This is comparable to rates found in other studies for athletes in contact sports such as football and wrestling. The average time lost because of a ballet injury was 10.5 days, with the actual time loss ranging from one to 87 days. An injury was defined as a medical problem that restricted participation for at least one day beyond the date of the injury. Ballet is physically grueling and the fact that dancers are competing with each other adds to the physical stress. Dancers often perform hurt and are afraid someone will take their place.
Many dancers have eating disorders and they lead very, very stressful lives.
The level of precision required is comparable to that of an Olympic gymnast. To probe dancing injuries, Smith and J.T. Ptacek, an associate professor of psychology at Bucknell University, and Elizabeth Patterson, a retired ballet dancer and former UW undergraduate student, studied 46 members of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company in Seattle. On average, the dancers were slightly more than 26 years old. None of the dancers was injured when the study began. Injuries were then tracked for eight months, the remainder of the company's season.