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I for INJURY

Writer's picture: Manon HallayManon Hallay

Dancers and injuries…


6 years ago, I tore my hip labrum and was told by doctors I needed surgery. Not wanting to get hip surgery in my early twenties made me look for different alternatives and turn to conditioning and physical training, which got me back on my feet slowly and allowed me to do my job as a dancer.


This pain comes back from time to time, and right now, it is back.

But this time, even if it is still difficult to deal with my body hurting, it’s different; my approach has changed. More precisely, after panicking (because yes, I panicked), I chose to look at the problem differently. I knew it was in my hands to react differently.

Dancers freak out when they begin getting injured and often go through an agonizing denial period, assimilating the pain to soreness or just overwork.

I believe we like to stay in denial because reality hurts. Being injured opens the doors to endless, open-ended scenarios.


When will I heal?

How bad is the damage?

How long have I actually been feeling like this?

Is this an old injury or something new?

Is it how my career ends?

And my favorite: How much will this cost me? How will I pay for it? I can’t afford to be injured~


I apologize for triggering some dancers reading this; these questions hit me, too.

But I went back to what I have learned in the past: the key is to listen to the cues your body is sending you, to translate what it is trying to tell you so you can adapt to what your body needs.

Pain is here to help you, like a fire alarm. In this scenario, pain is helping me understand that I am putting too much strain on my instrument and hurting it in some ways.


After going through a moment of panic, I took a deep breath and asked myself a series of questions:

When did it start?

Since when did it start getting worse?

What was the cause of the pain?

What did I do, or what did I forget to do, that put a toll on my injury?

Do I need to give more time for my body to recover?

How can I help myself better?


Dancers are incredible at adapting in the studio, jumping into someone’s part last minute, adapting to a new space, new music, and props, but when it comes to adapting to a slower tempo or modifying their training plan due to an injury, this is where we start hitting a wall.


As a coach, I want to put in practice what I preach to the people I train and listen to what my running coach (Daniel James) said “meet yourself where you are and be brutally honest about where that is”, so I decided to slow things down after the pain hit an 8/10. I switched to low-impact, low-intensity training, focusing on all the « PT »-style exercises I should have been practicing more regularly as I increased my training load.


Today, the pain is lowering to 4/10, and it is a relief to see the course going in this direction. However, it is a great reminder of my own journey. I often push my body more than it can take and realize it too late. But for once, I made the right decision. I know what to do, and most importantly, I trust my body’s capacity to heal when I support it and when I give it time to heal.


Trust that you can heal you.




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