Pointe Shoes

Try to imagine how many ballet barre moves you do in every class, that challenge your foot muscles. Every foot movement you do in classical dance training will build stronger muscles, if you learn to push down into the floor, creating resistance, or friction, in the motion.

Get That Long Lean Leg Look

At the same time, you pull up away from the leg movement with your core muscles - your very low abdominal muscles. At the end of a battement tendu, you are pulling outward away from the body with your pointed foot, and pulling up into the center of the body at the bottom of your tummy. This two-way pull results in the long lean look that ballet dancers have, or hope to get.

If you consider how many times you brush your foot along the floor in a ballet class - every tendu, every degage, every time you leave first or third or fifth position to do anything - you push into the floor, until the foot leaves it - you can get the picture of how your foot muscles are getting stronger this way. If you do not learn to use the floor this way, you can't take advantage of all those hundreds of movements.

Having a powerful brushing motion also helps with jumps like petit jete and grande jete forward, assemble, and other jumps that use a brush motion for a stronger take off.

Another important contributor to strength and healthy muscle tone, is knowing how to release tension in the muscles between the barre exercises. Stretching out the back of the calves should be done frequently. During exercises, every time you do a demi plie, make sure you relax right into it, as far as you can go, keeping the heels firmly on the floor. The soles of the feet should not be tense when you demi plie.

You can increase your foot strength by learning special daily exercises that target the sole of the foot muscles. These are not ballet class exercises, but will make a huge difference in your ballet foot control. I think you can benefit greatly by learning these pre pointe exercises with a professionally written dancers guide about preparing your feet for pointe shoes.

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