line dance research paper

Effects of line dancing on physical function and perceived limitation in older adults with self-reported mobility limitations

Affiliations.

• 1 a School of Nursing , University of West Florida , Pensacola , USA.
• 2 b Atlanta VA Medical Center, Center for Visual & Neurocognitive Rehabilitation , Atlanta , USA.
• 3 c Department of Medicine , Division of General Medicine and Geriatrics, Emory University School of Medicine , Atlanta , USA.
• PMID: 28485643
• DOI: 10.1080/09638288.2017.1294207

Introduction: Older adults with mobility limitations are at greater risk for aging-related declines in physical function. Line dancing is a popular form of exercise that can be modified, and is thus feasible for older adults with mobility limitations.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of 8 weeks of line dancing on balance, muscle strength, lower extremity function, endurance, gait speed, and perceived mobility limitations.

Methods: An experimental design randomly assigned older adults to either an 8-week line dancing or usual care group. The convenience sample consisted of 23 participants with mobility limitations (age range: 65-93 years). The intervention used simple routines from novice line dance classes. At baseline and at 8 weeks, balance, knee muscle strength, lower extremity function, endurance, gait speed, and mobility limitations were measured. ANCOVA tests were conducted on each dependent variable to assess the effects of the intervention over time.

Results: Results found significant positive differences for the intervention group in lower extremity function (p < 0.01); endurance (p < 0.01); gait speed (p < 0.001); and self-reported mobility limitations (p < 0.05).

Conclusions: Eight weeks of line dancing significantly improved physical function and reduced self-reported mobility limitations in these individuals. Line dancing could be recommended by clinicians as a potential adjunct therapy that addresses mobility limitations. Implications for Rehabilitation Line dancing may be an alternative exercise for older adults who need modifications due to mobility limitations. Line dancing incorporates cognitive and motor control. Line dancing can be performed alone or in a group setting. Dancing improves balance which can reduce risk of falls.

Keywords: Exercise; dance; endurance; gait; muscle strength.

• Aged, 80 and over
• Dance Therapy*
• Mobility Limitation*
• Muscle Strength / physiology
• Physical Endurance / physiology
• Postural Balance / physiology
• Random Allocation
• Walking Speed / physiology

Grants and funding

• TL1 TR000456/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States
• UL1 RR025008/RR/NCRR NIH HHS/United States
• UL1 TR000454/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States

•    Home

Line dance is an international sport which brings physical and mental pleasure by repeating fixed steps accompanied by music. It takes music as its core and shows the multi-cultural charm of folk dances of different countries around the world through the combination and cycle of dance steps with different styles. Line dance is a new type of sports dance. It is still in the initial stage in sports teaching of colleges and universities. Therefore, in this paper college students’ physical, musical and psychological qualities are improved through an experiment, which further shows that college students’ mastering of skills of line dance has positive significance.

Strengthen College Students , Line Dance , Skill Elements

Share and Cite:

1. Introduction

Line dance is a new international sport dance. The specific content of this kind of dance is as follows. First of all, we need to select music, match dance steps with suitable music, and maintain free standing positions. Whether in a row or in a circle, we can achieve the popular dance fitness participated by body which combines music, dance and other artistic forms. At the same time, the relevant people participating in dance are required to follow the prescribed dance movements. Each piece of dance music of line dance basically has its own rhythm, and varies by rhythm. It can be found in the teaching practice that many college students can complete dance movements in the normal physical education course and master the skills of line dance in repeated training after the public physical cause is offered in colleges and universities. Some of the students’ line dance movements are not standard enough due to their lack of strength, speed and coordination ability. The main reasons include the poor sense of rhythm of music, lack of confidence in dance, rigid body movements and so on. However, in fact line dance can effectively strengthen college students’ physical function, cultivate their music literacy and enhance their psychological quality. Therefore, this paper further strengthens college students’ line dance skills through the study of these three elements.

2. Research Objects and Methods

2.1. Research Objects

Two classes of college students in a university were taken as the research objects. Among them, class A was used as the experimental object, and class B was used as the control experimental group. Each class had 30 students. Basic conditions of subjects (see Table 1 ).

