Develop the Perfect Foot Muscles For Pointe Shoes

Is there a perfect foot for ballet - or can any foot function perfectly if the ballet dancer has the correct understanding of how to use their foot muscles in pointe shoes?

Even men in ballet want to work in pointe shoes to develop the fine foot muscles that will enhance balance and virtuoso allegro.

Strengthening and stretching the hyper-mobile (very flexible motion) body/feet and hypo-mobile (tighter motion) body/feet requires accurate ballet movements.

All would-be ballerinas and plenty of men in ballet want to get into pointe shoes, and, faster.

Preventing injuries such as sprained ankles, more typical of the hyper or extra mobile ankle and foot joints, and Achilles tendon injuries, more typical of the feet and ankles with less flexible movement, is not difficult if you learn correct basic ballet technique.

Ballet students, and particularly boys in ballet, who have tighter ankle and foot joints and flatter-shaped foot bones, can partially solve this disadvantage by learning how to massage their lower legs and feet.

The constant strain to get that ballet line in the foot arch leads to excess tension in the calves and feet.

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 Using a small sports ball or a golf ball, and rolling it under the arches with gentle pressure, eases the tension out of the muscles. You can also use a ball with nubs for extra stimulation of the circulation.

Calf muscles can be massaged the same way. Sitting on the floor, the ball can be eased from behind the knee, down the calf muscles to the ankle area.

Check that you get the extra tension towards the outside of the calf, and the inside area.

Your shins, or tibial muscles, can be tense as well.

Kneeling on the floor, ease and press your sports ball (a golf ball will not work for this one) from just below the knee, down the front of the calf to the ankle, leaning into it to get the tension to release.

After this, you may find a significant degree of increased mobility in the ankle joint, and a better line.

Hypo-mobile students are usually less likely to sprain ankles en pointe, but can be predisposed to Achilles Tendon issues, due to how hard they have to work the feet.

A wonderful stretch for the calves is: standing on a book, a stair step, or a rolled up towel, rise up and then lower onto one foot, stretching past the level point, so the heels are lower.

Alternating slowly and carefully, you'll feel a deep stretch.

Ballet students with the flexible high arch are lucky in that the ballet ideal has somehow become the large, domed instep over the top of the foot.

However, much more strength and control is required to utilize this range of motion, and prevent injury.

If you have this kind of mobility, one way to begin assessing your strength and control is to see if you can do 20 consecutive slow rises with no sickling out of the foot. That is the least control you need.

There are more advanced exercises for controlling the flexible ankle and stretching a tight ankle joint. Learning these will help prevent sprained ankles.

The Perfect Pointe Book provides with you with many self-testing methods and charted strengthening exercises so you can develop perfect foot muscles.

A Worry That Forcing The Splits Or Dancing In Pointe Shoes Can Damage Growth Plates

Parents can worry that the high demands of ballet training can distort or deform young children. Poorly taught turnout, for example, can result in the torqued look of feet turned out, with knees and thighs facing forward, and often with the a little bent. Growth plate damage is not common, but could result from dancing in pointe shoes starting at a too young age, or without proper preparation.

In ballet, the common injuries such as sprained ankles or knee injuries, will more likely be torn tendons, muscles or ligaments.

Starting with the splits, is there an impact on the hip bones that could damage growth plates? If young children practice vigorous or unsupervised stretching to do the splits, what is likely to be injured, if anything?

Doing the splits requires length in the large muscles at the front and back of the thighs, the large postural muscles that run down the front of the spine to the hips and thighs, and also requires long ligaments and tendons, that are not elastic.

Overexertion in stretching, or badly taught or unsupervised stretching, will first cause fairly significant pain (and stiffness the following day) in the muscles. Most younger children will not repeat this very willingly, and will avoid injury.

Overuse of the postural and large leg muscles that can cause injury to growth plates are most associated with sudden, unexpected exertion, for instance to recover from a badly executed long jump. This kind of uncontrolled pull, or compression, by a powerful muscle can damage a growth plate.

If a child, or any ballet student complains of severe, immediate (to the time of stretching), and localized (a child can point to it) pain, they must stop their exercise. If the pain returns at all, it is best that they be seen by a ballet/sports/fitness health practitioner as soon as possible.

Doing the splits is one thing that young dancers idealize in ballet. Some are not born to do the splits ever. Others can stretch to that degree gradually, with the usual guidelines - being extremely warmed up, and be patient.

Being able to dance in pointe shoes is another goal that young ballet dancers are eager to reach. Getting onto pointe too young could damage growth plates in the tiny foot bones. Even after the age of 12, lack of preparation for dancing ballet in pointe shoes can also result in damage.

