- Hey, dancers.
Today, I am walking you through some TheraBand exercises,
to A, strengthen your foot arch.
B, strengthen your ankle
and C, just have stronger feet overall
because we all need our feet to dance. (laughs)
Let's do it.
By the way everyone, don't stress
if you don't have a TheraBand.
You can still do some of these without a band.
But if you do wanna snag your own,
it's a really good tool to have just as a training dancer.
So a simple one that I use,
I have a ton of these at home is in the video description.
So just go click that little guy down there
and get your own.
So the very first exercise, let's do this.
All you're doing is putting your entire foot into the band.
So sometimes I see dancers do this.
This is not doing anything.
Your little toes are hanging out.
So what I want you to do is get your entire toe
and that fall of your foot in the TheraBand.
You're gonna sit up nice and tall.
Now, TheraBands are not just for your feet and your ankles.
It's also for your upper body.
You wanna make sure your wrists are straight,
not dipping down or doing anything funky like this
and then let's pull the band towards us.
So now you have your elbows into your side body
and you're activating your arms and your back.
Hello posture.
From here, we're gonna flex and pointe
and flex and pointe.
It seems simple and it is,
but if you're doing it correctly,
you're working in your back, your arms, your arch,
your core, your toes, all the things.
Point and flex.
You'll wanna do about 15 of these on each foot.
All right, so our next one are Barbie foot circles.
You're like, "What does that even mean?"
Let me show you.
You're gonna do the same thing,
put the whole ball of your foot inside of the TheraBand.
Keep your wrist straight.
Pull your elbows into your side body
and sit up nice and tall
to keep your upper body activated and strong.
What you're gonna do here, dancers is flex the foot.
Do you see how it's in a demi pointe?
Don't do a full pointe.
Come to a demi pointe, AKA a Barbie foot.
From here, you're gonna do circles
all the way around, maintaining the Barbie foot.
So it's demi pointe, demi pointe, flex, circle.
Demi pointe, demi pointe, flex, circle.
My ankle is already burning in a good way.
It's activating
and we're working on strengthening that ankle
no matter where your foot is in space.
So doing circles, you can go the opposite way too.
Just help strengthen the ankle on the sides as well
and not just kind of forward and back.
You'll wanna do about 10 each direction.
The most important tip here is to keep that demi pointe.
You're also, you won't feel it as much.
All right, so for number three,
it's really important that you set these up correctly
or else you won't feel it.
These are your everts.
You are going to again,
put your whole ball of your foot inside the TheraBand.
Now keeping your ankle and foot straight,
pull the band towards you.
Put the band in the opposite hand
as the foot that's in the band.
So stretch it over.
Now, you're gonna pull away from the foot.
You're gonna point the toe
and you're going to evert to the side.
It's a really small movement.
I'm gonna exaggerate it so you can see.
You're everting to the side.
It's an eversion.
So you're working this entire side part of your shin
and this is great to have that winged foot line
especially in your arabesque.
So you put your foot in, pull the band towards you,
take the opposite hand as the foot that's in the band.
Pull away from the foot.
Point the toe and then evert to the side.
You're going towards your pinky toe, out and out.
Do about 15 of these as well.
Don't forget to maintain your upper body posture.
So for the very last one,
we're kind of combining some of the ideas
from the other exercises.
So again, put your little foot inside the TheraBand.
I'll show you from the side,
so you can kind of see a little bit better.
Ankles straight, feet are straight,
wrists are straight, elbows pulled back into the side body.
Upper body is lifted.
Now what you're gonna do is flex,
demi pointe, point,
demi pointe, flex.
So instead of going straight from a flex to a full pointe,
you're stopping in the middle of that Barbie foot.
So you're gonna go one and Barbie,
full pointe and Barbie.
Flex it up and Barbie
and full pointe and Barbie.
It's hard to say flex and Barbie,
full pointe, Barbie.
What this is doing,
even my calf got worked out in that exercise.
This is really helpful
for strengthening the arch because you're pausing
in between that foot articulation mechanic.
Good job.
All right, dancers.
Fantastic job.
So those are just a little simple set
of exercises you can do to warm up
or maybe on a recovery day.
They're also great for when your feet
or your ankles are sore.
It's just a gentle way to kind of strengthen and stretch.
I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you so soon.
(upbeat music)