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.
Get your dancer's guide (The Perfect Pointe Book) to build strength for the long lean muscles every dance student wants,to achieve optimum results in ballet pointe shoes.
The finer details are both physical and conceptual, and will improve all your ballet exercises. These tips will also help your pre-pointe homework exercises.
Length is the goal in ballet, and here are some ways to think of it as a realistic goal.
For example, when you start a demi plie, you pull up. But to make that an extra pulled up strength, think of bending your knees, maximum turnout, and not lowering your body for a second.
That's right, pull up the lower abs so that your belly button moves up your torso and stays there!
This is different from pulling in your stomach into a bundled knot.
Whether or not you succeed in bending your knees and staying up, you will stretch your lower abs long and flat.
To practice, open and close your knees a little several times and try to stay up at the same level.
Then, when you sink down into that plie, keep the lower torso long and flat, still pulling up and away from the motion, still letting your calves relax, turnout held, and your feet flat on the floor, heels firm.
If you do this every time you do a plie, it will make a huge difference in the lengthening feeling.
Lowering From A Press Up
Another place to feel a lengthening is from the top of a press up. You've reached the top of your demi pointe or full pointe.
As you lower the heels, pretend you are not lowering. You pull the heels down, away from your hips and torso. Your thighs stretch out long, in your mental image, like a stretchy band (which they are).
You keep trying to stay up even as your heels touch the floor.
At this moment, if you are continuing into a demi plie, you again hold the lower abs long and up, as you open the knees, as if you are not lowering.
Here are just two places that will make a tremendous difference, if you do the lengthening technique every time you do a plie or pull down from a press up.
This helps control the pelvis, posture, and turnout, and you'll become the best you can be in developing long and lean muscles and build strength.
With expert instruction on dancing in with The Perfect Pointe Book you'll find more articles on technique with all the details.
Once you have studied about pointe shoe fitting and purchased the best fit you can get, you still might need to make some modifications.
Pointe shoes that are hand made have tiny variations in the finer detail of the shoe, and one pair may not feel as good a fit as another, even if it is made by the same cobbler.
If the shoes feel off a bit, there are many ways to make them exactly the right fit.
If you check the Dr. Scholls (or some similar foot care brand) area of a store you'll find all kinds of insoles, gel soles, corn and blister pads and other things you can cut up and put in your shoes, or on your toes, to make a pointe shoe fit exactly.
In fact, many professional ballerinas customize every pair of shoes that they have. They develop all kinds of tricks to make the shoes enhance their dancing.
Heel grips can help the back of your pointe shoe if it seems a little wider than usual, even though the size is the same as a pair you had that was a perfect fit.
Gel soles can be cut up and glued into the shoe or around or in between your toes, to get the perfect toe spacing, disperse the pressure on the toes in the box, or on the wings.
Plastic wrap is great to put in between the tops of the toes and your tights - you get a slide instead of the friction that rubs the weave of the tights into your skin.
If you have a bruised toenail, it takes a while to go away. A podiatrist may be needed to cut into the nail and drain the fluid from beneath it. Then, you may need a full sponge toe cover over the nail, and even a half size larger shoe, until the bruise has healed.
In other words, use everything that is available to dance safely, and know that you can avoid dancing in pain. Especially if you have an exam or a performance, you do whatever you have to do to dance your best. There is no rule against that.
Knowing about and getting the right pointe shoe fitting will make dancing in ballet toe shoes easier for you.
Get your own information on pointe shoe sizing, to avoid dancing in pain. If you get exactly the right fit, the most pain you should ever feel is a spot where your tights were not smoothed out, or where your protective padding slipped. Foot injuries are avoided by a good fit, good training, good floors, and being strong enough in the first place.
Dancing in pointe shoes should not be painful - uncomfortable sometimes, yes. Getting exactly the right fit is a challenge - knowing how, and finding a ballet store that has a lot of different kinds of shoes to try on.
Some ballet stores have excellent shoe fitters and some do not.
Some students have one foot that is longer, or wider, or weaker than the other foot.
