Ballerina Warm-ups & Stretching

Video Transcript

"First today I'm going to show you some warm up stretches. Warm ups are very important because they warm up your muscles and keep you from pulling muscles. You can tear ligaments, you can pull all sorts of inner leg muscles, you can pull your calf muscles, you can pull tendons if you do not thoroughly warm up first. So the first warm up/stretch that I am going to show you today is the Butterfly. Alright, the Butterfly. What you?re going to do is your going to pull your legs up directly in front of you like so and then you're going to turn them out. You're going to be pushing your knees down towards the floor, have the heals of your feet put together, put your hands on your ankles. You're going to want to pull your feet closer in towards you. You're going to start to feel a stretch in your inner thigh and this is going to start warming up your turnout muscles. Turnout is very, very important for ballet. Also, while you're doing the stretch you're going to make sure you're sitting up completely straight, that your lower back isn't rolled over like this, but that it is straight so that way you get the proper stretch. You're going to want to hold the stretch for at least thirty seconds to a minute. If you don't hold each stretch that long, it does not take any effect and it doesn't actually start to completely stretch your muscles. So you definitely always want to make sure you're timing your stretches. There is also another technique to this stretch. If you lean forward keeping you back straight and keep your arms and your hands around your ankles you can put your elbows out over your knees and push it down towards the floor. Make sure to not do a bouncing when you're stretching. The bouncing will actually pull your muscles and injure you. So what your going to want to do is put a small amount of pressure until you start to feel a little bit of a soreness and a pain and then stop and you're going to want to hold it there where it hurts so that way it's actually stretching your mucles. You're just going to keep putting a little bit of pressure so that way your knees don't pop back up. Eventually, what's going to end up happening is you're going to be able to push it all the way down to the floor and you're going to want to continue to stretch once you get it down to the floor to keep your muscles stretched out properly. The next stretch we're going to do today is going to be splits. I am sure everyone's familiar with this stretch. First thing you're going to do is you're going to want to rock up onto your knees, be kneeling on the floor, hips flat over your knees, then you're going to put your left leg in front of you like so. Then you're going to slide slowly, very, very slowly, forward. You don't want to rush this because you want to start to go until you feel a burning and a slight pain. You don't want to keep going past that because you will hurt yourself. Now, putting your hands in front of you for support, slowly slide your front leg out and start to straighten your back leg like so and keep going until you're where it hurts. Now, not everyone is going to be able to get all the way flat like I am so it is okay to stop here if that's where you feel the pain or if here is where you feel it, stop and hold yourself there. Make sure to hold for the thirty seconds, again, because you don't want your stretching and your efforts to not be worth while. The next stretch we're going to do is going to be to warm up our hip sockets. It will help with your turnout muscles as well as it will help with your leg kicks later on in the classes. You're going to want to sit straight up with your legs out in front of you first, then you're going to want to pull back on your elbows and support yourself like so. Then you're going to take your leg and you're going to pull it in slowly to the front, rotate it out to the side, and then put it down in front of you. You don't have to continue to do it this slowly. You're going to want to do about 10 to 20 of these each side. So, you can continue to do them a little bit quicker. The quicker you go the quicker the warm up will go, and keep doing it until you feel warm and then you're going to want to reverse it. You're going to want to take your leg out, bring it back up, and bring it forward like so. And then you're going to , of course, want to follow that with doing the other side with them going outward and then again, of course, a full set of 10 to 20 with them going inward."