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Cooling Down
This is
perhaps the most important, yet most overlooked part of the
injury prevention program. As a performer, repetition is part
of your life. Not only do choreography, costumes and stage
surfaces ask you to put yourself in stressful and abnormal
postures, but you must also put yourself in these postures
many times throughout your week and sometimes throughout your
day! This causes some of your muscles to get overused and
tight while others get underused and weak. This places uneven
stresses on your joints and can lead to injury or long term
conditions like arthritis. It is for
this reason that it is imperative that you undo all of this
stress that the show/performance does to your body on a daily
basis.
Cooling
down helps to undo this repetitive stress. After you finish a
show, you’re muscles are tight and pumped up from working hard. If you
allow your body temperature to drop while you are tight, than
you will feel stiff and tight the next day. If, however, you
stretch and massage out the overused, tight muscles while
still warm, you will feel more relaxed, rested, flexible
and have less aches and pains the next day since you will have
slept with a balanced musculoskeletal system.
The
following 5 sections describe different cool down exercises
utilizing the foam roller, sponge balls and various stretching
techniques. As a beginner, you should spend small amounts of
time on the foam roller and/or sponge balls. Start with just
a few minutes every other day and work up to 10 -15 minutes
daily. You can over-roll causing increased soreness
similar to that which you would feel if you had too deep of a
massage. The stretches should be done daily, and each
stretch should be held for minimum of 30 seconds and no more
than 3 minuets. Keep in mind that you should hold the stretch
in the position in which you first feel the stretch rather
than pushing through to the end-range stretch position. The
longer you are in the stretch the more relaxed the muscle
becomes thus allowing you to increase the range slowly while
doing the stretch. Many dancers injure themselves trying
to push too far into a stretch.
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