Stretching After Exercise For the Long Leg, the Straight Leg

You are a ballet student, in contemporary dance classes, or cheer leading, and you cannot get the straight leg look. You know about stretching after exercise, and you want the long leg, straight leg look. You have learned all the good stretching exercises, yet your knees still look bent.

The following tips will help you understand whether you have a structural problem or simply need to know more effective ways to release muscle tension.

The Essentrics Flexibility For Athletes DVD teaches fitness with stretching exercises.

Relaxing the piriformis muscle (your turnout muscle) with a muscle roller stick increases your turnout and enhances relaxation of the hamstrings.

Kneading down the back of the leg while sitting on the floor, roll around to get at the tense spots on both the inside and outside of the hamstrings.

Rolling to the outside extreme, you can get into the side of the quads, muscles that will pull on the knee joint when holding chronic tension.

You can massage the lower thigh muscles above the knee, and at the sides of the knees. Don't get into the back of the knee area. It is a very delicate muscle that can be worked on by a chiropractor, physiotherapist or massage therapist.

Learning how to release tension in the feet and calves will contribute to your overall muscle relaxation as well.

If a professional therapist tells you that you have tight ligaments around your knees, please do not plan to go home and stretch your ligaments. They are not elastic like muscles.

Take careful note of the professional advice you get. Ballet dancers especially are known for trying drastic and forceful measures to get a straight leg. Please don't!

Keep stretching after exercise and be patient with your muscles. Learn all the expertly taught and professional good stretching exercises with Essentrics Flexibility For Athletes.

How to Prevent Foot Injuries in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes

 How to Prevent Foot Injuries in Ballet Shoes and Pointe Shoes

A short anatomy lesson on the foot explains why classical ballet technique is finely detailed and exacting, in order to build strength and prevent foot injuries throughout dance training.

Here is some basic anatomical facts about your feet:

source.

• The support is provided by 28 bones

• 19 muscles attach to these bones by tendons

• 30 different joints held together by up to 117 ligaments allow finely detailed movement

• There are many yards of blood vessels and a complex nerve system
• Each foot has 125,000 sweat glands

• Everything is covered by sheets or bands of tough connective tissue called fascia

When you consider that a ballerina or a male ballet dancer spends years training, and then performing, and each time their feet hit the ground they are impacted by three to four times their body weight, that's amazing! Proper training and care of the feet is essential.

Even beyond preventing injuries, accurate technique will contribute to preventing early arthritis as well.

Shin splints, a burning stinging pain in the front calf muscles, sprained ankles, bone bruises, and blisters from pointe shoes, are foot injuries that can be prevented by building strength specifically in the sole of the foot.

Weakness in the foot muscles causes the lower leg muscles to over work, leading to chronic tension and loss of muscle tone. This will develop into tendonitis in the Achilles tendon which can become chronic and end a career, at the worst.

Chronic tension in any set of muscles in the body will cause mis-alignments, and strain, in the next joint/muscle group, and the next, and so on.

Prevention then, is understanding your foot's construction. Look at photos or drawings, and x-rays of feet.

How to use the fact of repetitive motion in ballet (just try to count the number of times you point your foot in a ballet or modern dance class) as strictly a plus, and not a danger to your feet, requires extra study and awareness.

Listening to your body, and paying attention to pain, should be considered part of your training. Aches and sorenesses should go away with warm soaks using epsom salts, ginger or apple cider vinegar, followed by icing. But pain of a sharp, burning or stinging nature must be addressed.

Your foot is brilliantly structured to prevent harmful movement - such as sickling in, and then landing that way, and lo - you have a sprained ankle.

However, this can be treated immediately and properly and rarely cause future discomfort.

Understanding your foot shape and bone structure tells you exactly what your potential is, to increase flexibility, or control hyper-mobility to your best advantage.

For example, if you think you should have more arch to your foot, the shape of your individual bones determine that. You can increase your ankle flexibility to get up onto pointe better, and improve the line of your foot and leg.

The shape of your bones will limit the actual arch shape, to some degree.

Famous athletes and dancers actually buy insurance for their body parts. Your insurance is how you take care of your feet.

Soaking or rolling a muscle roller stick around under your feet, while you study or watch tv, takes up no extra time.

Letting your parents know that you have a persistent pain and that you need to have it checked by a professional is important.

A visit with a physiotherapist or chiropractor and an x-ray is not terribly expensive, and the completion of your training may depend on it.

Get a professional guide and learn how to dance in ballet pointe shoes.

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

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How To Prevent Knee Injuries in Ballet and Dance

Anatomical information is going to help any ballet dancer survive better. Less pain, less struggle, and better results.Muscle tension can pull the knee out of alignment. A muscle roller stick will help prevent that.

There are four ways a leg (hip,knee,ankle) can deviate from the postural plumb line of the body.

1. Knees that angle in toward each other, with the feet facing straight forward; this is called tibial torsion. You can also see this clearly if you sit on a table and let the calves and feet dangle over the edge. Here your knees are straight in front of your thighs, and the lower part of the leg turns out.

Compensation for this is understanding and using your turnout from the hips, as best you can, and never allowing pronation, or "rolling ankles".

It is easy for legs like this to get a good turnout in the foot positions, but it should be worked to get the leg as close as possible to postural plumb line.

2. Knock knees is when the knees face forward when the feet are parallel, but the inside of the knees touch and the feet are apart on the floor, a little turned out, and slightly pronated (rolled in).

3. Bowed legs. This where the knees turn in slightly and the outside of the calves bow outwards. The feet can rest comfortably close together. The feet may also pronate slightly, yet will come to a correct position, flat on the floor, when the turnout is held well in the hips and thighs. This may straighten out the whole leg in some cases.

4. Hyper-extended legs, where the knees go beyond straight and the calves sway backwards. This will pull the body weight back onto the heels, and the thighs will turn in as a result (which can lead to tears around the knee).

The correction of stacking the ankle, knee and hips above each other along the plumb line, strengthens the legs. It also corrects the weight on the whole foot, and keeps the body weight forward enough. Uncorrected, this will lead to other complexities of technical inaccuracies, especially in doing ballet on pointe, if they do not show up before that.

The knees are wonderfully engineered joints. The details are described well elsewhere. Suffice it to say they are held in place by muscles, ligaments and tendons, and when healthy, all the moving parts glide and move well. The knees bend and straighten a zillion times for dancers and sports enthusiasts, without mishap, if used correctly.

Turnout enables easy pivoting to change direction without straining the knees. Many athletes now study basic ballet and turnout to prevent knee injuries.

A sharp pain in the knee, a pop, any clicking or feeling of impeded movement around or under the knee warrants an immediate pause. Any dance teacher or sports coach will want you to get it looked at by a chiropractor or sports medicine practitioner right away.

Tears can occur in the tendons, ligaments and other supportive tissue around the knee. Usually ice and rest will reduce the inflammation and heal theses injuries. Sometimes tissue will tear off and go under the kneecap, and this must be removed.

Normal growth in kids and teens can cause imbalances in muscle flexibility and strength which can lead to injuries and inflammation from overuse. Regular stretching and relaxing efficiently with the help of a muscle roller stick rolled on tight muscles, can help this temporary condition.

Correct turnout, foot strength in landings, in fact all ballet position placement, helps protect the knee joints. A sprung floor is also essential, rather than dancing over concrete.

If you are a serious ballet student or athlete, take a look at the anatomy of the knee structure. It is brilliant, and you'll see clearly why you are taught the way you are, to prevent knee injuries in ballet shoes and pointe shoes, or on the fields and courts.