Breakdancing is a very high-intensity freestyle dance form that enables the practitioners of this craft to perform explosive and dynamic feats. Notably, the concepts such as power moves, blow ups and freezes are what cause the most amount of injuries when breaking. The most common injuries I’ve seen in my 15 years of breaking are: wrist, shoulder, neck, knee, ankle, groin and foot injuries. In this article I will share my with you my opinions on how to mitigate short term and long term injuries that inevitably stunt breaking growth.
Universal truths:
- When you hurt a part of your body, stay off that area for a whole week.
- Stretch for first and last 15 minutes of your practice sessions
- Target injury prone areas when stretching, namely: wrist, shoulder, neck, knee, ankle, groin and foot.
- Do not overuse injury prone areas and try to diversify your practice session to target various body parts.
- Actively breathe during sets
Injury Prevention:
- Stretches – Focus on deep full body stretches. Follow along in this video to get a sense of what a full body stretch looks like.
- Conditioning – Calisthenics exercises are the perfect conditioning exercises for breakdancers as it is based in a free weight methodology focusing on core strength and body control. Follow along in Chris Heria’s video to get a sense of what these calisthenics exercises entail.
- Proper nutrition – Having a balanced and nutritious diet will help improve athletic performance and mobility, therefore inadvertently preventing future injuries from occurring. Watch the video below for an example of a balanced diet for athletes to glean some insights.
- Sleep: Getting enough sleep is key to remain performant during sessions and helps your body perform tissue repair. Read this article if you are interested in learning more about how important sleep is for athletic performance.