In the experiment, the questionnaire and statistical analysis method were used for study, and both classes had some dance experience. Such experiment needs to take a semester as the experimental time. A sports course of line dance is offered once a week, and line dance sports are carried out normally according to the time of college sports course. Before the experiment, we needed to collect the results of the physical quality and health test of Class A and Class B, and tried to keep the basic physical quality and physical ability level of the two groups consistent [1] .

2.2. Research Contents

The main contents of the experiment include three aspects. First, the physical quality. The control group only did some stretching exercises according to the original teaching method, learned normally and repeated training according to the teacher’s dance steps, and relaxed properly at the end of the experiment. The experimental group warmed up by leg-raising and jogging in the warm-up stage, which could improve coordination ability of the body. Then, according to the basketball training movements, they ran back and forth, followed by line dance [2] . Basically, each person needed to complete several groups of sit-up and relax after completion.

Second, in terms of music training, the control group needed to play the dance music in line dance according to the routine situation, but the students’ sense of music rhythm should be observed, and students needed to imitate constantly, so as to better follow the music rhythm. In teaching in the experimental group, the style and rhythm of music were analyzed, and training of the rhythm of music was provided constantly, so as to help students better grasp the rhythm of music and experience the mood of music in many dance movements.

Table 1 . Basic conditions of experimental subjects.

Finally, in terms of psychological quality, normal teaching was still provided to the control group. After completing the teaching task, the problems of students existing in the training were corrected. In addition to the normal evaluation, no other training was provided. In the experimental group, training was provided to students by group after the completion of the teaching. At the same time, a number of simulation competitions were made. At the same time, students needed to correct and evaluate their own training results [3] . Students need to be encouraged in training, so that they could perform in the community, gradually accumulate more performance experience, and have better psychological quality.

After a semester of experiment, the physical quality of the two groups of students was evaluated. The specific indicators of this evaluation meet the requirements of the Ministry of Education for students’ physical education evaluation. According to the relevant requirements of students’ health and physique, the results of the evaluation were obtained scientifically and reasonably. In addition, a questionnaire survey should be made. According to the actual cognitive level of students in line dance and rhythm training, the survey was made to find the effect of mastering of this sense of rhythm, and check whether the students’ physical quality had changed. The specific test content includes students’ feeling of body change, sports skills, actual physical conditions, whether the student is strong or not, etc. The main result of this questionnaire survey is the satisfaction of college students to their physical conditions. Then, a dance song was selected as the most important music used in the examination. The final evaluation was made by fixed judges on two groups of students [4] .

3. Research Results

3.1. The Effect of Improvement of Physical Quality on College Students’ Mastering of Skills of Line Dance

Comparison of Physical Quality between Control Group and Experimental Group

Adoption of Table 2 , it could be found that there was no significant difference in physical quality and ability between the control group and the experimental group before the experiment, which basically met the requirements of the experiment. After a semester of training, the physical quality of two classes improved significantly, but comparing the two groups it could be found that the experimental group (Group A) had more obvious physical improvement. In the physical training such as 800 running, long jump and sit-up, it could be found that the physical quality of the experimental group had been significantly improved, so we could basically conclude that in line dance increasing the content of physical quality training could significantly improve the physical quality of students, so it has a positive effect [5] .

3.2. The Effect of Improvement of Music Literacy on College Students’ Mastering of Skills of Line Dance

Statistical Results of Post-Experiment Questionnaire in Control Group and Experimental Group

So the results of the survey in Table 3 show that it could be found that many college students admitted that music could effectively improve their skills in practice of line dance. The focuses were the need for rhythm training and the improvement of the performance of line dance by understanding of music. It was obvious that the experimental group was more supportive, while the control group was less supportive. After the experiment, the line dance test on college students continued. The results of the related tests showed that the experimental group to which music knowledge was explained could have a deeper understanding of music and a better sense of rhythm. In addition, the experimental group also had bigger expressive force and tension, and good aesthetic feeling. In conclusion, the improvement of music literacy is of great significance for college students to master the skills of line dance.