Growth plate damage does not ever have to be considered a risk in ballet training. Good training is methodical, patient and is of very calculated exertion. Learn more about how to prevent ballet injuries with the materials at The Body Series.

Making Progress With Dance Fitness Or Ballet Tutorials to Enhance Your Ballet Instruction

In the quest to learn how to do ballet better, get into pointe shoes faster, or get cast in better roles for ballet recitals, many ballet students seek coaching from ballet tutorials. It is simple to improve your dance fitness with the wealth of information available. I didn't say easy, but simple. The following tips may help you.

Sometimes it is a little stressful thinking about the things that are wrong in your ballet positions, ballet movements, or other dance steps. Yet, if you do some analysis for yourself and develop a plan, I think you'll feel optimistic with an organized long term view.

Making a checklist to sort out things that you want to change and improve. It might look something like this:

***"the most basic correction I get - related to posture, flexibility, turnout or weakness?"

In other words if your corrections are directed to your demi plies, that is basic. It is going to affect nearly everything else you do in dance class. Is your most basic correction related to something you can change, or related to your physique?

If related to your physique, you may or may not be able to change something. Or, you may be able to change it over several years, so you have to give up being frustrated about it and get very patient and methodical.

If your correction is about something you do wrong, but you cannot seem to change it, why not? Is it related to a lack of understanding about it? Or you understand it but your body just doesn't seem to do it when everyone else's does? In classical technique, it's important to understand that certain ballet movements and ballet positions defy the human anatomy.

Sometimes ballet technique means "the safest and most aesthetic way to cheat", be it fifth position, or your arabesque. Ballet teachers do not like to talk about cheating, and it's not really cheating. It's calculated, educated compensation.

If you have to release the hip placement to get an extension of ninety degrees in a la seconde, there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. If you learn the right way to do it, you will be able to do turns a la seconde without falling off pointe or demi pointe. You will still have a postural plumb line, and you'll look correct, aesthetically.

So back to making a checklist:

*** "things I can change by improving my ability to concentrate on doing it correctly every time"
*** "things I can change over a few years"
*** "things I don't understand how to change"
*** (a sublist) "things I need to research to simplify my practice"

Ballet and other dancers tend to just work harder, do more and more repetitions. However, practicing until your muscles burn is worse than not practicing. Ballet training does not usually accommodate what sports and fitness trainers consider a realistic recovery period, so burning out your muscles is harmful.

Professionally prepared ballet tutorials and guides such as THE PERFECT POINTE BOOK are written with moderate practice routines, and self-assessment tests so you know when you have improved. You can get progress charts with some of these, or make up your own.

Adding to how you make your checklist:

*** "my weakness is because of muscle power and I need to......" understand and add nutrition, hydrate better, sleep better, rest more, learn to release more tension. Once you've figured this out, you will start improving.

If you are still growing, growth spurts can bring on muscle pain and awkwardness. Your body doesn't fit anymore! However, this passes.

Let your ballet teachers know that you are practicing for better dance and ballet fitness, the ballet tutorials you are using, and ask for feedback. If your teacher is not that approachable, work with another student and you'll learn some valuable ballet coaching skills as a bonus.

How to Prepare For Pointe Shoes and Prevent Dance Injuries

Prepare, prepare, prepare, for dancing ballet in pointe shoes.

Learn how to prevent dance injuries like a sprained ankle or a ballet knee injury years before you, or your child is looking for exactly the right fit in pointe shoes.

Even recreational dancers who may leave ballet classes for hip hop, jazz, salsa, cheer leading or any other style of dance, benefit from learning how to do basic classical ballet technique correctly.

The basic ballet movements and ballet positions can be executed correctly by almost any dance student. Students who do not have the physical attributes of turnout, flexibility, long legs/short body, long arms and long necks, can still learn to do ballet correctly enough to advance.

In some ballet schools, teachers actually believe that a student will never be able to do certain ballet movements because they lack "X" physical attribute. Unfortunately some students absorb this negativity whether the teacher voices it or not. It's a shame.

If you feel like you are not progressing and you do not get the coaching you need in ballet class, read, read, read. There is detailed information available about ballet technique and also there is plenty of help in the area of anatomy and anatomical correctness in ballet movement.

The all too common sprained ankles and knee injuries of ballet/sports/fitness can be avoided, for you.

The trick is how to get YOUR body to do THAT. If you are a few degrees too many from the ballet ideal, your teacher may not be able or may not be willing to help you. However, you can learn what you need to do to develop the correct application of for instance, a demi plie, onto a correctly postured releve with a correctly stretched arch and ankle.

If you aspire to become a performer in another dance style such as jazz or hip hop, your longevity in dance will depend on the correct use of your body.

