Lower Limb Motion Contributions To The Turnout During A Bipedal Jump In Pre-professional Ballet Dancers

Turnout is the ability to laterally rotate lower limbs, and it is considered an elementary motor skill in the Ballet. An inadequate or compensatory movement in the lower limbs kinetic chain can be considered a technical failure, and often associated a risk of injuries. Sustaining the turnout during jumps is a complex task. Several studies have already emphasized the importance of static turnout in the past years, but there is still a gap in understanding the dynamic aspects, especially when it involves lateral displacements. This lack not only limits the understanding of jump’s biomechanics in Ballet, but also hinders the improvement of technique and injuries prevention. In this study, we will focus on the dynamic turnout during a typical bipedal Ballet jump - Assemblé. PURPOSE: We aimed to analyze and compare hip, knee and ankle kinematics in the transverse plane in different motion phases (prep, fly, landing) in pre-professionals ballet dancers. METHODS: 7 female dancers (18 ± 2 yrs), BMI (19.9 ± 1.4 kg/m2); 11 ± 4 yr of ballet and 16 ± 12 weekly hours of training. Maximum and ROM of hip, ankle and knee angles in transverse plane were compared between motion phases and joints by ANOVAs for repeated measures, followed by Neuman-Keuls post hoc test (p = 0.05). RESULTS: Ankle, knee and hip ROM and peak rotation angles were all different among phases(p = 0.001). In general, the prep phase showed significantly greater lower limb rotation ROM (hip 33.9 ± 10.5, knee 22.5 ± 7.9, ankle 34.4 ± 8.8[degrees]) and peaks (hip -44.6 ± 12.6, knee -25.6 ± 15.5, ankle -22.7 ± 14.9[degrees]) compared to the other two phases, except for knee ROM in prep compared to the landing phase (p = 0.063), hip peak in prep compared to the fly phase (p = 0.177) and ankle ROM at fly compared to the landing phase (p = 0.359). Another remarkable result is that rotations in all joints seem to reduce progressively from prep to fly to landing phases. CONCLUSIONS: The hip consistently and progressively reduced its rotation from prep to landing, whereas the knee reduced its rotation at fly, recovering its ROM at landing. On the other hand, the ankle ROM was apparently preserved from fly to landing phases, but smaller than in the prep phase. These findings highlight the complexity and dynamics of the turnout patterns while performing bipedal jumps in ballet. CAPES financial code 001