Coogan, SM, Hansen-Honeycutt, J, Fauntroy, V, and Ambegaonkar, JP. Upper-body strength endurance and power norms in healthy collegiate dancers: A 10-year prospective study. J Strength Cond Res 35(6): 1599–1603, 2021—Dance is physically demanding and requires dancers to have adequate upper body (UB), core, and lower-body fitness to perform successfully. 50–85% of dancers suffer injury during a performance season. Although a large number of dancer's injuries are to the lower body, several dance genres (e.g., modern, hip hop, and salsa) use UB motions such as partner lifts and holds, which may result in a higher risk for UB injury. Health care practitioners often use baseline physical performance normative values to determine their clients' fitness levels and when planning training programs to prevent or rehabilitate postinjury. Still, little information exists regarding UB fitness norms among collegiate dancers. Thus, our purpose was to determine UB strength endurance and power norms in healthy collegiate dancers. We recorded UB muscular fitness in 214 healthy collegiate dancers (males: n = 26, 174.0 ± 6.7 cm, 71.3 ± 9.2 kg and females: n = 188, 163.0 ± 6.1 cm, 59.3 ± 6.8 kg) prospectively over a 10-year period (2008–2018) in a dance program that emphasizes modern and ballet dance. For UB strength endurance, we recorded the number of push-ups a dancer was able to perform without forcibly straining or losing form for 2 consecutive repetitions. For UB power, dancers sat with legs outstretched, backs flat against a wall, and threw a 3-kg ball horizontally from their chest as far as possible (distance thrown normalized to body height, *BH). The best attempt of 3 trials was used for statistical analyses. We report descriptive statistics, interquartile ranges (IQRs), and percentiles for both outcome measures. Dancers performed 20.4 ± 10.6 (range: 2–70, IQR: 12–24; males: 32.5 ± 14.4; females: 18.4 ± 8.4) push-ups and threw the medicine ball 1.8 ± 0.5 *BH (range: 45–3.9, IQR: 1.4–2.1; females: 1.7 ± 0.5; males: 2.3 ± 0.7). Overall, in this long-term prospective study, we developed UB fitness norms for dancers. The push-up test and medicine ball throw test are simple, low-tech, and inexpensive to test dancers UB fitness. Although dancers' UB muscular fitness was lower than previous reports among traditional sport athletes, these values may not necessarily indicate problems, as subjects were all healthy collegiate-level dancers. Rather, our findings reinforce the need to develop dance-specific norms so that practitioners can use these values to assess dancers' UB fitness and devise interventions appropriately. These results provide baseline UB muscular fitness norms among collegiate modern and ballet dancers, and further support the notion that differing norms are needed for different sports and dance genres. Specifically, future researchers should similarly develop norms across different dance genres for preprofessional and professional dancers and also examine whether these norms can predict dancers' injury risk or performance.

Introduction: As the world population ages, practitioners use community-engaged interventions to help older adults stay healthy. Engaging in arts programs (e.g., dance or music) reportedly improves physical and mental health, but little research exists examining these effects in community-dwelling older adults. Our purposes were to examine how taking part in 10-week, twice per week community arts programs (dance and music) and control (social conversation) affected physical and mental health in community-dwelling older adults and their perceptions after program participation.Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, 64 older adults over 65 years of age (71.3 ± 4.6 years, 166.9 ± 8.3 cm, 78.1 ± 18.1 kg) took part in community-engaged arts programs: ballroom dance (n = 23), music (ukulele-playing, n = 17), or control (social conversation n = 24), two times per week for 10 weeks. Participants’ physical health using the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB; score 0 = worst to 12 = best) and mental health using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA; score = 0 to 30, where less than 26 = normal) were tested three times: 1. before (pre), 2. at the end of 10 weeks (post-1), and 3. 1 month after intervention (post-2). Separate 3 (group) x 3 (time) ANOVAs and adjusted Bonferroni pairwise comparisons as appropriate examined changes across groups and time. Focus group interviews and surveys were audio recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using inductive thematic analyses to examine participants’ perceptions. Results: Across all groups, participants had an 87.8% attendance and an 87.5% retention rate. Participants’ SPPB performance improved over time (pre = 10.5 ± 1.4, post-1 = 10.7 ± 1.3, post-2 = 11.3 ± 1.0; p < 0.001), but similarly across groups (p = 0.40). Post-hoc analyses revealed that performance improved from pre to post-1 (p = 0.002) and pre to post-2 (p < 0.001). Participants’ cognition improved over time (pre = 26.3 ± 2.8, post-1 = 27.3 ± 2.6, post-2 = 27.5 ± 2.5, p < 0.001), and similarly across groups (p = 0.60). Post-hoc analyses revealed that cognition improved from pre- to post-1 (p = 0.002), and pre- to post-2 (p = 0.001). Participants consistently mentioned increased social engagement as the major reason for participation.Conclusions: Overall, taking part in community-engaged arts (dance and music) and social conversation programs positively influenced physical and mental health in older adults. Still, as all groups improved equally, the results may partly be due to participants having normal physical and mental function pre-participation and due to them learning the test over time. These study findings imply that providing fun and free community-engaged programs that empower participants to be more engaged can positively influence physical and mental health and promote successful aging in older adults.

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