The ballet beginner and the adult who goes to ballet class wants to learn and understand the best stretching exercises. Everyone wonders “what’s best for me”? Those in love and already watching ballet closely can see that high leg extensions, long backbends, springy knee bends and cat jump landings, and high jumps in splits are the mere norm in classical dance. A difficult task for most!
After training hundreds of ballet students, I tell them, everyone is different, and almost everyone wishes they had just one more physical attribute, the one that everyone else has but them. You can be a ballet student with high arches, flexible hips, and yet you have lousy turnout.
You may be a dance student with a long neck, elastic shoulders, a slender upper back, and high arches, but you have a tight pelvic area. Believe me, it seems that even the most talented dancer has an area that needs a lot of stretching, just to catch up with the rest of her physique.
Ballet is not easy for practically anyone, only in this aspect. However, if you learn some functional anatomy and KNOW what your least flexible muscle group is, you can bring it up to par with your most flexible muscles.
Don’t despair if you don’t have easy, supple ankle joints, but you do have a deep, springy demi plie. The long, elastic calf muscles will provide you with a range of motion from the depth of your plie to the highest point of your foot, giving you a powerful spring up.
If you have a shallow demi plie, but more movement in the ankle joint, that movement will give you a strong push off your feet. Either way, you can work on the other, to get more movement, as well as a more modern look in the result, which as we all know, ballet is very demanding.
If you have a small range of motion in both your ankle and demi plié (calf muscles), you’ll need to patiently work on both areas. The good news is that, no matter how slowly, you will get better, with an understanding of your muscles and joints, and not just a hard push on them.
The essential arabesque: It must be flexible in the hips, the psoas, or the long postural muscle that runs from the thigh to the front of the spine and through the upper back to the shoulder girdle, for a truly fluid movement. Some dancers find themselves more tense in one place, which is very annoying… but it can still be corrected.
Understanding Myofascial Release
Releasing tension in the fascia, the surrounding tissue that surrounds and binds all the muscles from head to toe, will also release tension and lengthen the muscles. Returning to flexibility of the lower legs and ankle joint, a relaxation technique for myofascial release of the shin muscles can be performed BEFORE stretching the ankle joint. You will feel more flexibility if you do it in this order.