If you aspire to dance ballet in pointe shoes, you need to be sure that your time and effort and the thousands of plies, degages and battement tendus are not being practiced with errors that will lead to injury.

Your basic dance movements imitate the advanced and sometimes intricate classical choreography. Modern ballet and modern dance choreography often cannot be imitated by basic ballet movements, but you are more prepared for that if you know how to move and prevent injury.

Take advantage of the wealth of information available at this blog, in books (print and downloads) and on DVDs. You can learn what you need to know to prepare to dance in pointe shoes and prevent ballet injuries.

Muscle Tension Release In Ballet - Magnesium!

For success in ballet, sports and fitness, strong muscle tone must also result in fluid movement. This requires the minimal tension needed to execute a ballet movement, or ballet position, or a physical move as required in sports training.

Magnesium is a nutritional super star. It improves function in the brain, bones and muscles. In team sports, advanced ballet in pointe shoes and pas de deux, magnesium is part of the nutrition that enhances ballet/sports/fitness success.

Magnesium is present in most of your body cells. It plays a starring role as a co-factor, meaning, it assists enzymes in catalyzing (a catalyst is a substance that initiates or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected) many necessary chemical reactions.

Magnesium affects many things that your ballet and sports require of you, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Here's a short list:

- nerve conduction, or the sending and receiving of messages affecting muscle response
- muscular movement affecting fluidity, accuracy and coordination
- bone metabolism, affecting your growth and development, as well as your immune system
- protein manufacture in the body which is extremely complex
- fat and carbohydrate metabolism. A new frontier being researched now is magnesium in relation to insulin resistance, which, once that condition begins, makes it harder to stay thin
- glucose utilization, affecting brain power and muscle power

Whether your goals in ballet/sports/fitness are personal and recreational, or professional, I'm sure you would want all the points made above functioning for optimum results in your muscles and brain.

Because magnesium allows the muscle contractions that occur to turn off, it helps control tension and spasms caused by over training, heavy practice or rehearsal days, and inaccurate technique.

Magnesium supplements can be bought in tablet or powder form. Always read labels, and select brands that do not have anything else added, except maybe fruit flavoring from natural sources that you recognize. Powdered magnesium digests faster.

It's usually a good idea to take half the recommended dosage for a couple of days, to let your body get used to a nutrient that has been deficient. Magnesium can loosen the bowels at first, but that effect goes away within a day or so. Magnesium carbonate has the biggest affect this way. Magnesium citrate and magnesium lactate are known to digest better.

Because of the relaxing effect magnesium has, you may sleep more deeply, and high blood pressure may lower towards normal. Even irregularities of the heart muscle can be helped by magnesium.

Many flavoring foods are high in magnesium: dill, chives, celery seed, spearmint, sage, coriander and basil. Put fresh into salads or chopped and sprinkled on vegetables, meat or fish, these are all delicious.

So for strong bones, good muscle tone (which requires proper relaxation for strength), getting enough rest, and staying calm, eat magnesium! Best obtained from fresh foods, yet very helpful as a food-sourced supplement, it is a super star silent partner in your ballet/sports/fitness training.

Learn how to get more minerals into your diet to help with muscle tension release.

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What is Your Protein Requirement As A Ballet Dancer

I talk to both athletic (mostly ballet dancers) and non-athletic dieters frequently. It seems that both groups do not know how much protein they should eat every day, or every meal. If your goal is burning stored fat, cutting down on food intake should not be done carelessly. I am not a weight loss expert, but here is some general information to help you sort out your own dieting decisions.

After noticing recently that the subject of what is your protein requirement was being mentioned in many quarters around me, I got curious. We all know that protein is important, but we are also barraged with conflicting information in our culture, like the following:

*** eating too much meat is bad for you
*** soy is better than meat because it is lower in calories
*** fish is better than meat because it has better oils (omega 3 fatty acids)
*** don't eat fish more than twice a week because it is contaminated with mercury and other industrial chemicals
*** eating egg yolks raises your "bad" cholesterol levels
*** butter is just fat, don't eat it
*** killing animals and eating them is murder
*** even eating animal products like milk and eggs is abusive and we shouldn't

You see how crazy this can get, in terms of contradictions. Some of what I wrote above is true, but how and why? How do we find balance? We have indeed polluted our food sources with industrial chemicals, herbicides, pesticides and more. Slaughterhouses are indeed horribly cruel and do not need to be. All the "bad" can be changed.

Get the best food you can. Use a Body Mass Index calculator to determine your lean weight, and then a protein calculator to find out what your protein requirement is, based on your lean weight.

I did a search using Google with the phrase "protein intake for ballet dancers". I recommend that you read the first page of articles, all of them. I wanted to pick one, choosing a particular angle on this subject, but I didn't because it is a giant puzzle and the pieces need to be put together for you, by you.

