Miss Julie thought these articles about stretching would benefit all of our dancers!  Please read them carefully, there is a lot of great information here!

https://perfectformphysio.com.au/portfolio/safe-stretches-for-tight-hips/?utm_source=sharemail

Safe stretches for tight hips

Stretches and mobilisers for the hip flexors

In this video (on the website that the above link will take you to) Sally Harrison, Senior Physiotherapist, demonstrates safe ways to work on the muscles at the front of the hip – Psoas major and Minor, Iliacus which both lead into the Ilioposas tendon at the front of the hip. When we work on these muscles we don’t want them to be held on a long sustained stretch. We want to be moving in and out of the stretch nice and slowly to work on the elastic defamation and plasticity of the fascia and the myofascia that sits around the muscle. This isn’t the cure-all for every issue at the front of the hip. If you do have tight hip flexors it is really important to find out why they are getting so tight. Please come and have a chat with your Physiotherapist to get them to check over your technique and whether you are a dancer or whatever your chosen sport or activity is.

These exercises can be done in either kneeling or standing. If you have issues with your knees, please place a pillow underneath your shin to offload the knee cap in kneeling otherwise please perform these in standing. You should not experience any pain in your knee or back during any of the exercises.
All of the muscles in the body are positioned in a spiral pattern so it is important to mobilise them in all 3 planes of movement. Sally demonstrates many variations of the common hip flexor stretch which will provide much greater and longer lasting relief from tension at the front of the hips.
Hip mobilisers in kneeling

• Start in split high kneeling with hips facing forward.
• Position the pelvis in a slight tilt either driving from the tummy or by gently activating the glutes.
• Aim for a mild sense of stretch at the front of the hip.
• Lunge forward slightly without losing the position of the pelvic.
• Hold of 3 seconds before returning to the starting position.
• Make sure that when you lunge forward that you do not lose your back control in order to go into a deep lunge.
• Variation 1: Add an arm driver by imagining tapping the back of your hand to the wall behind you.
• Variation 2: To work psoas in a more 3D vector, take the front foot out to the side. Continue to use the same arm driver.
• Variation 3: Have front leg in neutral and rotate the trunk by taking the same elbow as the front leg towards the back. Make sure the ribs and pelvic rotate together.
• Variation 4: Using the same arm as the downward leg, rotate the trunk in the opposite direction by driving the elbow back behind you.
• Variation 5: Position the back leg in turnout. Use the same vertical arm driver and a gentle lunge forward.

Hip mobilisers in standing

• Variation 1: Split stance. Back knee bent slightly with a mild tuck under of the pelvis. Increase tension in the stretch by imagining that you are being drawn forward by the navel and bending the front knee keeping the pelvis in position. Make sure to do a small pulse forwards rather than a sustained stretch.
• Variation 2: Add a vertical arm driver.
• Variation 3: Take the arm up and over to the side.
• Variation 4: Reach up and back on the diagonal. This variation in an advanced variation and should not be done in the beginning but also brings into play the oblique abdominals.

Please remember when we are stretching that we want to be gentle to the body. We don’t want to be yanking the tissues as this will cause them to shorten. These hip mobilisers can be done before your class and again afterwards. If you’ve been doing any activity that involves lifting the legs for sustained periods of times they will love this release.
We hope that’s been useful for you!
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Here is another article about stretching from Dance Magazine - http://dancemagazine.com/inside-dm/what_are_they_doing_wrong/

Physical therapists talk about the common mistakes dancers make.

Static stretching before an activity decreases strength and power. Photo by Erin Baiano


Health practitioners who work with dancers are a dedicated tribe. They love the art and its performers, hoping for long careers, less injury, and years of pain-free dancing. Yet frustrations mount when they see easily preventable problems in their patients day after day. Sometimes it’s not rocket science but a small change, like how you walk, what you do outside of class, or a hand placement at the barre, that can make a huge difference. Larger mistakes take more consideration and may need reeducation about how our bodies really work.

Dance Magazine spoke with three leaders in dance science to get their gripes out in the open, which could possibly lead to healthier choices. So, listen up: The experts know their turf.

Know Your Stretching
“I wish dancers wouldn’t stretch the way they do,” sighs Jennifer Gamboa, president of Body Dynamics, Inc., in Arlington, Virginia. “They love to plop down before class and stretch out, using static instead of dynamic stretching.”
Here’s the problem: According to recent studies, static stretching before an activity decreases strength and power. A static (or passive) stretch is one where you assume a position and hold it with some other part of your body, or with the assistance of a partner or some other apparatus, such as hoisting a leg onto the barre and just hanging out there. “If you stretch a chain-link fence, it becomes deformed. The same thing happens to the muscle fibers,” says Gamboa, who works with Washington Ballet’s dancers. “The brain has to adapt to that change, so the muscles are not as strong and less able to produce speed. Plus, you have less agility. Static stretching before classes decreases strength, speed, agility, and useful range of motion.” The worst part is that she sees static stretching at the wrong time in a dancer’s daily schedule. “I find dancers doing static stretching between the barre and center work, and again before rehearsal, where often speed, power, and agility may be in demand.”
It’s not that static stretching is bad in and of itself, but it puts you at risk. “You are more likely to land incorrectly, and are more susceptible to injury,” she adds.

