Your pointe shoe - pointe shoe sizing, ballet stretches, preventing dance injuries, increasing ballet turnout, adult ballet beginners, men in ballet, boys in ballet, and cheer leaders too.
Many students wonder just how perfect their ballet foot positions should be in earlier training. As the years progress, you expect to improve ballet turnout. You do whatever you consider to be the best stretching exercise for dance turnout.
Please note that very few dancers have 180 degree turnout from their hip joints, resulting in no strain no pain 180 degree turnout in their ballet foot positions.
Yet, there comes a time in your ballet training years where you must stand in a toe-to-heel fifth position. Exactly when that year is, is up to your ballet teacher.
This is the best book for understanding turnout:
You've done years of leg and hip flexibility exercises to improve your turnout. If you're "born to dance", your hip joints, where the top of your thigh fits in, and is attached, slant sideways, as opposed to slanting a little forwards, blocking your movement towards the 180 degree angle, and giving you the ideal ballet foot positions.
Even with those sideways hip joints, you maybe had to do a lot of leg flexibility exercises, to really take advantage of what you were given.
But what if your hip joints aren't quite so sideways pointing, and you feel a pull when you do hip flexibility exercises?
If you're studying Vaganova technique, you probably have been putting your ballet foot positions into the toe-to-heel fifth position since day one.
If not, you may have a ballet teacher who starts with third position, training your leg and hip exercises to improve turnout gradually. Then, crossing over toward fifth position a little at a time.
Decisions need to be made during your training, as to how you will go after your ballet foot positions - or dance turnout in general - and how you fulfill the ideal of "square hips square body".
Every ballet teacher must evaluate every individual ballet student and determine how and when she/he will demand those anatomically incorrect ballet foot positions.
Especially for adults ballet classes, this topic should be addressed.
Get your copy of "Tune Up Your Turnout" and you'll have good ballet foot positions.
There are many uses for the therabands, or stretchy bands, so I'll discuss a few here, focusing on the feet, toes and ankles. If you are already doing pointe work, these exercises will enhance your precision of technique, save your calf muscles from over-work, and increase your strength in ballet foot positions.
If you are in a pre-pointe class, or organizing your own pre-pointe practice, you can learn four basic exercises to strengthen the sole of the foot muscles, and then do them with a stretchy band.
Feet and ankles must be strong enough before starting pointe work, for slow releves through the metatarsal area, and slow controlled lowering, without any sickle in or out of the ankle joint.
"Toe swapping" is done starting with the feet flat on the floor. Simply lift the big toes up, leaving the foot and the other toes flat.
Do not lean the foot toward the big toes, the sole of the foot should rest on the floor with no twisting. Place the big toes down, and lift the other four toes.
You may cramp, in which case stop and roll your foot over a tennis ball or pinkie ball, to relax the muscles.
Do this 10 times, a total of twenty lifts. Initially, you may find that your brain can't even find the muscles to do this precisely - but your brain-to-foot communication will improve.
When your movements are precise, you can add the stretchy band. Sitting down with your legs straight in front of you, flex the feet and place the stretchy band behind the toes.
"Playing the piano" with the toes is just like it sounds - lift all toes to start, and place the big toe, the next toe, the next and so forth. Do the reverse, lifting the little toe, the next, and so forth.
Relieve cramping if necessary, and do both movements 10 times each.
Once your movement is well-defined, add the stretchy band, sitting, feet and toes flexed, with the band behind the toes. Your toes will keep contact with the band, with more resistance when pressing against it.
If you use the band before your movement is exact, it will not do much good. Try it and you'll see why, nothing really happens.
For ankles, if you are wobbly going up and down in slow releves, in soft shoes, you are not strong enough to be in pointe shoes.
You must check your overall posture, use of the core muscles, turnout and how your feet rest on the floor when flat. Wobbling can be for many reasons. But, back to the ankles,
If you get corrections for sickling in where your weight goes towards the little toe: sitting, legs straight, loop the band around your right foot, at the metatarsal area.