If you choose a regimented diet where someone else makes the food, allowing you to have (artificial) sweets and (non-fat) carbs, with starch thickened non-fat sauces, I doubt you are eating anything close to your protein requirement. Also, these foods are not fresh, and who knows if they retain even ten percent of their vitamin and mineral content. So this route to weight loss is really starving yourself, and pretending that you're not. And when you starve yourself, your body will start dissolving itself to get the required nutrients in the right places in order to maintain. You WILL lose weight.

Your choice then might be to cut out ALL empty carbs, meaning white bread, pasta, crackers, potatoes, and of course sweets. That leaves you room for your protein requirement, or at least some more of it, in every meal or snack.

Fresh meats, poultry, eggs and fish are good for you, in general. Trim the fat from the meats and poultry. You will still ingest a small amount of animal fat, which your body requires to function. If you are eating salmon or tuna eat the fat and skin. Those have omega 3 fatty acids in them, which are also essential for health.

Some of the newer information about dieting is that changing calorie intake, a little, on a daily basis, is better for weight loss. Because your body can get used to anything, and will modify your metabolism to slow down when you eat fewer calories, you can trick it by not giving it the same number every day, so that there is no exact routine for it to get used to.

The goal of staying thin while getting your protein requirement, for a growing child or adult athletes and ballet dancers, and burning stored fat, is complex. Who has the time to become an expert?

Personally, I think you do. With the internet and all of the amazing information at hand, you can learn, gradually, what you need to know. I could write a book for every sentence I wrote in this article. Others already have, so I won't.

Investigate why egg yolks and butter are good for you. Investigate why artificially sweetened sodas make you crave carbs. Investigate why prepared foods full of MSG for flavor might be related to brain damage like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, or dementia and memory loss. Investigate the real deal on using soy as protein food.

If you are being treated for a disease, please follow your doctor's recommendations, but also keep looking for information for yourself. Figure out what is your protein requirement, learn about burning stored fat, and sort out your own dieting decisions.

The Many Exercise Benefits of Ballet As a Natural Remedy

If we review all the benefits of any exercise, ballet provides them all, with many bonuses. Since studies have shown that high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, and many inflammatory conditions such as Ulcerative Colitis for one, are improved using exercise as a natural remedy, why not dance ballet? Gaining muscle and losing weight is another great side effect.

Why does exercise help almost any ill-health condition? And by ill-health, I mean inflammatory (diabetes, Ulcerative Colitis, IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, joint pain and many more) conditions.

Exercise increases your muscle exertion, including your heart muscle, therefore your oxygen intake, therefore your metabolism, and therefore your circulation. Increased circulation means more nutrients and body-manufactured hormones and enzymes going to body cells, and also, increase of waste products from metabolism getting OUT of your cells.

Perspiring washes many toxins we create naturally (or eat, accidentally) out through our skin. while the purpose of exercising is not to overheat the body, it happens. While cooling down, we detoxify.

Exerting your muscles on your bones stimulates bone growth and density. Healthy bones are part of our overall health. Many body processes occur in our bone tissue, including our immune system functions.

In fact our body is, under normal conditions, a factory of excellent health results, if we treat it properly.

Another way that exercise helps us is to DECREASE STRESS. This happens on a physical, emotional and mental level. The physical level entails all the I mentioned above, and more. The emotional level is involved because we are doing something good for ourselves, maybe just for the enjoyment and benefits, and maybe because it is an ambition being fulfilled. Mentally exercise is a challenge requiring concentration, and increases our ability to concentrate.

Exercise of a certain type will increase muscle mass, though not necessarily bulk, which helps us to maintain or lose weight.

So why dance ballet? In a ballet class, almost every exercise is a full body workout. At the same time, each exercise exerts more on a specific muscle group than it does on the supporting muscle groups.

Ballet increases reflexes and demands incredible coordination. Because of the demands, taking ballet classes and perhaps dancing in pointe shoes, requires learning about functional anatomy and how to avoid dance injuries as well as nutrition, for the more curious students.

It is wonderfully satisfying to work on a difficult combination, maybe all year. Then one day, what was a disjointed conglomeration of efforts and concentration, suddenly becomes a smoothly executed grand jete en tournant, a fouette battu saute or an effortless series of chainee turns. Your friends wonder "how do you DO that?"

If they only knew, the blood, the sweat and the tears. I'm just kidding. Well, maybe not.

Regular ballet training or other exercise training will also PREVENT high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and many other degenerative physical conditions. Another huge bonus.

So ballet is a natural remedy for less than optimum health conditions that benefit from exercise. If you're ill, ask your doctor if there is any reason that you should not exercise. Unless you are an exceptional case, you will likely be encouraged to do so.