How to Improve Almost Every Move In Dance, By Strengthening One Part Of Your Body

 

 


How would you like to improve the height of your jumps? Perhaps find the perfect eleve to do more turns? Maybe you want to be able to move and transition faster? How about making your legs look longer and kicks look higher? The answer is simple...strengthen your feet.

 

 

Our feet are our support, our means of transitioning, pushing off of and landing on, balancing on, and just being on. We use our feet in absolutely every aspect of dance. Your feet, and the connection you have to the floor with them are one of the most important elements to becoming a successful dancer.

 

Our feet are perfectly designed to use in a way to safely support our bodies both standing and moving. First it's important to feel the weight of your body in the ball of your feet instead of your heels. The ball of your foot, or metatarsal, is where your toes connect to your feet. This part of your foot has more surface space, and more tissue, making it easier and more comfortable to be on. The added bonus is, it brings the center of your body right where you need it to move more easily. Our feet attach at our ankles to our legs, this joint, along with the joint attaching your toes to your feet, make our feet natural spring boards. This means we can launch ourselves high in our jumps, and land back softly and safely to floor when using them correctly. The key is to first push your heel off the floor, coming to the ball of the foot, then using the muscles in your toes and arch, push off the floor bringing the foot to a full point. You then reverse that movement, rolling through the toes to the ball of the foot, and then controlling it back down to the heel. The stronger your feet are, the more effectively you can do this, achieving those high jumps, and soft landings.

 

If you were to only push half way, stopping on the ball of the foot, this is your eleve position. This position allows us to balance, and complete multiple rotations in our turns. When you push up to the ball of the foot using the muscles in the ankle and feet, you can lock in a strong eleve. We also use the muscles in the toes to spread our toes out on the floor, giving us even more surface space to balance and turn on. Again, the stronger the feet are, the longer we can hold our eleve. All of this pushing, and controlling back down is what allows us to easily move back and forth from one place to the next.

 

 

 

Lastly, for those beautiful lines, we want to stretch, stretch, stretch those feet, but then.... You guessed it, strengthen them as well to hold that beautifully stretched pointed foot. Those pointed toes help continue the line of leg, creating the illusion of a longer leg and higher kick.

So now that you know the importance of those feet, time to work on them! Here are some helpful exercises brought to you by Dance Spirit magazine.

www.dancespirit.com/2010/03/toe-pointers-mar-2011/



Happy dancing! 

 

 

 

Author, April Hamner, has been dancing for 26 years, teaching for 12, and coaching for 5. She was awarded Dancer of the Weekend several years in a row for New York City Dance Alliance. As a captain of her Poms team, she helped her team take 1st in state. Her choreography has won 1st place overall in the Hip Hop category at 2014 Primetime nationals in California. She currently has students all over in the US including 2014 1st place winners University of Minnesota and 2nd place University of Tennessee. She is very excited to spend time with the students of China to help grow cheer dance! 


 
 

If you like this article and find it useful, please forward it to your friends and family£¡

 


 

Varsity Cheerleading Academy

Address: Zhuguang Newtown International Center Block A, 4th Floor

Qingyi Street No.1, Zhujiang Newtown

Tianhe District Guangzhou City.

(Metro Line 5, Exit D, next to Zhujiang Park)

Tel:          020-37031336

Website: www.varsity.com.cn

www.varsity.com

Wechat ID: varsitychina