INJURIES ARE A SHOW STOPPER
Let’s talk about injuries and rehabilitation and how they can be such a let down when we just want to keep pushing through each day. Finding the right rehabilitation program is crucial whether it be a short term fix or long term. I don’t know about you but I always search until I find what is going to benefit me long term when dancing, teaching, choreographing, or just everyday life running around after my daughter.
What worked for me is not the solution for everyone so it’s so important to get the people you need that specialise in their field to guide you and your specific needs. I will say though, it is very important to always get a second opinion as it helped me really go within and check in with myself of what it is that my body needed me do to. Our health and well being mind body and soul no matter what is number one.
Say that again, my number one priority is my health and well being, mind body and soul!
Injuries, they can effect us emotionally and physically and that’s where keeping ourselves in alignment can be a heaven sent. It’s important to make ourselves a priority as much as we can. Being caught up in crazy everyday life can sometimes be a distraction.
My body has taken a beating being a dancer growing up and most of my professional career, so injuries would be a part of life and generally not a shock to the system. The one that stopped me from performing in the industry as a professional dancer was when I damaged my hip. Now at first I thought this will be fine, I’ll just take it easy and it’ll mend again like all my other injuries. No, that wasn’t the case at all. The pain was excruciating and would limit me a lot even when trying to take a walk even if it were for five minutes. Two MRI scans, physiotherapists, sports specialists and an osteopath told me it was time to really think what is was I needed to do for my body long term. Surgery kept coming up in all the conversations but I refused as it would completely throw me off and take a very long time to be able to bounce back again, if ever to be honest. So I didn’t like the odds of that.
I knew there had to be another way. So I hung up my shoes as a performer and changed my focus on teaching, mentoring and choreographing. I was doing a lot of treatment and getting PT sessions at the time and that’s where I discovered TRX, and boy did that change my life!
To cut a long story short I loved it that much that I decided to become a certified TRX coach. It was the best thing for my body. I felt strong yet kept lean, I maintained my flexibility and mobility. Everything about the training itself was full of movement and functional. I never loved doing weights at the gym personally, it wasn’t my thing, but I loved TRX that much that I actually looked forward to waking up at 4am to take a class or train myself. I was coaching for about a year but teaching and choreographing took up a lot of my hours and I had to stop being a coach but I never stopped training.
So let’s fast forward to the here and now. I am always going to be rehabilitating with Chiropractic treatments, physiotherapy, Reformer Pilates and of course TRX. It’s a part of the schedule and keeps me going at my best.
It’s so important to find what works for you. As I said before, what works for me may not work for you and you should speak to the right people to help you recover for the long term. Second opinions and consistent treatment is key.
Take a look at my Instagram page @uncensoredandreal where I had a live chat with my own physiotherapist Ashlea from Peak Performance Physiotherapy about dance injuries, rehab and prevention. Ashlea has a performing arts background who has worked her magic on me countless of times. Ashlea is the head physiotherapist for Sydney Dance Company and has also played the same role for many musical theatre productions.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Ashela talks us through injuries and how important rehabilitation is and what we can do strengthen our bodies so we can always bounce back faster when injuries do occur.
