Preventive strategies mentioned by the stakeholders and supporting quotes
| Strategies mentioned by artists | |
| Healthy lifestyle | You need to be healthy, you know? It’s not about just one specific exercise. If you are healthy, you need to eat well, sleep well, you need to do your work. Lifestyle. If you are healthy, your body will be healthy. |
| Show/ training modification or adaptation |
If I’m climbing the pole and it hurts. (…)I can recognize that and maybe climb in a different way. So I know I will do exactly the same climb 700 times a year. So, it’s important to make slight modifications, shift the pressure, shift the stress on your body. To be aware of that.
I work every day, so I can rest or I can train and I’m in a solo [ act ] so I have the option to change my act a little, and for me this is pretty good. |
| Preparation and warm up |
So for me, if I want to avoid injury, if I want less pain, the best way is: warm up and exercises. And I know if I stop, I know my back will hurt and I need to do specific exercises. This really really helps. So during the year I do the same exercises before the act, and it’s really helpful for me, help me to not have an injury.
For me, stretch, exercises, warm up. This is the best way to avoid injuries. |
| Respect your limits and l isten your body |
No other person knows your body as you know. So that’s the best thing- to prevent injury, you need to know your body
100
%
. You need to feel your body.
If something is not going right, rather than be pushing and pushing… maybe there is a reason why it isn’t going right. So, I would take it easy today, and find a way to not push too much. |
| Experience |
And your experience helps you to know how to manage
[
your body
]
and how to prevent injuries, it’s by getting injured that you learn how to prevent injuries.
Getting injured helps you to detect ‘ types ’ of pain. And there is good and bad pain. And some pain is related to an injury and it’s a clear signal, that ‘ ok, now, you need to do this and this ’ . |
| Strategies mentioned by the head coaches | |
| Preparation | One [ strategy ] is the physical preparation, they need to have the physical condition to perform the workload in their body. I would say that this is a big one. |
| Healthy lifestyle | Diet and sleep are important for sure. For 2 reasons: your body is stronger and your focus is better and you are less likely to make mistakes that can cause an injury. |
| Load management | We can talk and we can modify a little bit here and there. We also have a good rotation system here, which I also believe it’s good for prevention, because we share the workload. Maybe sometimes an artist has an easier show, and they can build up again, for a more difficult one in the end of the week. We look to the rotations and see how we can be more fair, give rest to artists, create more rotations; so, people are not doing the same thing all the time. |
| Technique | You can see how the technique is, if the technique start to be less good, is a reason for it [ to intervene as a coach ] . |
| Safety | Every time a new show come up they need to check the equipment to be safe. I think safety is in everyone’s mind. And safety is part of injury prevention. |
| Strategies mentioned by the artistic directors | |
| Management and support | I deal a lot with their [ the artists ] moral and in making sure that they feel supported. (…)That’s is what I would say as my particular job. Making them feel supported, making them feel heard, having resource to manage the external things that is going on. |
| Load management | We don’t over train them [ artists ] . We rotate a lot of the skills set and we have backups options. Those types of options help us to manage the show, but they also manage the injury. If we are just slamming people 10 shows a week, until they are broken, that will not do much for our investment and we are not managing properly. |
| Communication | I find that the artistic team structure is great. Because of the communication flow, you would never know that wardrobe would influence Pmed. But if shoes aren’t correct for the artist integration or this injury…The team communication and the meetings that we have weekly. We run every artist, every injury, everything that is going on with them. |
| Strategies mentioned by the Pmed | |
| Physical assessment and preventive exercises |
@how would you define prevention in a general term?
The act of taking the artist , doing an evaluation with them, determining where they need to work, addressing those issues with programs that correct what you find. Progressing to increase the strength and the tolerance to do what they are ask to do, the show performance. For me, that’s it: from start to finish. |
| Load management | We modify what we do based on the overall load. If we know that is 10 shows week or whatever, we can change this, we can try to modify workload: their own training, their strength and conditioning, their preventive intervention. Because all those things are workload. |