Problems on demi-pointe

One of the girls, Roxi, who gets my emails, asked if she could send a picture of her feet to me so that I could comment on them for her. I thought you all might be able to learn from what I said, so here is my reply....


Hi Roxi

It seems to me that you are not getting fully up onto demi pointe. There may be several reasons for this. Either you are too tight in the muscles under your big toe; the big toe joint may be too stiff, you may have a restriction in the pointe range of your ankle, or you may have the range, but not the strength to rise up onto demi pointe on a single leg.

Test your range by pushing that foot up to demi pointe while the other one is on the floor and see if you can take it to full range. If not, try massaging the undersurface of your foot, behind the big toe joint (first metatarsal) with a golf ball or your fingers for a few minutes, and then try again.

If you do have the range, but not the strength, try rising to a ful demi pointe on both feet, transfer the weight onto one, and then lower slowly

(see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbDrJHItcEU )

This will help build the strength at the height of your rise and single leg ones will get easier and easier.

I would really recommend getting a copy of The Perfect Pointe Book,

www.theperfectpointebook.com/index2.html

as this goes over loads of things like this in much more detail, and I think it will help you out a lot! This is why I wrote it!

I hope this helps!

Take care,

Lisa