Knees & Releves

Dancing Smart Newsletter
June 30, 2006

Announcements

Hello! Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend! Right to the questions of the week……

First Question

You need to do some more evaluation with your turnout in order to target more specifically how to improve it. Check the flexibility of your iliopsoas muscle first. Sometimes dancers with lordosis have a tight iliopsoas muscle, which pulls their back into a sway. This in turn makes it harder to utilize your turnout.

When you test the range of your turnout, do you test with more internal rotation, or are both your turn in and turnout tight? It would be very helpful to define what is structural versus muscular. If you have anteverted hips with more natural turn in than turn out, you will want to focus on releasing as much tension as possible from the external rotators by using the pinky ball and stretching.

If you have been turning out from the knee down for a while, you may have some tibial torsion, or you may have simply strained the knees by this pattern. Figuring out whether you do have tibial torsion will tell you whether to allow a small amount of disparity between the facings of the knees and feet. If there is true tibial torsion, then you'll have to allow for some, if there isn't, then you'll need to correct the standing pattern.
I'm afraid that I haven't been able to give as straight forward of an answer as you might want. Turnout is a complicated set of relationships between structure and muscle patterns. My strongest suggestion to you is to analyze the different elements in greater detail. You can do this by seeking out the assistance of a PT who understands dance, or by purchasing my book, Tune Up Your Turnout. I talk about all of these elements in great detail.

There is always something that we can do to improve our muscle usage and technique, so don't give up!

Next Question

I'd like to make a few other suggestions. The first one is to look at what's happening in your relevé as you slowly rise. Do this either in bare feet or in socks. Are you able to rise into relevé without having your toes grip and crunch up? Hopefully the answer is yes – but if your toes are gripping then you need to develop more strength to the arch muscles and release the pull from the calf muscles.

Work with the pinkie ball on the front of your calf on the muscle outside of the shin bone. Do this by kneeling gently on the ball and pressing or rolling over the muscle. That is the anterior tibialis muscle and your feet will feel better when it is less tense! Then take the pinkie ball and sit on the ground with your leg in front of you and place the pinkie ball underneath your calf muscle and roll all over the calf area. You are trying to reduce as much unnecessary tension in these muscles as possible. The last thing you can do with the pinkie ball is to stand on it and roll the arch of your foot over the ball. It feels wonderful!

Practice strengthening the arch muscles by extending your ankle while slowly lengthening your toes. Keep your toes separated and straight and don't let them curl under.

It is very hard to keep your heels from lowering rising from a forced arch relevé. It was a good suggestion on your teachers part, but let's see if with some added focus on releasing tension and developing strength you can improve your relevé.

Next newsletter is in two weeks!

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.