How To Relieve Muscle Pain That Has Become Chronic In Ballet, Dance And Cheerleading

Dancers and cheerleaders need to know how to relieve muscle pain that has become chronic. Often, some area of the hips in particular can become imbalanced because of a postural misalignment. It seems like nothing gives those sore muscles relief.

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In many cases, you will see a dancer's or cheerleader's postural habit when they are not dancing or practicing. There are variations on the lack of the postural plumb line, which is a line going straight down through the body, through the natural curves of the neck and spine.

 Ideally, the ankles, knees, hips, waist, and shoulders are all stacked neatly.

A tight area in the psoas, one of the large muscles that lifts the legs to the front, will pull the low back out of alignment. The back will look swayed, and the thighs will turn inward.

This is one way that leads to imbalance in the development of the hip muscles. A dancer or cheerleader will try to resolve this with more and more stretching.

Yet, one muscle or another will get tighter and tighter, and others may get over-stretched.

Some students will feel a clicking, a snapping, or a clunky movement for a long time before it starts to hurt. Please tell your teacher or coach immediately if you feel these things.

You can correct your posture and how you use your core and hip muscles, before you get the inflammation and pain that is so hard to get rid of.

Misalignment in the basic posture, and in the basic ballet positions (used everywhere in dance), will develop one muscle or area of muscles too much.

Consequently, other muscles in the same group remain underdeveloped and weak.

Understanding the muscles around the hips, and how they work in connection with the deep low core muscles, will help students or dance team members prevent injuries.

Can you stand sideways to a mirror and check your posture? Can you see the natural curves of your spine and visualize the plumb line going straight through the curves?

Can you pull up the very low abdominal muscles? Sometimes they can be harder to feel than the higher stomach muscles.

If you are not sure that you are using these low ab muscles properly, try this:

* lie down on the floor, and make sure you have your natural curve at the small of your back
* you should be able to slide your hand under the curve there
* first do this wrong - suck in your stomach so that the small of your back pushes into your hand
* release the stomach muscles
* now do it right - pull your very low ab muscles straight up from your pubic bone and away from your hip bones
* keep the curve in the small of your back

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 Your belly button will move UP toward your ribs. Up not IN. This action, when you are doing barre exercises, or routines to warm up for your cheer leading, will support the right activity in the hip muscles. It is going to help you develop long lean muscles.

If you take contemporary dance classes and study the Martha Graham technique, you know that the contraction movement actually elongates - even though it changes the shape of the spine and DOES push out the curve at the small of the back, it requires that you pull UP the lower core muscles and maintain length in the spine.

The stronger your low ab muscles are, the more fluidity you will have in your ballet movements. For cheer leading too, your core control will be so much better.

Make sure you get the instructional DVD Flexibility Exercises For Athletes. It includes a whole section on sore muscles relief.

Flexibility Exercises For Cheerleading Stunts

How to improve your flexibility is an ongoing challenge for cheerleaders, dancers, and those doing gymnastics.

Safe stretching is a learned art. It's especially important for those who are not in dance classes learning ballet technique, to learn proper warm up, and proper stretching positions.

If you are in high school or college cheer leading it's easy to justify a short-cut and skip warming up - especially if you're hot and sweaty just from getting to practice on time! Yet warm up and cool down are important for making your hard work pay off. Also, and just as important, your stretching is more effective.

The time taken to warm up protects you from injuries. Stress fractures, joint pain and muscle strains are the least of what can happen if you fail to warm up.

Warm-up gets your body activated for the intense activity of all the choreographic repetitions you will do in any given practice. It wakens your reflexes, or your automatic physical reactions to your own and others' movements.

Your heart rate and breathing will increase, pushing oxygen and glucose to your muscles and raising your body temperature. The result is, your muscles get warmer, move and stretch more easily, and will be less painful afterwards. Once warmed up, your metabolism runs high for the duration of your practice, resulting in better fat-burn off.

Your warm-up should work the same muscles you'll be using while exercising. If you are going to be doing a lot of jumps, a slow motion warm up of jumps would be slow controlled squats.

Slowly straightening up, controlling your posture, and holding your core muscles, will prepare your muscles and your concentration for a fun and safe session.

Using slow motion versions of your arm movements will warm up your shoulder/neck/arms and upper back.

After five to ten minutes of this kind of warm up, you can do some gentle stretching in all the positions you will be using in the choreography.

After practice, you can repeat your stretching more intensely. Better to take time here while you're really warmed up, and then throw on some sweats to go home in. (Even if you are going somewhere to grab a bite and socialize, better use the time to stretch rather than primp. You are serious, right?)

Cool-down gradually. Just walking around two or three minutes, pausing to lunge and stretch your calves, makes it easy on your circulatory system (heart/lungs/blood flow).

Stretches are technical and must be learned in detail. Warming up in order to maximize your efforts will help you get more flexible for cheer leading, and avoid injury.

CLICK HERE  to learn the best  flexibility exercises.

D. Buxton is a writing partner with Vone Deporter, of The Sedona Series, about a surfer girl in pointe shoes.

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Ballet Warm Up Exercises For Your -Position To The Front

If you are a beginner in ballet classes, adult ballet classes, or with a cheer leading team, safe stretching is an important factor in your training. Following are some safe easy at home stretches with which you can become more flexible. Whatever aspect of ballet/sports/fitness you participate in, these stretches will help for ballet warm up exercises.

Being able to kick, or lift your leg to the front, side, and back, enables you to move more freely and maybe eventually do the splits. You need a daily routine of stretches to become more flexible. You also need to understand a few principles of working safely.

Don't skip a warm up. If you haven't had a class or any other kind of exercise on a day where you decide to stretch, walk on the spot for at least five minutes, swinging and moving your arms freely. This will boost your metabolism and get your muscles a little warm.

For becoming more flexible to the front position, you need to engage your core muscles and lengthen the hamstring muscle(s) that run from your butt bone to the areas around your knee. There are two ways I recommend for this. If you are not able to lift or kick your leg to the front without the movement causing a change in the position of your hips, here's a great exercise. Stand in front of a chair. Lift one leg up and place it on the chair. Bend the standing leg, keeping your pelvis upright and your back straight. If you feel tension down the back of the leg on the chair, stop there. Very slowly lean forward, back still straight. You may only move a quarter of an inch, this doesn't matter. Don't let your back round. Hold this position for 15-30 seconds. That's your stretch. No bouncing or pulsing. Release up a little, then repeat. Change legs. As you get used to this you can do more repetitions on each leg. You want a stretchy feeling, but not pain.

You will feel a place where the muscles will let go a little, allowing more of a stretch. This is the "stretch reflex".

If you can already easily lift or kick the leg to over 90 degrees, or above your hip height, you can put your leg up on a ballet barre or counter top, keeping your hips facing to it. Maintaining a straight pelvis/back, lean over the leg slightly, while pressing the leg down. Hold 15-30 seconds. At some point you will feel the stretch reflex, maybe not on the first repetition. Do the same number of reps on each leg.

After a class or workout is an ideal time to stretch, but sometimes that's not possible. Always warm up for safe stretching.

With these ballet stretches, you will become more flexible for your ballet moves or cheer leading choreography.

Get more ballet warm up exercises, with the fast download The Ballet Bible.