Fitness training and its effect on musculoskeletal pain in professional ballet dancers

In a controlled, prospective, randomized study, half of the dancers in a professional ballet company were asked to do extra self-administered fitness training, while the other half became the control group. The aim was to examine if the dancers in the training group would be able to keep up the extra training during a regular season and to examine its effect on their maximum oxygen uptake and on their self-estimated musculoskeletal pain. The training group increased their oxygen uptake more than the control group. The self-estimated functional inability because of pain (SEFIP) indicated significantly less pain the week after the première for the study population taken as a whole, but not for the two groups when considered separately. The training group claimed that the fitness training had helped them to cope with the psychological strain during rehearsals.