Splits, Fifth & Plié

Dancing Smart Newsletter
December 22, 2006

Announcements

Warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season! Hoping everyone's Nutcracker's and holiday performances went well, and you are now able to slow down and enjoy time at home with family and friends. It is a magical and busy time of the year.

Just a quick note about sending in questions to AskDeb. I try to get to as many of them as possible, either through the newsletter, or writing a short response back directly. Know that I appreciate all of your questions, but as I receive between 20-30 questions a week, I am unable to answer all of them personally. Thank you for your understanding as I do my best to choose questions to respond to that have a wide appeal to the teachers in the subscriber list, as well as the many dancers who are also on this list.

Onto the questions…

First Question

Generally when you can't keep your heels down in a demi plié it is because you have either tight calf muscles, or are shifting out of anatomical alignment. Try releasing calf tightness through working with a pinkie ball underneath your calves as you are sitting on the ground, and then stretching the calf muscles out in the lunge stretch, both with the back leg straight, and then with a slight knee bend.

If you are shifting out of anatomical alignment, it is usually because you are tucking your pelvis under and shifting forward towards the front of the feet. Not only does this lift the heels off the ground, it puts a lot of strain on the knees!

Next Question

Your internal tibial torsion could certainly be a strong factor in your fifth position. I imagine that you are straining at the hip muscles and that is why you are feeling the pain. With internal tibial torsion the feet are 'toeing in'. Without seeing your leg alignment I don't know whether the knees and hip alignment is. You'll want to test the turnout at your hips lying on your stomach and bending one knee over the other thigh to see what your functional range of turnout is.

This is a challenging situation and in fact I'm glad to here that you are adapting your stance by bringing the foot to parallel. While I know it is not the ideal for a ballet class, what I do know is that a dancer with an internally rotated tibia turns out into first position they are almost always putting extra torque and twist at the knee and foot. They have to in order to be able to do it.

The pain is a signal, Ariel, that there is too much strain. Do your hips hurt when you take a jazz or modern class? If it is turnout that brings on the pain, I would encourage you to continue adapting your positions and enjoy moving without pain. Even when you are working in turnout – try not to push your turnout. I am more concerned about the long-term effects of such habits.

If possible, try some different types of movement classes and see if there are some that feel good in your body. While ballet is a very wonderful way to develop strong technique, it isn't the only way. You might even try doing Pilates reformer work, and see how your body feels with that modality. Whether you have internal rotation or the tibia or any of the many other unique structural differences humans have the goal of dance would be the same. Develop muscular strength and flexibility, working within your own unique structure while developing grace and coordination to increase the body's movement range.

Good luck!

Final Questions

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These two questions are speaking to the same issue of flexibility versus strength, and so I put them together. For Ellany, she is missing the last few inches of her splits, and for La Precious she has her splits, but needs work on her leaps and extensions.

Let's start first with flexibility. Since Ellany does yoga and Pilates on a regular basis I know that she is stretching regularly. The most basic analysis of the splits are that the front leg has a strong stretch in the hamstrings and buttock muscles, while the back leg is stretching the front of the hip. The front leg should have the knee facing the ceiling and the back leg will either have the knee facing down to the ground, which stretches the hip flexors more or the knee facing to the side, which stretches the inner thigh muscles more.

I would have you first see what the natural inclination of your back leg is as you go down into the splits. Do you want to turn your leg out? Then focus on increasing and deepening your hip flexor stretches. Does your leg stay nicely behind and facing the floor? In which case, focus for a while on increasing the flexibility of your adductor, or inner thigh muscles.

The more pitched forward your pelvis is when you are going down in the splits, the more likely the hip flexors are keeping you off the ground. That may also give you a clue whether it is the hip flexors (usually the iliopsoas) or inner thigh muscles.

The last question I would ask of you is where do you feel the resistance to deepening the splits? If you don't feel much muscular resistance to the lowering in the splits, then you might look at having some myofascial massage work done to release tightness in other areas along the front or back line that may be getting in your way.

With LaPrecious feeling that she has her flexibility and splits down, but unable to make her leaps more spectacular, that may be a deficiency in strength. More often I see weakness in the hip extensors (hamstrings) over the hip flexors (quads). Try lifting your back leg up more quickly sometimes makes a difference. Dancers are often overly focused on the front leg and lifting it up high. The back leg is doing a very fast battement as soon as it pushes off (as in a grand jeté).

If your back leg doesn't get as high as you'd like in your leaps, then focus on strengthening the extensors of the hip, the hamstrings and gluteal muscles.

Warmest wishes for a wonderful weekend!

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.