Dance is a wonderful display of physical skill and raw energy. In order to express this and get to this point, you have to be mentally and physically prepared. Your body has to be capable of such movement, without injuring itself. There are many ways to stretch and strengthen the parts of you body that you need to. For example, it is very important to maintain strong and balanced feet and ankles, so that you have a good foundation when dancing. The "seated Soleus Pump" exercise will help with strengthening and lengthening your soleus muscle.
To do this exercise, start by sitting down in a chair with your legs parallel and with your knees at a 90 degree angle. Rest your feet on a ledge, but let your heels hang off the end.
Next, begin to relevé, while lengthening under the toes and widening the metatarsals.
While coming down from your relevé, control your foot as it drops back to the starting position. repeat about 15-30 times, working up to 3 sets.
| Picture from book
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| Heel drop |
| Heel lift |
This exercise is very helpful for injury prevention among dancers. When landing any sort of leap, it is extremely important to have control of your body as it comes down from relevé. Your toes land first, and you have to learn to carefully articulate your feet in order to cushion your landing and support your body weight as it goes against gravity. The soleus muscles helps to maintain balance, so by doing the Seated Soleus Pump exercise regularly, dancers can ensure safe landing from jumps, and can jeté worry-free.
Hi Amiah!
ReplyDeleteIn your blog post, you talk about injury prevention and an exercise to help with that. I find this extremely beneficial as it's so important to stretch your muscles after exercise. As a runner, I will do anything to make sure my body stays strong and intact because an injury can ruin my cross country and track season. Having a good foundation or base for really any type of exercise is extremely important. This is because without a foundation, you will easily become tired and are more prone to injury. I find it very helpful that you explained that this exercise will help prevent injury when landing in any sort of leap. The leaps I make are definitely not as high or long as a dancers. In running, you tend to stride more than leap but I still feel like this exercise will help me when landing on and off from the ground. Thanks for the tip and have fun dancing!