Table 2 . Changes of physical fitness index of female college students before and after the experiment.

Table 3 . Investigation on music appreciation ability and rhythm training of college students.

3.3. The Effect of Improvement of Psychological Quality on College Students’ Mastering of Skills of Line Dance

At present, the mental health of college students has been paid attention by the society. To a great extent, mental health directly affects the healthy growth of college students. In the stage of college students, teenagers change into adults. Facing many psychological changes, there are great moral problems in self-psychological adjustment and control caused by lack of experience. Therefore, they lack adjustment ability when facing economic and emotional pressures, leading to serious psychological impact. Therefore, it is easy to have very intense psychological contradictions. By comparing the test results before and after the beginning of the experiment between the control group and the experimental group, it could be found that students’ physical self-esteem and physical attraction improved significantly [6] . However, comparing the training results of the control group and the experimental group, it could be found that the experimental group was better than the control group in all the items, and the experimental group had a more significant improvement. This can show that the psychological quality of the students in the experimental group significantly improved.

Finally, the results of college students’ line dance test were compared. In the results, it could be found that in the items of college students’ line dance sports such as movement proficiency, opening modeling and performance in line dance the psychological quality of the experimental group had significantly improved, so the results of the experimental group were obviously better than those of the control group. Therefore, we can see that in the evaluation of line dance the experimental group was more confident and had bigger expressive force. In actual training, their movements would not be uncoordinated because they were too nervous. In the line dance performance of the experimental group, they showed better vitality, and the performance was more fluent. Students were obviously relaxed, and had better aesthetic feeling. Through these experiments, it can be found that good psychological quality can effectively help students complete the line dance, so that they can really integrate body and mind into the dance movements and show better results.

4. Conclusions and Recommendations

Line dance is mainly characterized by the popularity of national fitness. Colleges and universities carry out sports activities, in order to cultivate students’ comprehensive abilities in addition to knowledge of cultural courses. From the perspective of the type of bodybuilding exercise, line dance is simple and easy to learn. As long as you follow the music, you can do exercise. Second, line dance has various styles, a lot of contents and many elements of national dance, thus forming a new form of line dance. Line dance has such functions as teaching, body building and pleasure in temperament. First of all, in terms of teaching function, as a new type of mass fitness activity, line dance can be actively carried out in college sports activities. In the healthy physical fitness activities, it plays an important role in promoting the physical education teaching in China. It can improve the body coordination of practitioners and speed up the body circulation. In addition, it can also achieve pleasure in temperament, make learners affected by music, make practitioners closer, and cultivate people’s sentiments [7] . Therefore, it has certain positive significance to carry out line dance in colleges and universities.

This paper divided college students into two groups for experiment. By observing the experimental results, it can be found that in line dance teaching proper line dance can improve the physical quality of college students. Compared with simple exercise activities, it can better improve the physical quality of college students. Music practice can make college students better understand music, so that they can combine music in line dance, better integrate music and dance steps, and perform more skillfully in the performance. In addition, in the continuous simulation training students’ psychological endurance ability to the competition can be improved, and the psychological quality ability can be further improved, so under the strong self-confidence college students can have bigger expressive force in the line dance. To sum up, psychological quality, music quality and physical function can effectively promote college students to master the skills of line dance. They promote each other, so they should be developed in an all-round way.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

•   Articles
•   Archive
•   Indexing
•   Aims & Scope
•   Editorial Board
•   For Authors
•   Publication Fees

Journals Menu  

• Open Special Issues
• Published Special Issues
• Special Issues Guideline
• E-Mail Alert
• OALibJ Subscription
• Publication Ethics & OA Statement
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Recommend to Peers
• Recommend to Library
• History Issue

Copyright © 2024 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.

This work and the related PDF file are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License .

• Journals A-Z

About SCIRP

• Publication Fees
• For Authors
• Peer-Review Issues
• Special Issues
• Manuscript Tracking System
• Subscription
• Translation & Proofreading
• Volume & Issue
• Open Access
• Publication Ethics
• Preservation
• Privacy Policy