Achilles Tendon

Dancing Smart Newsletter
March 17, 2006

Announcements

Happy St. Patrick's! I've never had as much fun celebrating this day outside of New York as I did when I lived in the city. While green beer was never my favorite, I certainly enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm that was present on that day throughout the city.

Next - drum roll ......the venues and dates have been for the summer workshops. I'm very excited about the opportunity to work closely with some of you in an intimate setting. For detailed descriptions on the weekend entitled Dance Connections: Training for Success go to TheBodySeries.com. Here is a brief description of the 2 workshops. Anneliese Burns Wilson and I are teaching an all day workshop on Saturday called The Dancer's Body: Exploring the Anatomy of the Hip and Pelvis. Class times run from 9-5 with lunch included for the participants. In it you'll begin to understand the anatomy of this area, learn how to accurately assess muscular imbalances, and practice exercises suitable for class.

On Sunday, I will be presenting a workshop that I have longed to teach for quite some time and decided that now is the right time! It's called Breaking through Mental Barriers. It will run from 9-3 with lunch included. The inspiration for this workshop comes from watching so many dancers and dance teachers who have a wealth of knowledge, are so hard-working with their hearts in the right place, and still sabotage themselves from getting what they say they want. Self-mastery is the focus of my journey in life right now, and I invite you to join me in discovering ways to break through the barriers to success.

Go to TheBodySeries.com, read the descriptions, follow the link to the registration form, which can be filled out online or sent via snail mail. Reserve your space now to be a part of these intimate workshops.

First Question of the Week

Deb's Answer

There are a couple different directions I'd like you to explore with this problem. You didn't mention whether the pain is greater after doing petite allegro, or perhaps you are teaching daily so there is never a time that you aren't demonstrating. The reason why I ask is petite allegro requires a lot from the soleus muscle which is a calf muscle that attaches below the knee and joins with the Achilles tendon to attach onto the heel bone. It contracts strongly when you do a bent leg relevé, and helps to control the descent into plié when you are landing from jumps. It also peeks out either side of the gastrocnemius (the soleus muscle is underneath or behind the gastrocnemius muscle) Open up this link to see a picture of the soleus muscle. Both the gastrocnemius and the soleus plantar flex the ankle, which is pointing the foot in dancer's terminology.

http://www.therunningdoctor.com/achilles_fig.jpg

Early morning foot and ankle problems are sometimes caused by sleeping with your foot in plantar flexion (pointed), which is the way most people sleep. I don't know anyone that sleeps with his or her feet flexed! That being said, it does mean that you are spending 6-8 hours with a shortened gastrocnemius and soleus muscle. If you are doing a fair amount of stretching to both those muscles during the course of the day there won't be a problem, but if you are like many teachers, myself included, we demonstrate, and then walk around while our students are doing the plies and stretches that our bodies so desperately want to be doing.

So the first suggestion I have is to increase the amount of calf stretching you do with straight legs to stretch out the gastrocnemius, and a slightly bent knee, which stretches the soleus muscle. Besides the normal way to stretch your calves in a lunge, you might stand facing the wall, put a thick book a few inches away from the wall with the ball of your foot on the book. Do a small bend of the knee of the foot that's on the book as you use the wall to support yourself as you drop the weight through the heel and into the floor. Make sure the foot is totally relaxed as it is doing this stretch and you aren't allowing the foot to roll in towards the big toe. You'll feel the stretch lower towards the ankle and in the Achilles tendon area. Hold this stretch for at least a full minute, breathing, and constantly checking for tension as you are stretching. If the pull is too strong and you can't relax your foot completely, straighten your knee some or put a thinner book under the ball of your foot.

The other suggestion I'd like to make is to listen to what your knees are saying. Not knowing your particular alignment pattern, I don't know if you have a tendency to be hyperextended or lock your knees as those are patterns that create strain through the knee joint because the weight is not traveling efficiently from femur (thigh bone) to tibia (shin bone) If you ever feel your knees ache during a plié, observe when that happens. If it is when you return to standing then you need to look closely if you are going into a locked position. If it happens more at the bottom of the plié, then work to stretch the hip flexors (quadriceps and iliopsoas muscle) AND focus on soleus stretching as described before. If the soleus is tight it limits the depth of your plié. Dancers don't like to have short pliés, so they try to go a little farther by barely shifting the weight forward over the ball of the foot, straining the soleus and gastrocnemius because the weight is no longer equally going through the front and back of the foot and overworking the quads, creating strain on the knee joint. Because you mentioned having osteoarthritis, it would be worth checking if you have developed some compensations.

I'd like to think by addressing the information your body is sending you will get even more comfortable in your movement, more efficiently aligned, and pain free in your joints.

Have a great week everyone! Be well!

Deborah

"Education is the key to injury prevention"

Copyright ©2003-2006 The Body Series. All Rights Reserved.

Deborah Vogel is a dancer, author, and master teacher who conducts workshops across the U.S. for both student and professional dancers. Her numerous articles on dance technique and injury prevention have appeared in Dance Spirit and Dance Teacher magazines. She is the Director of the Institute for Performance Studies and a faculty member at Oberlin College and the OC Conservatory of Music. During her years in NYC she co- founded the Center for Dance Medicine. Deborah makes her home in Oberlin, Ohio.