Frisky Feet Friday!

Hello to all and Happy Friday!

Todays blog is all about your feet (strength, artistry, and flexibility) and how these things on your body are one of the main components you need as a dancer.

We’re going to be going over some questions that may be popping up in your mind and how to get even stronger to continue to improve your technique as a dancer.

So what does your feet do in dance to bump in up in the main category of importance? Your feet hold you up, your feet pointe, your feet hold positions turned out and winged and are part of your flexibility, and artistry.

What can you do to improve your feet mobility, flexibility, and all in all, strength.

Strength/Mobility

I know when I first starting out in dance, my teacher would heavily talk about how your feet and ankles have to be increasingly strong and always push past your limits even through the burn. We did many releves slowly at barre and center.

Relevè- a bend of both legs and straightening your legs to rise onto the tips of your toes.

Relevès are given in each ballet class throughout the entire class no matter what the exercise is.

Scrunch a towel up- Sitting up straight and having in leg bent and using your feet to scrunch a towel will increase strength and mobility of pointing and flexing foot/toes.

Sitting in a pike position with legs extended out in a parallel position, you hold your feet in a pointed position and hold for a few seconds and then flex and hold as well. This stretch not only increases flexibility in your feel but also your hamstrings so this is a 2 in 1.

Flexibility

Some of the exercises require a Thera band.

Using a Thera band, you pointè and flex your toes and move on to your whole foot. This also engages your ankle bone as well and will strengthen the ankles as well.

Sitting on your toes will give your toes a nice stretch, this may not feel to comfy at first but after some time, it will get better.

This exercise will increase your flexibility and pointe- grab your foot and extend your leg to second.

Put a foam block at the back of the calf muscles and sit on top of the foam block, your feet should be pointed on the ground and this will stretch the arch of your foot as well as the toes and the entirety of the foot and ankle.

Artistry

As you work on improving with these exercises, your feet will grow in strength and flexibility and change the artistry of your foot. The deer in a dancer are such a beautiful image. It’s always in some sort of way whether it’s pointed, flexed, winged, or biscuit ballerina and is turned in completely. The artistry of the foot as it points, as it goes to a flexed position is what matters and the way the toes articulate to the position is what creates it as art. These exercises above will bring the art of the foot out.