Turnout

Dancing Smart Newsletter
March 16, 2007

Hope everyone has a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day!

First Question

Thank you for your email, Carolyn. I didn't correct the sentence about using the quads to turn out instead of the deep lateral rotators, and I should have. The primary rotators of the femur are the 6 deep lateral rotators of the hip. They are underneath the gluteals as we have talked about in other newsletters.

The quadriceps are hip flexors and knee extensors, meaning they will bend the thigh at the hip and straight the knee. (of course you can bend at the hip and bend the knee at the same time as in a passé, and that means the top portion of the quadriceps is doing a concentric or shortening contraction, and the lower portion is doing an eccentric or lengthening contraction.

The muscles on the outside of your hips and run down into the iliotibial band to the outside of your knee do assist turnout. These are the gluteus medius and minimus muscles. Assist is the important word. If you have too much tension in the more surface gluteal muscles it makes it much harder to find the deeper lateral rotators underneath. Use your pinkie ball frequently in this area before and after class. All around the pelvis is one of the favorite spots for dancers to work on – after all it is the center of the body and so important to the alignment of the rest of the body.

The inner thigh muscles are not active turnout muscles, but rather stabilize your turnout, especially returning to straight from a plié. If you think of turnout coming from the inner thighs it often promotes a tucking under of the pelvis and a shifting forward, sometimes into pronation.
I like to focus on turnout and what is happening at the hip joint and encourage my students to do the same, in order to minimize all the compensations that can happen when forcing your turnout.

Thanks for asking me to clarify!

Next Question

You gave lots of yummy details to ponder. First I will say to you 21 is not too old to see an improvement in your turnout. Thirty-five is not too old, nor is fifty! There is lots of research stating we can change our muscular balance and functioning, no matter what our age. (see a past newsletter on flexibility and age)

You noted that you pronate, and when you correct your pronation you feel your turnout suffers, and yet you like to walk turned out. When you stand in parallel are your knees and feet facing in the same direction? If your knees face inward when your feet face forward you may have lateral tibial torsion, meaning the tibia, or shin bone, has rotated (as if it has turned itself out). I propose that young dancers who are trying to increase their turnout are often doing it from the knee down by pushing the feet into that 180 degree first position. The main way they do this is by pronating their feet, which during their growth years, the tibia responds to this force by creating a twist in the bone.

If you had lateral tibial torsion it would explain why you like to walk in a turned out position, and why you have a tendency to pronate. Since we often have unequal amounts of turnout on the two sides, I will often see the side with the better turnout have more pronation. It is easier to cheat at that ankle/foot and twist the pelvis towards the lesser turned out side.

Test your turnout on both sides and see if you can get an approximate measure of both your turnout and turn in. Then focus on releasing any tension around the hip joint through stretching and pinkie ball or foam roller work. My favorite way to strengthen the turnout muscles is to lie on my side with my knees bent and feet underneath my hips. Keep your feet together as you slowly lift the top knee up – without allowing yourself to tip onto the back of the pelvis. Keep the gluteals relaxed as you gently open and close that top leg. It doesn't take very many repetitions before you will feel some effort or fatigue happening deep in the pelvis. Those are your turnout muscles. After strengthening both sides, repeat your stretching and/or ballwork to that area.

On with the dance!

Warm regards,

Deborah

"Education is the key to injury prevention"

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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.