every clinician uses does not examine a single hip, ankle or foot. Plus the dancer who was certain strength training would fix her hypermobility, did the exercises for weeks, and kept getting the same tendon problem back.

Every dancer whose case is discussed on this podcast has given permission for their story to be shared. No dancer is named or identifiable.

I worked in a football club at first national amateur level, and it took me years to understand what I had been looking at. Athletes and dancers are the same animal. Both worlds have a culture that says push through. The difference is that in sport, the system can overrule the culture. In dance, it cannot.

In this episode: the audition that rewards you for hiding an injury, what performing injured actually costs, the German data showing more than eight in ten dancers in musculoskeletal pain in an average week, why the yes-but list a good clinician gives you is unusable in a studio, and why I will not answer the question yes or no.

I am Audrey De Bry, sports physiotherapist, former dancer, and founder of Smart Dancers Academy.

Cases discussed on this podcast are shared with the permission of the dancers involved, with identifying details removed.

Research referenced
Junge et al. Self-reported Health Problems of Professional Dancers from Five German Opera Houses or State Theatres. Sports Medicine Open, 2024.
Bolling et al. In your shoes. Translational Sports Medicine, 2021.
Benoit-Piau et al. Sustaining Health in Professional Ballet. Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, 2025.
Volkova et al. Systematic review of methods used to measure training load in dance. BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine, 2023.
Fuller et al. Artistic and Health Professionals' Perceptions of Training Load Practices. Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, 2022.
Team Physician Consensus Statement: Return to Sport and the Team Physician, 2023 update.

Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:13 The football club: can he play, yes or no
2:50 Nobody asks a dancer that question
3:25 The audition trap: hired for hiding it
4:22 My ankle, and the contract I paid for
5:14 Where dance really does have it harder
6:44 "Dance is not healthy anyway"
8:16 What performing injured actually costs
9:24 83% in pain: the two numbers
11:17 What sport wrote down and dance never did
14:44 Why I will not answer yes or no
20:09 The hip that became a back
21:09 What I am not telling you to do

smartdancersacademy.com

One thing to be clear about up front. This episode is not saying sport is better than dance, and it is not asking dance to copy sport. The sport comparison is here for one reason only: to show that sport kept updating its training with research while dance largely stayed behind. That comparison does not even hold across every sport. The real point is dance being willing to question itself.

In this episode: the three professors who saw the problem before Audrey did, what a plank actually trains versus what a pirouette demands, why the studies people cite never tested the plank on its own, and the real reason dance struggles to update the way sport does.

Chapters:
 0:00 Good Luck Working With Dancers
 3:17 The Warm-Up That Made Us Puke
 6:05 Does Planking Actually Fix Your Pirouette?
 9:11 Every Exercise Has To Earn Its Place
 11:03 Why Sport Evolved And Dance Froze
 12:32 What An Amateur Football Club Got Right
 14:12 You Are The Part, So Why Aren't You Protected?
 17:33 Tradition Is Not The Enemy
 18:40 What Else Have You Never Questioned?

Studies referenced in this episode:
 Systematic review of training protocols on dancers' balance. Senger and colleagues, Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 2024.
 Systematic review and meta-analysis of musculoskeletal injuries in modern and contemporary dancers. Frontiers in Public Health, 2024.
 On the limits of translating sports medicine into dance. Research in Dance Education, 2024.

This is Unsolicited Dance Advice, a show that questions dance training one belief at a time. New episodes every Wednesday.

Follow on Instagram: @smartdancersacademy
 Website: smartdancersacademy.com

For dancers who want answers: Smart Dancers Academy, smartdancersacademy.com