Foot Warm-ups for Ballerinas

Video Transcript

"Now what we're going to do is we're going to warm up our feet and our point shoes, like we warm up the rest of our body. You're going to start standing up completely straight, remembering your placement. Tuck your bottom under, pull up your stomach, make sure your shoulders are flat, and you're going to want to have your feet turned in right in front of you like so. What you're going to do, is you're going to take your first foot, going to push it up just to the ball of your foot, now push very, very hard. And then you're going to roll it up to the top, now you're going to continue to push it a little bit over the arch of your foot like this. Going to go back down, to the three quarter, and then flat. Now with the other foot, going to go the three quarter point, all the way up, back down to three quarter, and flat. You're going to want to continue to do this until you start to feel your feet getting a little bit warm, till you start to feel shoes feel a little bit easier to push, a little bit softer, not so hard and rigid. Then from there, what you're going to do is once you're up on top, going to roll through your other foot while you?re on point, and then roll back down. Then again the other way, making sure you're continuing to roll through your feet. You're going to go a little bit faster like so, a little bit faster, but make sure that you're continuing to roll through your feet. You don't want to be going like this and bouncing. You don't want to bounce; you want to roll through the toes and back down, roll through the toes and back down. You're going to want to continue to do this until you feel comfortable and your ankles start to feel warm. Alright, now this next warm up for point is going to begin to break in your shoes, and stretch the arch of your foot. You're probably going to want to hold on to something, a chair or a table works really well, or if you're going to be in class definitely use the ballet bar that's given to you in class. Now what you're going to want to do is stand parallel again. Remember your placement, bottom down, stomach up, standing straight. And you're going to take your right foot and put it over your left like this. Now what you're going to want to do is make sure that it's pushing against the shin of your foot, and when you push forward, your knees are inside of each other, and it's going to start to stretch the arch of your foot. You'll feel a little bit of pressure, but that's very, very good. You want the pressure to stretch the arch. And you're just going to do little tiny slow pulses. About four or five of them, and then you're going to want to switch feet and do the other foot. Wrapping it over again, pushing and slowly pulsing. This is going to continue to stretch the arch of your foot, which is what you want because you want to have pretty point in your shoes."