At Home Physio: Functional Feet

Strength4Dance At Home Programme for Dancers

1. Improve Your Foot Function

Strength4Dance understands that you might be worried about not having your usual dance class to go to and perhaps you’re wondering how to make sure you don’t lose too much strength/fitness/flexibility/technique during this strange time in isolation and not having classes to go to.

But if you think about it, now could be the perfect time to get back to basics and start injury-proofing your body. When this is all over you could get back to dance stronger than you’ve ever been before!

The Strength4Dance team want to help and have put together a full 10 weeks worth of COMPLETELY FREE training guides for you to follow. They cover topics like Hip Mobility, Flexibility, Turnout, Foot Function and many more! Sign up details at the end of this article. This week we are happy to share with DanceLife our exercises for Functional Feet.

Functional Feet

FOOT CHECK IN

Get connected with your feet!
They are the contact your body has with the world around you.
The information we get from our feet can give us so much feedback about what the body is doing.
Watch the video to check in on your feet here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5upfkPMG6Ew

BALL RELEASE

Get mobile feet using a ball.
Release into the feet for better jumps, points and kicks!
Learn to release muscles, affect fascia and release trigger points in the foot.
Watch the Ball Release video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzdGYDhZJM&t=73s

PRONATION

Improve your plie and jumps!
Everything you need to know about pronation.
Why do we need it? How does it help us and how does this relate to dance?
Learn about tripod feet, the 3 arches of the foot and the pronation movement as a 3D loading motion.
Watch the video on Pronation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W027BbnaFu4&t=120s

SUPINATION

If you’ve been told you have ‘flat feet’ or ‘rolling in’ feet this is the video for you.
All things supination…
Looking at the rigid lever, type 1 and 2, 3D movement mechanics, the windlass mechanism and how all this relates to dance.
Watch the video on Supination here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di9U3733mbc&t=37s

A HEALTHY FOOT FLOW

Pronation to supination: how to achieve excellent foot motion.
Improve motion in plie, rises, jumps and even walking.
Learn about foot and knee relationships when bending the leg and why we shouldn’t use ‘knee over second toe’ as a guide in parallel or turn out.
Watch the video on Dynamic Foot Flow video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bclZKH0MoA&t=136s

You can sign up for the FREE programs here: https://mailchi.mp/1720e5349167/homeprogrammesignup

Every week you’ll get a new PDF/video guide sent straight to your inbox. We’re not trying to sell you ANYTHING AT ALL – absolutely everything 100% free. We just want to do our part to help the dancing community during this bizarre and scary time that we’re going through. SO sign up today and start Injury Proofing Your Body!