Breakdancing Injuries: Common Damage Areas And Causes

Sophie Manuela Lindner and Matti Pulkkinen

In breakdancing it has been shown that a lot of injuries occur. The body of a Bboy and a Bgirl handles an immense impact in training and performance. Aside from being an artist, the dancer is also a high leisure sports athlete with a high risk of injury.

A distinction is to be made between acute and chronic injuries. Since many Bboys and Bgirls avoid visiting the doctor, unfortunately chronic injuries are common. These chronic injuries could, however, often be treated with early therapy and rehabilitation and thus heal much sooner. Most injuries are caused by an overuse of a unilateral training and too little regeneration.

In the following post you can read more about general injuries, their causes and which bodily regions are mostly affected by them.

GENERAL BREAKDANCING INJURIES:

The following list includes common injuries that are typical for Bboys and Bgirls:

• General trauma: aberrations, contusions/bruises
• Bone fractures
• Instability / (Sub-) Luxations
• Overuse injuries: strains, sprains of muscles / joint capsules and ligaments, tendinitis

CAUSE OF BREAKDANCING INJURIES:

Here are the frequent causes of injuries with Bboys and Bgirls:

• Extreme pressure through too much strain such as Jumps, Spins
• Imbalance between load and load capacity
• Too many repetitive impacts without breaks: bad training habits
• High load impacts: weak technique, weak protection against high impact in landing,  jumps and spins
• Traumas while landing, spinning and sliding
• Malalignment
• Muscle imbalance: strong superficial muscles but inefficient depth stabilisers, training in only one direction
• Poor or no warm up and cool down, no stretching
• Regeneration phase is too short after an injury
• Training without or with no proper supervision, poor technique, no know-how about technique
• Weak physical capacity
• Training with physical exhaustion
• Inadequate protection with resources such as knee pads, elbow pads, mattress

BY AVOIDING THESE CAUSES OF INJURIES YOU CAN PREVENT THEM!

SCIENCE ABOUT BREAKDANCING INJURIES:

In literature, there are only 26 case reports or letters to the editor dealing with breaking related injuries. The spine, knee, skin, shoulder and wrist/hand are the most common regions for injuries in breaking. Ankle/foot injuries are in the sixth place. Amateurs have injuries most commonly in the spine, knee, shoulder, skin and ankle in this declining order.

The most common injuries in professional breakers are in the knee, spine, skin, wrist and ankle. The following diagram describes the percentages of the most common injuries combined from amateurs and professionals. The total number of injuries was 1665 including injuries in amateurs and professionals. Most common injured sites are spine, knee, skin, shoulder, wrist/hand and ankle/foot. Data was collected by a survey from 144 breakers.

According to Cho et al. (2009) breakers had injuries in more than one site. The study included 42 subjects. The percentages of injury sites were: wrist (69.0%), finger (61.9%), knee (61.9%), shoulder (52.4%), lumbar spine (50.0%), elbow (42.9%), cervical spine (38.1%), ankle (38.1%), foot (28.6%) and hip (16.7%).

So over half of the subjects had injuries at wrists, fingers, knees and shoulders. The most common injury types were sprain, strain and tendinitis. Additionally, 31% had fractures or dislocations. Warm up was performed by 66.7%.

The upcoming posts will detail tools and tips for injury prevention in these areas.

Published in Collaboration with Urban Dance Heath

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