Effects of different footwear on landing forces from a grand jeté in trained dancers

The Grand Jete movement is a popular leap elevation movement used in ballet, modern, contemporary and jazz dance. The move involves taking off from one foot and landing on the other foot reaching the highest point possible in the air and lifting legs to a split position. Dancers may perform many grand jetes in a single routine. The aim of this study was to investigate whether footwear used by dancers can reduce the vertical impact forces caused by landing from high leaps. The study was approved by the university’s ethics committee and informed consent was given by ten highly-trained dancers (age mean 23.1, s=1.6 years; height 1.64, s=.08 m; mass 57.7, s=5.2 kg). The participants all performed a grand jete in three different footwear conditions: bare feet, jazz shoes and dance trainers with shock absorbing properties. Landing forces were recorded using a Kistler force plate sampling at 1000 Hz. Peak impact force was determined as the maximum vertical force occurring during the first 0.07 s of contact. Statistical analysis consisted of repeated measures ANOVA. Maximumforce during the landing phase decreased from 4.00 BW (s=0.72) in the barefoot condition to 3.95 BW (s=0.69) in the jazz shoes condition and 3.58 BW (s=0.68) in the trainers condition (F2,9=2.5, P=0.108, Z2=0.22, power=0.44).Higher impact peak and loading rate values were found in the barefoot condition compared to the shodconditions, with the trainers showing the lowest values. However, there were no significant differences between the footwear conditions for impact peak force(F2,9=0.50, P¼0.616, Z2=0.05, power=0.12),time-to-peak impact force (F2,9=0.44 , P=0.653, Z2=0.05, power=0.11), or loading rate to the poin of maximum vertical force (F2,9=0.53, P=0.597, Z2=0.06, power=0.12). The results showed lower maximum landing forces, impact peak force and loading rates in the dance trainers compared to the barefoot and jazz shoes conditions. Although the values were not significantly different, the small difference between footwear conditions may prove important with the onset of fatigue during a routine. Dancers should train to develop safe landing techniques when performing barefooted.