In Pursuit of the Perfect Dancer’s Ballet Foot. The Footprint, Stabilometric, Pedobarographic Parameters of Professional Ballet Dancers

Abstract

This work aims to assess footprint parameters in a group of professional ballet dancers and to determine the correlation between the aforementioned parameters and lateralization, stabilometric parameters, pedobarographic parameters and work environment conditions. A group subjected to tests consisted of 44 elite professional ballet dancers and the reference group was composed of 44 students. The test of balance and thrust under feet involved 30 s-long free standing with open eyes on a podographic platform. The research-related analysis was concerned with footprint parameters (foot length and width, Clarke angle, and Weissflog index), stabilometric parameters (path length and ellipse field, mean value of the velocity and deflection of the displacement of the center of the foot pressure on the ground) and pedobarographic parameters (percentage thrust on the right, left foot as well as the front and rear part the foot). Statistically significant differences between the groups were observed in relation to the stabilometric parameters, the percentage pressure of the left forefoot and the right heel, as well as the value of the Clarke angle (p ≤ 0.05). The longitudinal arch of the foot and the width of the foot in ballet dancers are not dependent on the total and professional career duration and weekly training volume

Keywords

• ballet dancers
• footprint parameters
• Clarke angle
• Weissflog index
• stabilography