Muscle imbalance session case study: Pro dancer, Cat Foley
Cat Foley got in touch with Red Pill after experiencing pain in her left knee for the past 5 years — she’s seen physios, doctors and PTs but has not managed to solve the pain. She’s a professional swing dancer and has been dancing full time for 7 years. She dances for around 2-3 hours a day and up to 7 hours per day on the weekend.
She came to see coach Ash at WIT Training in London. Ash’s first step was to find out any injury history — in this case, Cat had been diagnosed with flat feet a few years ago, and had sprained her ankle badly around 3 months previously. Since the ankle sprain she’d been experiencing main more frequently and intensely.
They spent some time identifying the core movements of Cat’s sport that seem to be causing her pain. Many movements of swing dance are hopping and twisting (and often together). They worked out that it’s when combining hopping and twisting that Cat feels the most pain in her knees.
Ash then worked through several movements to identify the exact source of the pain and spot any imbalances within Cat’s movements.
When Ash asked Cat to do a movement that was designed to isolate the knee, so it was the only thing doing the work, the movements were extremely unstable and she felt pain. As Cat is such a skilled dancer, she’s learnt how to use her whole body to execute a movement — in that process, her knee has become weaker and less stable than other parts of her body, and other areas have had to work harder to compensate. This imbalance has eventually led to regular knee pain.
With this, Ash introduced Cat to some exercises that would isolate the knee and help her strengthen that and that alone. He also designed some exercises to help her strengthen the knee for the specific types of movements she does when dancing and showed her ways to make them more challenging and scale them up when they feel easier.
They filmed the exercises and Ash sent them over with a workout plan for Cat to do at home. He explained that the exercises need to be done regularly and he designed it to fit in around her dance training schedule — for example, a 10 minute session before teaching a class at the weekend, or a longer one she could do mid-week.
After the session Cat said:
He was very lovely and I felt very heard. He found the core functionality of dance moves that I do repetitively and pinpointed where my areas of weakness were. He explained super clearly why I might be experiencing pain and have a super clear plan for how to get from pain to not pain by small increments. I feel I understand the function of my body much better and I’m optimistic to be pain free in the future. I realised on the way to the train station that I can even train some of the twisting movements on the escalator, which is going to help me fit a high volume of reps into my daily life. I can then practice the harder movements and add weight to them in my gym sessions.
A couple of weeks later, Cat is training regularly and feeling a difference in her knee. Ash told her that she would feel different niggles and the pain may move around her knee as it became stronger and began to work in different areas. This sang true for her and she’s hopeful that she will start to feel a real difference in her dancing soon.
This post will be updated with time and as we’ll follow Cat on her journey.