WASHINGTON — The patient was a healthy young woman who came into a Washington- area emergency room this year because of severe heel pain, which turned out to be a potentially serious injury known as “compartment syndrome.” The syndrome is typically caused by high-impact accidents, like something involving a motor vehicle. The patient had not been in a car accident. The patient had been in Zumba.
“I have seen some interesting things,” said David Pontell, the podiatrist who ultimately treated the injury. “That was one of them.”
People can get injured doing a lot of things that are dangerous or physically punishing. Or they can get injured doing Zumba. Zumba is not inherently dangerous. Its injuries are not any more prevalent than those from any other physical activity. They are just more embarrassing.
“By the end of the class, I was on fire, and not in a ‘Hoo-hoo — I’m hot and sexy!’ kind of way,” Tonya Green, 32, said ruefully. She discovered, through a Zumba class, that she had something called snapping-hip syndrome. “It was a salsa movement. I Zumba’d my hip out real good.”
Some 12 million people worldwide do the cardio dance bonanza that is Zumba.
“We see a lot of ankle strains,” said Rajeev Pandarinath, an associate professor at George Washington University’s Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. “There are a lot of lateral moves in Zumba.”
Elizabeth Delasobera, a physician at Georgetown University Hospital’s ER, speculates about the reason for so many injuries: A novice starting a running program will probably jog only two or three times a week for 15 or 20 minutes. But somebody who starts a Zumba program? “They’re Zumba-ing five days a week,” she said.
“We get people being so enthusiastic,” said Joy Prouty, who works for Zumba, training other Zumba instructors. She preached safety first, but there is little that even a conscientious instructor can do in the face of a determined Zumba-ist.