Pointe shoes must be bought for the longer foot, and the shorter foot can be padded differently. Just like you do with your street shoes.
A weaker foot must be exercised twice as much as the stronger foot. This gives you more homework, but you can build strength and develop two strong feet.
Go to a ballet store during quiet shopping hours if possible. Call them first and let them know you want to come in and talk to someone who knows the shoe inventory, and can help you. Ask a lot of questions before the shoe fitter brings out shoes.
If you have hyper-mobile feet with a high arch, you'll need stronger shanks, probably a longer vamp, though not if your toes are short.
Let the shoe fitter see you on demi pointe - she/he will hopefully see right away the length of your toes, the type of arch you have, your foot width, and will know what shoes to suggest.
Your teacher may give you an idea of what shoes to try on as well.
Try on the shoes with your tights on your feet, and also wear some padding - be it gel or lambswool or a tissue wrapped around your toes - this will help you get as close to exactly the right fit as possible. Don't make it a goal to get rid of padding. As you get stronger you may use less or none, but don't assume you will never need it.
Do not try to stretch the life of your pointe shoes with extra padding - that will not work, and you may get injured. Pouring shellac into the shoe can add some extra life, if done before they are worn out. But you need to experiment with this, and have a good pair of shoes to wear to class while you try out shellacking another pair. Without practice, you cannot count on this to work out well.
Ultimately, if you have good practice routines to continue building strength for ballet and pointe work, you can avoid dancing in pain. Taking care of your feet involves strength, gentle stretches for some of you, foot massage and supportive street shoes. Work like a pro, right now.
Wow! I see today that this is my second most read post! 16 years later! Thanks to you all who come here to read my ballet tips!
Any leg extension exercise in ballet is important. The finer details need to be understood to build strength, and get the most out of your daily routines. To sustain high extensions while on pointe, as in pas de deux, takes years of consistent practice.
A routine exercise for strengthening extension is doing a developpe, lowering the leg two inches, and raising it up. Lowering, and raising it up.
Basically, for as many times as you can stand it. Then, relaxing and stretching the muscles completely before doing the next position.
The assumption is that your placement is good, and you are not straining too much. You can do this lying down, (on your back for devant and on your side for a la seconde) to isolate the leg muscles, and then standing up, which requires stronger core and leg muscles.
For very basic placement review see my article here.
The repetitive flexing of the psoas muscles ( as in the above, not to mention every tendu and degage you do!) can leave those muscles strained and shortened with tension - so you need to stretch the psoas muscles - a lunge, in parallel, pulling up the abs and leaning into it gently and often, will stretch out the psoas.
A deeper stretch is the runner's lunge: one leg extended behind you, palms on the floor on either side of your front leg; you remain pulled up as you stretch the psoas. If you turn sideways away from the back leg, you'll feel a stretch along the TFL (Tensor Fascia Lata) which goes deep into the side of the hip muscles.
Here is a quick video showing this - she goes a little fast, and I would slow it down.
Lack of strength in arabesque could be in your mid back muscles, in your deep abdominal (core) muscles, in your hamstrings, and in your hip extensor muscles.
Here's a ballet exercise which will strengthen all those muscles. Stand in arabesque in the corner where you can hold one barre on the wall in front of you, and place the arabesque leg behind you on the barre behind you. Let the leg rest for a moment and check your placement.
Check that the leg extended out away from you leaves you length in the back, as opposed to you having bunched up back muscles at and above the waist.
Do you feel your butt muscles holding the leg as high as it can go? You can test this by lifting the leg off the barre just an inch without letting the back work or move forward at all. Only the leg moves.
Hold the leg there, feeling the back of the leg (hamstrings) and butt (hip extensors) holding it. Put the leg down on the barre and pick it up ten times, just an inch. Gradually work up to twenty times.
Here's another version of that exercise. Get placed like above.
Do a demi plie, allowing your upper body to move forward as needed, but staying upright in your upper back.
Lift the leg just off the barre and come up from the plie, holding the leg in position. Do this as many times as you can.
Always relax and stretch everything again after such a strenuous exercise. Tension leads to poor muscle tone=loss of strength.
