Questioning my own questions

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About a week and a half ago I thought I had finally decided what I want the focus of my inquiry topic to be; Overuse injuries as a result of overtraining in classical ballet dancers. Having spoken to Helen in my 1-2-1 she thinks this could be a good line of inquiry to take however the main question she posed to me was what are my actual questions within this topic and if I'm honest I have no idea.

I perceive from my own experiences and from the experiences of friends I have within the industry that not only are overuse injuries common in classical ballet, they are also often caused by overtraining and rigorous schedules but I don't really know how to turn this perception into a research question. My original plan was to research into common overuse injuries and the root of the taxing schedules dancers are often presented with within the professional ballet world and try to find correlations between the two although this isn't really a question but more of an exploration.

Having thought about this I now want to take a slightly different approach and look at how different injury prevention techniques work to counteract the negative effect of overtraining and reduce the rate of overuse injuries. The problem with this is that I'm struggling to find practical studies where different injury prevention techniques have been tested on classical ballet dancers in this way and I know it would be unrealistic to think that I could conduct a study of that nature on this course.

Now I'm wondering whether I should shift the focus of my research into what injury prevention techniques other athletes use and compare those to the research that has been done on dancers to see what crossovers there are and what seems to be most beneficial in reducing overuse injuries. Then leading into module 3 I could conduct interviews on different people within the industry (dancers, directors, dance physios etc) to gather more information on what they feel works for them and how they view training schedules, links to overuse injuries and injury prevention techniques? 

I feel like I've kind of hit a wall and I really need to find a way to break through it as time seems to be passing scarily quickly and I'm worried if I don't figure this out soon I won't be even close to having anything ready for the draft deadline or my MORE form completed on time :/ Any suggestions/ideas would be greatly appreciated! 


Comments

  1. Alex WignallMarch 13, 2021 at 8:02 AM

    Hi Kirsty, it all sounds really interesting, particularly your initial idea of overuse injuries as a result of overtraining in classical ballet dancers. Maybe you could look at this topic from a couple of angles, why so frequently overtraining occurs in classical ballet dancers? Do classical ballet dancers know their limits and choose to ignore them? Why do classical ballet dancers feel the pressure to ignore their limits? Are classical ballet dancers more conscious about their limits after recovering from an injury incurred from overuse? Hope this makes sense and helps a little? Just some thoughts that came to mind.
    Alex x

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    Replies
    1. Kirsty WalkerMarch 13, 2021 at 9:50 AM

      Ah thank you so much! That is super helpful and actually a really good way to look at it and will allow me to stick to the original topic I wanted to look into. Thank you!!!

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  2. Emily SmithMarch 15, 2021 at 8:35 AM

    Hi Kirsty! Fastinating topic, I am not a classical ballet dancer but from experience I think there is a lot of pressure that dancers put on themselves to always be on top form and to keep working through injuties,we worry about missing out on opportunities or being reblocked out of a show and what impact that will have. Also that feeling of never letting your understudy go on! Does this pressure come from ourselves or is it something we have learnt or had put on us in our pasts? Why do dancers push through injuries when other athletes wouldn't. I remember at college a teacher told us that part of our professional training was to understand and take action on when we have an injury. This is something I've always thought about!

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  3. Lauren SKMarch 23, 2021 at 4:33 AM

    Hi Kirsty,

    This sounds great, and I don't think you should feel like you've hit a brick wall because I think you're going through the process that we're supposed to venture down if you know what I mean!? You have your area but you're now refining it and looking at what other questions emerge. I think the topic sounds really interesting and I would agree with what you said and definitely one side of it is comparing other injuries in sports to classical ballet and looking at what the similarities are but also what distinguishes them from each other. I Guess that's the point of a case study approach any way. I read this which would compliment this method: (in terms of looking at a few individual cases perhaps and different sports injuries;) "...it is believed that understanding them better will lead to better understanding...about a still larger collection of cases. " (Stake, 2005, p446) and also it says in our KORTEXT that researchers "seek to understand what is common and what is particular...but the priority between the two might differ in different projects"
    I hope that is perhaps a little helpful but ultimately reassuring.
    best wishes to you, Lauren x

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