Dancing Smart Newsletter

My ballet teacher has been helping me a lot with my feet because they are my weak spot. She said that I am too strong in the outer part of my feet, instead of being strong in the inside part. She said that I am more prone to injury because of this, and that this is incorrect.
I know this is true, especially because my feet are pretty close to flat. I "roll in" my ankle in class and outside of class when just walking around. I try not to roll in as best as I can. I was wondering if there are any exercises to help strengthen my inner part of my foot.

Thanks, Rachel
PS: I have a theraband.

Rachel, I'm not sure what you mean exactly with the stronger outer part versus inner part of your foot. When your foot rolls in it is called pronation and yes, there are definitely exercises you can do to help strengthen the muscles of the feet.

Your first focus is to bring your turnout in to where you feel equal weight between the pads of the big toe, little toe and heel. Check how you are standing when you are waiting in line at lunch – or standing and brushing your teeth. The habit of pronation probably occurs in your regular life as well as in ballet class.

Start with rolling for a moment or two on a tennis ball or pinkie ball to release and relax the foot muscles. Start by simply by 'playing the piano' with your toes. Keeping the pads of the toes on the floor, lift the toes up in the air and starting with your little toe, put it down on the ground, then the 4th toe, etc., with the big toe being the last. Now reverse and lift the big toe up, the 2nd toe next, and so on. You can use your hands to help do this exercise. If your feet start to cramp, stop and roll on the ball for a moment.

The next exercise is to practice pointing your feet by separating your toes as they begin to lengthen. You will start to cramp on this - and again - stop and roll on the ball before trying it again. You can do this exercise easily with putting the theraband around your toes and pressing gently against the theraband as you extend your toes.

Next tip – get rid of your flip-flops! Wear good supportive shoes with an arch support to help you keep from rolling in. Becoming aware of your rolling in or pronating is the first step in changing your feet – and I can't emphasize enough the importance of standing with equal weight on the 3 points of the foot.


I am really late-starter, having taken my first ballet class at 36.
My 6 teachers in the past 4 years adjusted the classes' level to the level of the knowledge of the majority participants. Inevitably, I ended up in a class way over my head or way below my level, which eventually left me with an enhanced ability of copying, and huge gaps in my technique.

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I am a faithful reader of your newsletter and I found your book, Tune up your turn out a great help too. Now at 40, I am taking 3 classes a week, I feel that the largest improvement in my dancing would come from understanding of the muscular recruitment of proper posture.
I can’t seem to get hold of the right balance between my deep abdominals, hip flexors and extensors. I don't know if I am tucking under or holding my center. The visual that I got from my teachers is that I should think belly button to the spine, or lengthen from the bottom of my spine, but I don’t find this very helpful. Should I really be aiming for a straight lower back devoid of its natural curve?

I naturally stand swayback, in a slight turnout with hyper extended knees. Standing in parallel feels really weird, as if my knees are about to knock, and correcting for the exaggerated lordotic curve I end up on bent legs with tight hip flexors and ribs fanning out. I am experimenting with different recruitments, but I am afraid of acquiring bad postural habits, and I certainly don’t need any more of those.

I know that you can’t possibly diagnose my posture by email, but I was hoping that you might have a few tips, or visual images I can try. I know a bit about musculoskeletal anatomy, so to me it would be more useful if someone could address the issue in those terms, as in get out of the quads, use more hip flexors, for example, but this is wishful thinking with the teachers I encountered here.

I would be grateful for your advice.

Zsuzsanna from Budapest, Hungary

Sounds like you have learned a lot over the past 6 years! First – check out whether or not your slight hyperextension is connected to your swayback. Very often it is – and when you bring your knees out of hyperextension, the pelvis comes out of its forward or anterior tilt.

Your lower back will not board straight – and I wouldn't want you to work towards that – clearly as you describe it creates other problems. What if you shift your focus to the pelvic bowl? If you were lying down on your back with your knees bent and your lower back just resting on the floor I would want you to feel that the pubic bone and the two points on your pelvis that feel like they are sticking up are on a level plane. (Those are your ASIS, or anterior/superior iliac crests)

Note that if you flatten your lower back against the floor your ASIS are probably closer to the floor that your pubic bone, and when you arch your back your pubic bone is closer to the floor that your ASIS.

Now come back up to standing. In standing it is more challenging for me to have a sense of the ASIS and pubis relationship so I shift to thinking that my pubis is lifting gently towards my sternum above it. This helps me to maintain the correct torso/pelvis alignment without putting my thinking (and corrections) into my lower back.

I also imagine that the pelvis is a bowl and I keep a small amount of lift between the pubis and my belly button in order to keep the front of the bowl from spilling their abdominal contents out as they do when you go into a swayback.