Strengthen Core Muscles
For abdominal muscles, lying down with perhaps a small rolled towel under your neck, super-slow motion pull ups are very effective.
If you count three real seconds for the first inch of movement, and pull up slowly to count to ten; then, three real seconds for your first inch back down, and getting down on the tenth count - don't relax!
Repeat twice more before you rest back. That's all! Only three times.
You'll feel those muscles really working. Breathe throughout - put one hand behind your neck if you feel a lot of strain (most do) and let the other hand reach out toward your knees. You only do this once or twice a week.
Here's a wonderful stretch to oppose all that intense abdominal work - some call it a bow - it's a yoga exercise.
Lying on your stomach, reach back and grab your ankles - then lift up your feet and hands toward the ceiling and your body will make a bow shape.
This will stretch those abs (including the psoas) and also stretch across your chest and the shoulder area. Don't force to the point of pain - just enjoy a lovely stretch.
You can stretch your back the other way by hanging over a large physio ball and just relaxing.
The above routines are very rigorous. If you do class daily I would only do these all, twice a week on top of everything else. If you do class two or three times a week, I would do them on those days (two of them) because you are warmed up enough. But not two days in a row.
If you're a late ballet starter do read my words of encouragement here. You too can have higher leg extensions!
D. Buxton is a writing partner with Vone Deporter, of The Sedona Series, about a surfer girl in pointe shoes.
Learn how to get into pointe shoes with your ballet bar exercises.
In ballet, every exercise is designed to build strength and most ballet exercises approximate a full body workout. The accuracy of your daily routines determines how you build the best muscle memory, and affect how well you progress to the perfect pointe, just for one example. Consider battement fondu, A French ballet word meaning melted, referring to the quality of the movement.
Battement fondu can be done as a melting adagio exercise, or as a crisper faster movement. It is always elastic in quality, as it is designed to develop the thighs for strong jumping. The coordination required in the exercise is needed for the grands sautes such as grand jete en tournant, fouette saute and all the many other jumps found in the solos of classical ballet.
Battement fondu develops the quadriceps, or thigh muscles. It's beautifully elastic stretch up from the demi plie, to a full rise onto demi pointe and full leg extension, is a challenge for all the basic technical areas. As a habit, check for the points below during your battement fondu exercises:
***Are you on balance in your demi plie - can you lift your hand off the barre just before you reach the bottom of the plie, and keep it off as you press out of it?
***Does your presenting leg fully extend at the same moment your supporting leg reaches its fullest demi pointe? Can you lift your hand off the barre right here?
***Is your postural plumb line stable from the depth to the height of the movement?
***Can you feel an elastic resistance resulting from the quality of your press up from your demi plie, and also a resistance you create, pressing your extending leg out to its stretch? (It's like you are using an invisible stretchy band tied to your ankles).
***Are your foot muscles working and engaged throughout the whole movement, both up and down, strengthening the foot and ankle without over-working your calf muscles?
***Are your arm movements also coordinated, without strain?
***Can you do battement fondu without the barre, en croix, at a 45 degree height?
Aside from being a whole body workout, the building of strength for your pointe work and jumps is accelerated with this exercise. Keep at the finer details in your daily routines and you'll have a perfect pointe - and wonderful jumps too.
Get your special dancer's guide on how to get into pointe shoes. It will take you way beyond your current progress if you follow it as carefully as it is written for you.
Get your copy of highly effective yet simple exercises for training in dance pointe shoes. Even before you explore getting exactly the right fit, or the brand of pointe shoes you will look for in the ballet store, choosing your daily routines carefully will give you an edge in the competition of the ballet field.
Here are some areas to focus on and analyze for yourself. I hope the male ballet students read this too, because any pre-pointe exercise (and everything is pre-something) that is chosen because a student understands the anatomy, the function, and the aesthetic of a ballet exercise, will also help a male ballet student understand the ways to both stretch and strengthen his feet.