Gamboa prefers dynamic stretching, which involves movement that is of low intensity and uses a broad range of motion. Leg brushes, arm circles, trunk rotations, lunges across the floor, and other large movements constitute dynamic stretching. “Even walking or biking to class is an ideal way to get the blood moving and raise the body’s temperature. Simply put, the body needs movement to get ready to dance.”

You don’t have to stop having those long, luxurious stretch experiences. “Static stretching should be done at the end of class, the end of rehearsal, and the end of the day,” Gamboa says.

Walk Like Normal People
Marika Molnar, president and founder of Westside Dance Physical Therapy, hopes that some day dancers might quit walking like ducks. “Walking with the hips and the feet turned out on a daily basis creates too much stress, especially on the feet and ankles,” says Molnar, who works with New York City Ballet dancers. “You end up rolling medially over your arch and putting stress on your posterior tibial and flexor hallucis tendon. You also put too much stress on the medial knee, which can affect the stability of the patella. Dancers immediately try to hit 180-degree turnout before they prepare properly.”

Turning out in class is one thing, but turning out 24/7 quite another. “The gait pattern is a bad habit, a sort of identity,” she says. “The 180-degree first position happens because that’s what they were taught early on. We need to bring awareness to the importance of walking correctly. Dancers should get to class earlier and warm up their bodies before assuming the strict ballet position. Teaching good walking skills nurtures the spine, hips, and feet.”

Another major pet peeve for Molnar is when dancers hold on to the barre with the hand directly to the side instead of slightly forward. The position can wreak havoc in your alignment. If your hand is not in your peripheral vision, chances are it’s too far back. “When the hand is back on the barre it may cause the elbow to be behind the body, which then destabilizes the scapulothoracic area of the back [the shoulder blade wings off the rib cage],” says Molnar. “This is a very unstable position for the arms, and can be the cause of shoulder subluxations.”

Turnout, Bones, & the Gym
Bridget Quinn, MD, has a long list of things she wishes she could change in a dancer’s perception of health. Pushing turnout tops the list. “Forcing turnout is the source of lordosis, increased strain on the sacroiliac joint, and torque on the kneecap—which can lead to patella and anterior knee pain,” says Quinn, who works with Boston Ballet’s dancers. “It affects the whole kinetic chain.”
Quinn finds that the common habit of planting and screwing the feet in fifth position is often the culprit in forcing turnout. “Then dancers tend to pronate the foot, which can lead to flexor hallucis longus (FHL) trouble, the Achilles of dancer’s foot,” she adds.

There are safe ways for dancers to improve their turnout. First they need to remember that turnout starts at the hip. “You can build deep external rotation strength,” says Quinn, “and improve the flexibility of the iliofemoral ligaments.” She suggests the classic clamshell exercise to improve the hip’s external rotators. Lie on your side with your knees bent. Without moving your hip back and forth, open and close the top leg. You can increase the tension by using a Thera-Band as resistance.
Quinn would like to dispel the myth that all great ballet dancers had perfect turnout. Many did not have 180-degree turnout, and went on to highly successful careers. “They danced,” Quinn says, “and we never noticed their turnout.”

Another trouble spot is the belief that you can get all you need within technique class. “Dance is an art form, not a whole-body conditioning regime,” says Quinn. “There are still too many dancers who do not do any cross-training. Class alone leads to imbalances and weaknesses, and there are not enough aerobic challenges.”

Bottom line, the rate of injury for dancers is too high. The quality of teaching continues to improve and dancers are becoming more informed on injury prevention. Yet the technical legacy comes with some immovable issues. What dancers need to change is in their control. Listen to the experts. They speak from love and experience for the form and its practitioners.

Nancy Wozny has made most of these mistakes. Now, all her mistakes happen on the page and are made in Texas, where she lives and writes about art and health.

Judy Chan, ESB teacher, found this article that she thought you all might be interested in!


http://pointemagazine.com/inside-pt/mirror-friend-foe/ 

The Mirror: Friend or Foe?

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Hannah Foster

PNB’s Margaret Mullin in company class (photo by Angela Sterling, courtesy PNB) 

Suddenly, all I could see in the mirror was a fuzzy, dancer-shaped outline. I had accidentally rubbed out my contacts right before pliés and, frustrated, resigned myself to an unproductive two hours. As class progressed, however, something strange happened: I felt far more relaxed and placed. My balances at barre were steadier, I didn’t have a single wobble in center adagio, I nailed every pirouette and even my jumps felt freer. Could the reason for this stellar class be that I wasn’t depending on my reflection?

So much of dancers’ training is through sight, usually with the mirror as an aid. From toddlers to top-ranked company members, nearly every hour of studio time is spent in front of the mirror, honing technique in class and perfecting choreography in rehearsal. Too often, however, the mirror becomes a crutch, and the very reasons you need it for your training can become detrimental. Luckily, awareness and refocusing can help break the habit.

