The Performer’s Pelvis: Managing Pelvic Floor Dysfunction in Dancers and Artistic Athletes

Dancers and artistic athletes have unique movement and training demands. Pelvic floor dysfunction is common in these high-level athletes, and there is a need for more clinicians who can understand their performance demands as well as deliver high-quality care. This course bridges pelvic health with musculoskeletal practice and performing arts medicine, with a focus on external and functional/movement training

Do you see dancers or artistic athletes in your clinic? These athletes can be challenging to assess and treat due to their range of motion, hypermobile movement patterns, and training schedules. Join us for an 8-week deep dive to learn clinical pearls when working with the dancer community. Guest speakers from Pivot Dancer will participate in several of the weekly sessions giving you the opportunity to hear directly from professional dancers, teachers, and other experts about the assessment and treatment of dancers. 

Assessing & Treating Dancers and Artistic Athletes - Level 1

Building directly on the foundations introduced in Level 1, Level 2 is an advanced on-demand course delivering over 13 hours of expert content for clinicians ready to move beyond the fundamentals and build genuine clinical mastery with dancers and artistic athletes. Recorded from a live 8-week virtual series, this course captures real case discussions, live patient assessments, and candid conversations with professional dancers, Olympic-level athletes, and specialist clinicians, giving you a unique and immersive, multi-perspective learning that a textbook cannot replicate.

Assessing & Treating Dancers and Artistic Athletes - Level 2

Did you know that about 1/3 of dancers and other high-level performers struggle with pelvic floor-related symptoms like urinary leakage? Dancers and other artistic athletes also face unique movement demands with repetitive loading at end ranges of motion, and can often develop movement habits that interfere with optimal pelvic floor function. This resource package includes access to instructional videos (including cueing) of exercises focused on optimizing breathing, pressure management and core control, pelvic floor coordination, strength, and length, digestive health, nervous system downtraining, and hip stability and mobility geared toward improving pelvic floor health for performing artists. 

Resource Package - The Performer’s Pelvis

Did you know that dancers are at high risk of injury? Did you know that some of these injuries are preventable? In fact, 95% of dancers will experience pain or an injury within every year they participate in dance. Up to 91% of all injuries will be to the lower extremities. There is strong evidence that neuromuscular training and strengthening can help decrease injury, improve performance and improve movement mechanics.There is also evidence that strengthening can help improve flexibility in a safe and effective manner!

Resource Package - Rehabilitation for Dancers

This resource package was inspired by actor Nathaniel Dolquist. He trained over the course of 14 weeks to meet the aesthetic performance and physical demands of being cast in the role of Tarzan in the on-stage musical performance. The resource package includes 24 gym strength training exercises that focus on the trunk, chest, and shoulders and building movement patterns from proximal to distal. Injury prevention was of paramount importance in managing the rigorous training load, rehearsal and performance schedule.

Resource Package - Functional Resistance Training to Support High Performance Strength

Did you know that an estimated 60-90% of dancers have a joint hypermobility disorder? Research has shown that physiotherapy is a critical component in the management of hypermobile patients. Exercise for hypermobile patients has been shown to help improve self-efficacy, manage pain, decrease risk for injury and increase rates of continuing meaningful participation in activities. This resource package includes access to professional quality video exercises geared toward your hypermobile patients who participate in dance as well as other artistic sports (gymnastics, artistic swimming, etc.). 

Resource Package - Rehabilitation for the Hypermobile Dancer

Enhance your clinical practice with sports taping techniques! This course will teach you the traditional taping techniques, as well as how to modify these techniques to best support the dancer’s/athlete's return to activity while respecting their mobility requirements. This course has been designed to give participants a full introduction to taping so that each taping product and the rationale for application is understood. Participants will learn the tools of the trade, the different tape supplies, the risks and benefits, as well as best practices for safe application and removal.

Clinical Taping Skills with Dance Specific Adaptations for Clinicians

Dr. Brooke Winder and Dinah Hampson, Dance Physical Therapists present on Menopause in performers as presented at the International Association of Dance Medicine 2022 and Performing Arts Medicine meeting 2023. Dancers and performing artists are enjoying long careers and little has been offered to guide the perimenopausal and menopausal performer through this stage of life. This presentation will review the physiology of menopause, its impact on the individual and the management strategies available to them through conservative care.

Menopause-Perimenopause in Performers

Physical Therapists, Dinah Hampson and Dr. Amy Werner teach a succinct review of joint arthro and osteokinematics and have insight into how these mechanics are impacted in mobile populations like dancers. People with high mobility often crave a release that they are unable to find through stretching because the length of the soft tissue does not reach its tensile stretch prior to the joint capsule and ligaments reaching their end first. This can make stretching very frustrating for “stretchy” people. Dinah and Amy have brought their years of clinical experience in dance together to create a set of their favourite self-mobilization techniques that all clinicians would benefit from keeping in their toolboxes.

Self Mobilization Techniques for Dancers, Performers and All Humans