Let me know how it goes with bringing your knees to neutral when standing (you can hyperextend when its in the air) and bringing the front of your pelvic bowl up.

Best wishes!

Deborah

"Education is the key to injury prevention"

Dancing Smart Newsletter

Greetings!
I'm sending this from the beautiful TCU campus where I have been teaching an intensive course this week to the dance dept. There is nothing like teaching to a group of students who are eager and avid to learn all they can to improve their technique. And an extra perk is the Texas sun and warmth – It's going to be hard to go back to Ohio weather!

Quick reminder that registration for Lisa Howell's Perfect Pointe Workshops ends today. Register at http://theballetblog.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=67&Itemid=152

Onto the questions of the week!


Thanks for creating such a valuable resource. I attended your session at the Dance Teacher's Conference in New York back in August and found your information so helpful. One of my legs is a little longer than the other. This does affect my ballet dancing, particularly my turnout and jumps, etc.. I've also noticed that the longer leg is a little more weak than the other. Are there any exercises I can do to help? I am new to your newsletter so please forgive me if you have already addressed this issue. Thanks, Jennifer

Jennifer, if your legs are structurally at different lengths it can influence your alignment. It's tricky to decide whether or not you should insert a small heel lift in your soft slippers. Your spine needs to be looked at to evaluate it's curves and response to the shorter leg. Sometimes the spinal curves become less when the pelvis is balanced by putting a heel lift in - other times it might make your spinal curves worse, in which case you would not correct the leg length difference. I would suggest you see a PT or sports physician who could do an assessment of your spine and leg length.



There are some common patterns with uneven leg length - some of which you have referred to. When you look at the picture on the left you see the dancer has a pelvic shift right, torso shift left. The common pattern is to stand on the long leg, because to stand with more weight on the short leg would require you bend the long leg. You can see her left leg is the shorter leg.

Typically you come down heavier on the short leg side on each and every step. Sometimes dancers prefer to stand on their short leg and use their longer leg as the gesture leg - although I have seen the opposite preference also. It certainly can influence the turnout too. More often I see the long leg side having more challenges with turnout. It is easy to understand that you'd prefer to stand on your long leg and put your shorter leg in front in fifth position.

The dancer in this photo improved her alignment by putting a lift under her left heel. It evened out her shoulder line as well as equalizing the amount of weight through both legs. She put a lift in her every day shoes - as well as in her soft slipper. For modern dancers sometimes it is enough to have a lift in your shoes - keeping the musculature working evening for the majority of the time, then dancing barefoot without a lift.

There aren't any special exercises I would offer to you to even out the two sides, rather I would encourage you to have an evaluation to see if a lift would be useful, and then do your stretches and strengtheners in such a way that you are working to balance out the 2 sides. If you find the muscles around the right hip tighter, but weaker, then do more stretching and strengthening on that side. Don't feel you need to do your workout exactly the same on both sides. It is very common to have one iliopsoas muscle tighter than the other and I tell people if you only have time to do one side - do your right side, as many times as you can throughout the day. Then as the two sides feel more even, you can reflect by stretching more evenly as well.

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I have a student who is complaining of her arches and ball of the foot hurting when she rolls up to pointe. She has fairly flat feet and either tight calves or short achilles tendons - she does not have a very deep demi-plie. She also tends to roll onto the outside of her pointes. Any ideas as to what can be causing her pain (plantar fasciitis?)? Courtney


You've hit upon some of the reasons in your question. Having overly tight calf muscles will pull on the plantar fascia, and encourage such standing patterns such as standing slightly forward onto the ball of the foot. That decreases the pull slightly, but over time, certainly doesn't help to get a deeper plié.

You didn't indicate where she felt her pain when she rolls up to point. Plantar fasciitis is most often felt on the underside of the foot. The diagram to the left illustrates this.

If she is feeling pain down towards the toes, perhaps she is rolling to the outside of her feet as a way to get away from the pain. It would be useful to send to her a good sport podiatrist who may be able to evaluate her feet and make sure she doesn't have any problems such as a sesamoiditis.

Have sesamoiditis once myself I know how easy it is to simply rise a little bit more towards the little toe side to get away from the irritation and inflammation of the area underneath the big toe.

There are other reasons she might feel some discomfort only in relévé, but we won't go into those now. My advise would be to have her get checked out and make sure there isn't anything structural going on.

As far as deepening her demi plié, I would encourage her to do a lot of soleus stretching. Spend 1-3 minutes in the following stretch.


Until next time!

Warm regards,

Deborah


"Education is the key to injury prevention"