A Helpful Point of View
There are plenty of reasons why the mirror is ever present in ballet studios. “It’s a tool to get symmetry, to get perfect lines, to see the positions that you’re supposed to make every time,” says Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet school principal Alecia Good-Boresow. Each glance at your reflection is an opportunity to improve your technique. LeeWei Chao, a teacher at the Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program, sees the mirror as “a third person,” an intermediary between the dancer and instructor. When your teacher corrects you, he says, you can use this third view to help apply it.

In rehearsals, the mirror is a necessary aid in setting ballets—especially, says Good-Boresow, in corps de ballet work: “With the mirror you can make straight lines, make sure that the shapes you’re trying to create in choreography are visible to the dancers.”

From Habit to Hindrance
Constantly staring at the mirror, however, causes as many problems as it solves. Good-Boresow calls dancers’ tendency to rely on their reflections “mirroritis.” While scrutinizing your image can help you self-correct and improve some aspects of your technique, it can be detrimental to your port de bras and épaulement. When your head and eyes are always focused on your reflection—likely favoring the legs and feet, Chao says—you aren’t reaching the full extent of your positions. Your head placement won’t match the reach of your lines, and arms become an afterthought rather than coordinated with the movement.

This lack of coordination is more than cosmetic. “If you use your eyes to find balance,” Chao says, “you’re not using your mind–body connection,” and you’ll lose stability when static poses become movement. To demonstrate his point in class, Chao will ask his dancers to do an arabesque. Many automatically look in the mirror to find their placement. Next, he’ll have them try an arabesque turn. The line they created with the help of the mirror isn’t there, and the turn is often unsuccessful.
The problems multiply when transitioning from studio to stage, where the mirror is replaced with the theater’s “black hole,” says Good-Boresow. Well-rehearsed spacing and traffic patterns devolve into minor mishaps at best—chaos at worst. Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Margaret Mullin often witnesses this when PNB Professional Division students are thrown into corps spots, as they’re unaccustomed to using their peripheral vision. “When dancers have been relying on the mirror,” Mullin says, “people can panic onstage.”

In addition, when your movement is entirely based off your reflection, it’s not coming from within—or projecting out. “You’re robotic,” says Good-Boresow. “You’re not actually dancing.” Waiting until you’re onstage to make the adjustment is too little, too late.

Refocus
So, how do you prevent your relationship with your reflection from becoming a dependent one? The most obvious way to gain stability and confidence sans mirror is to practice sans mirror. Both Chao and Good-Boresow will remove the temptation by closing a curtain or by asking the dancers to face the back of the room.

If the teacher doesn’t provide this impetus, however, you have to break the habit on your own. When you must use the mirror to check your placement, Mullin says, don’t just look for correctness and move on. Instead, pause and internalize what “correct” means on a deeper physical level, maybe even briefly closing your eyes. Sense where your limbs are in space, which muscles are engaged and which have feelings of length or opposition. This trains your muscle memory, allowing you to more easily reproduce the position without the mirror.

Chao recommends taking some cues from modern-dance training, which focuses less on how high the leg is or how arched the feet are. In modern, he says, “you learn how to move.” Try bringing this mentality to daily technique class. Instead of obsessing over those last few degrees of turnout, focus on transitions, movement quality and artistry.

Finally, remember that the audience won’t scrutinize your technique nearly as closely as you do. The whole point of using the mirror to improve your technique is to eventually take it away. In the end, it matters less how you look. It matters how you dance.

Up Close and Too Personal
When you dance in front of the mirror for hours each day, it’s easy for flaws to become the whole picture. This daily self-criticism, Pacific Northwest Ballet soloist Margaret Mullin says, may lead to insecurities, which can manifest in body issues and anxiety. Here are Mullin’s tips for developing a healthy relationship with your reflection:

• Avoid instant gratification. Mullin has seen young dancers go to extremes—disordered eating, dangerous stretching techniques, et cetera—to try to achieve a certain ideal. Trust that the work will mold your body eventually; forcing it will negatively affect your health.
• Limit social media exposure. Instagram and Facebook profiles are curated to look picture-perfect. When you’re walking around with that ideal in your pocket day in and day out, insecurities are likely to follow you into the studio. Save some “likes” for yourself.
• Expect change. “I looked incredibly different at 13 than I did at 14, then 15, then 19,” Mullin says. She’s even seen professionals’ bodies change based on their current repertoire. Getting used to the idea of physical changes may help you accept them.
• Focus on fuel. “Don’t let the demons in the mirror affect how you’re nourishing yourself,” Mullin urges. Yes, dance is an aesthetic art form, but it’s also intensely physical. Talent doesn’t reside in cookie-cutter bodies, and being thin is far less important than having the energy and strength to do what’s required of you. —HF

Technique Tip
“Turning is sometimes daunting for me. What helps me is to think of the resistance and opposition between my arms and my torso: I imagine an internal twisted band that tightens during my preparation, twisting one direction with my arms and the other with my body. The release is the turn.”
—Carmen Felder, Carolina Ballet