Increasing Hamstring Strength and Flexibility During Arabesque in Collegiate Dancers

Abstract

The hamstring is an important muscle group to dancers because it assists in leg and hip extension and helps maintain many classical positions in dance such as attitude derrière and arabesque. Additionally, the hamstring is a common injury in dance caused by insufficient warm up or lack of flexibility, strength, or a combination of both. The purpose of this study was to analyze the difference between strength and flexibility training and its effect on a dancer’s hamstrings during arabesque. Having proper hamstring strength and flexibility increases performance in regard to execution and safety. The subject pool was selected from a group of volunteer university dance students. These dancers were randomly placed into either a strength group (n=1), flexibility group (n=1), or control group (n=1). Throughout the course of the study, dancers were given exercises that corresponded to their selected groupings and performed these exercises after going through a warm-up protocol. This seven-week study was conducted using pre and post testing, including hamstring flexibility and strength tests. The subjects underwent a training week, followed by 4 weeks of intervention.