Hold the band ends with your left hand. Pull the foot outward, and you will feel the muscles on the outside of the foot/ankle area working. Pull and hold for 10 seconds 10 times. Repeat other side.
If you go up onto demi pointe or pointe and your weight leans onto your big toe, you would loop the band and pull your foot inward, working the muscles on the inside of the foot/ankle area.
Another strengthening exercise is (sitting, legs straight out in front) to slowly stretch the feet, splaying the toes apart and stretching them long.(Meaning, DO NOT CURL YOUR TOES).
Here is an excellent video by Lisa Howell demonstrating lengthening of the toes, and with an extra tip for strengthening at the same time:
You can use the theraband around the metatarsal area for resistance, except for one instance.
If you have highly mobile ankle joints, repetitive pointing and compressing a pointed position can irritate the back of your ankles. You do not need that particular movement at all. You DO need to increase strength in the soles of the feet and to control slow rises with no loss of ankle control.
If you are a late starter or adult beginner in ballet, start these exercises now.
Avoid pain and muscle strain by ignoring some of the drastic measures you will see dancers do.
Do not put your toes under the piano, for example, and pull your knees straighter. You are heading for injuries.
Couple of Quick Stories...
Many years ago an artist friend, Vone Deporter and I would do yoga together a couple of times a week in the National Ballet School, in the evenings. We would play some relaxing music and do our own flexibility exercises.
Over the weeks, I felt more flexible, slightly, and got good results, experienced less aches and pains, and overall tension.
I used yoga to stretch the ballet way - forcing every position and deep breathing to distract myself from the pain. I thought I was getting into much better positions.
Vone did her stretching exercises the gentle yoga way. She picked a few yoga positions and stretched comfortably with a stretchy feeling, but no pain.
A few weeks later her positions were drastically more flexible than mine. She had no workout routines, no warm up routines, she'd just show up and do it.
That does not seem fair! I thought I was working much harder. But that was the way I was trained. Take it to the limit.
In recent years much that has been written by dancer/dance medicine specialists who have a very different view on how dancers should treat their bodies.
How to stretch the foot and ankle joints to improve the curve that is part of ballet fashion, is important.
I remember watching Swan lake with Vone. Karen Kain was performing. Vone leaned over and whispered "What's wrong with her feet?" Huh? What ballet student would not like to have those banana feet?
It's a matter of perspective!
So - what is safe stretching for the top of the arch curve, the instep?
Author Deborah Vogel describes how to relax and knead out muscle tension down the front of the calves to the ankle area, using a Spaulding ball. This is a small,dense, high bounce sports ball.
If you sit down with your feet folded under you, you can roll the ball under the top of your calf muscle, below the knee joint. You will feel some very tender spots where the muscle is especially tense.
If you lean into the ball on those spots, you will feel some release there. Don't push too hard, because you can do this every day, and gradually condition the muscle.
Working your way down the leg, you can knead and massage tension out of the muscles, which will allow more flexibility at the ankle joint.
Staying in this position (or stretching out for a few minutes if your feet are going to sleep) you can now slide your hand under one knee, and gently raise the lower leg up.
Make sure your ankle is in a straight line, not sickled in or out. You will feel a stretch along the arch curve. Hold the stretch, relax and repeat 10 times, each side, every day.
This is a gentle stretch that produces results. You can also put the Spaulding ball just lower on the foot than the tops of the metatarsal joints, and gently lean into it for an extra stretch.
None of this should produce pain.
Look at an x-ray of the human foot and the many tiny foot bones.
Here is a short video showing the bones and soft tissues of the human foot:
These bones and the soft tissues supporting them need to be treated gently in between your ballet classes. They are tough, but as you push them as far as they can go every day in the ballet studio, they deserve rest and care.
With these two exercises you can increase flexibility, avoid muscle sprain and foot injuries, and improve your look in pointe shoes.
For an excellent pointe shoe fitting guide, get your dancing daughter a copy of The Pointe Book.
D. Buxton is a writing partner with Vone Deporter, of The Sedona Series, about a surfer girl in pointe shoes.