Do you have tight joints/ligaments/muscles in the ankle or foot area or are you hypermobile? (hypermobile is what every dance student wishes to be. However, there are problems in the highly arched foot, just as there are problems in the foot that doesn't curve over the top of the instep.
Also, the audience is not aware of the aesthetics that dancers and choreographers are obsessed with. I once took a neighbor of mine to see Swan Lake. The ballerina was a very popular dancer who had highly arched feet. My neighbor is a trained artist, familiar with human anatomy. Sometime during the ballet, she leaned over to me and whispered "what's wrong with her feet?" Later she confessed that it made her feel nauseous to see the ballerina's feet pointe like "they are broken".
Quite a new experience for me to hear THAT.
If you need more flexibility in the ankles and foot, did you know that stretching from the knee down can help with that? Using a soft rubber ball, knead the muscles of the tibia (shin) by kneeling and sitting on your feet, and placing the ball under the tibial muscles below the knee. Press into it gently,moving the ball down the shin to the ankles, and you will get some relaxation in those muscles. You may feel some very tender spots where tension has built in the muscles.
And next (I learned this from Deborah Vogel) place the ball under your metatarsal area, above the joints, and lean into it GENTLY, and you'll feel a fabulous stretch over your instep area, right where you would like it to curve more.
Do you know how to strengthen your feet?
Did you know that cramping in your feet, lower calves and even upper calves, usually means that your tiny foot muscles are weak? If they cannot do the job, your calf muscles that end down in your foot area, will have to do the extra work.
This results in calf tension which will shorten your demi plie, lessen your ankle flexibility, and prevent the development of the arch you want.
The foot muscles are strengthened by lifting the big toe off the floor while relaxing the other four, then lifting the four toes off the floor while relaxing the big toe. This increases strength and also enhances the brain/foot communication a lot.
Another exercise is like playing the piano with your toes, starting with the big toe, and then starting with the little toe.
Choosing and consistently practicing exercises for your daily routines will help you achieve realistic goals in dance pointe shoes.
How to do your ballet barre workout without the barre....Choose some daily routines from class, and do them without the barre.
I have implemented this early on in a class' development. After a few months, when every student understands and executes correct technique in plies, battment tendus, battement degages, and battement frappe, I would have them do those exercises periodically, all away from the barre. Weaknesses and misunderstandings show up this way. This is one way of working smarter, as in pre-pointe exercises, to assess exactly the right level of progress for your self, or your class.
It's always a good habit to be aware of how you are using the barre. Your hand should rest on it, and your wrist should be relaxed. Pay attention to when you press down or squeeze the barre. It's exactly that moment that your weight is shifting, or your posture is changing incorrectly, or that the wrong muscle is bearing the work of a movement.
Perfection may not be possible, but understanding the mechanics of technique perfectly, and understanding your own strengths and weaknesses leads to you doing your best.
Ideally, in plies, you want to have a smooth transition when the heels lift, and when they return to the floor, without the weight shifting or a clutch of the barre.
Whenever you have a press-up in the warm up, always lift the fingers off the barre. Note if you have any strain in the neck and shoulders, and where your posture and weight is.
As in pre-pointe routines, repetition of press-ups, on two feet or one at a time, reveals your true strength.
In boys' classes, (not at a beginner level) I often gave a grand plie, back up to demi plie, and back into the full plie again before straightening fully, to build strength.
A class needs to have the basic strengths in place before a more demanding exercise like battement fondu is added to daily routines. Fondu asks for a perfect postural plumb line, whether done with low or full extensions, coordination of legs to complete the movements at exactly the same time, and much more core strength.
In your own daily routines at home, periodically add a barre exercise, done without the barre. Make a note of where your weak spots are. You can do core exercises, repetitions of press ups on two feet, and in coupe de pied, to build your basic strength.
Think of all these very basic issues when you watch your favorite dance stars perform the variations you love best.
Aside from the fact of plain true talent, you can get an edge on your competition with good self-assessment, and work smarter with simple but consistent daily routines. If your focus is pre-pointe, or you are a male student needing to strengthen and work your feet better, this dancer's guide refines your ballet barre workout. You'll never be the same!
