The Physio

Esther Collacott

Esther is the Rehabilitation and Conditioning Lead Physiotherapist at the Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) where she has spent the past 5 years immersed in learning about the demands ballet places on the dancers’ bodies.

Esther is also a Team GB/EIS contract physio for British diving, gymnastics, para triathlon and para canoeing.

These are her thoughts about her role at the BRB and her decision to work with Ed Archer and complete her S&C Trainer qualification:

“Professional ballet is an incredible environment to work in as a physiotherapist: our main challenge is to support dancers to be robust enough to withstand the highly demanding, high volume leaps and landings whilst continuing to enhance the aesthetic quality of all positions and movements. 

Dancers display artistry through movement and their bodies need to be able to express many emotions and to evoke reactions in the audience. This may involve delicate and refined movements in one instance and be explosive and aggressive in the next.”

“Taking a “deep-dive” with a very practical and coaching-centric S&C course has given me a huge boost in personal confidence in the training environment as well as expanding my knowledge and skills in the use of of S&C principles to benefit our dancers. 

I have a clearer understanding of when and how to load the dancers to improve their ability to tolerate forces and how to select exercises and design programmes to increase rate of force development, jumping and landing skills. The experience I gained on the S&C Trainer course coaching the foundation movement skills now provides me with more tools to screen and assess dancers’ movement skills and also provides a framework of exercise for improving proprioception, balance and coordination in our rehab programmes”