Ballet muscle relief with a tennis ball
Tight shoulders and hips? I'll tell you what's causing it and how to release it.
Let’s talk about the maintenance of your body. Ballet is physically challenging and if we don’t take care of our body, we are more prone to injuries, and it can restrict our joints making it hard to strike correct ballet shapes.
Some bad habits are:
Shoulders up…instead of down and relaxed
Back arched…instead of keeping neutral form
Arms go too far back…instead of keeping them in front of the body
Hips are tight and feel stuck…instead of free range of motion
Back pain…instead of no back pain!
Overworking, as we know it, is bad.
When you don’t give your body enough rest, you will be overworking your tired muscles. That is connected to injuries like tendonitis and shin splints.
Overworking can also happen by incorrectly using your body. This is particularly bad, because incorrect movement of your body often happens without your knowledge (thanks to bad habits). Which means it’s easy to not be aware of those tight muscles.
Not knowing how to use your core to stabilize and support your movement is the cause of incorrect movements, and will overwork smaller muscles that are not up for working that hard.
And you don’t even know which muscles are tight…
I’ve got your back!
I’m going to focus on two areas of the body: Shoulders and hips.
Specifically, shoulder rotator cuff muscles and lateral rotators of the hip.
Shoulder rotator cuff muscles
We are looking at the three muscles that are circled below. These are the rotator cuff muscles.
Teres major is not a rotator muscle, but it’s also a muscle that we want to target while we are on this topic, so please keep it in mind.
This muscle group is so easy to misuse in ballet.
These muscles give great stability for any arm movements. They can also be the primary muscles used to rotate arms.
Although they are great muscles if used correctly, when misused they become overworked and tight. This will make your arm and shoulder move as a whole and not individually—as if the ball and socket joint in the shoulder are fused.
Which brings me to my point…
Main goal: When you move your arm in any way across your body, your shoulder should not be moving with it.
In ballet, we move our arms all the time. Port de bras (movement of the arms) is happening in the shoulder ball and socket joint first, and should not be done by moving the shoulder blades.
This is how you should move your arm:
The notorious teres major
If you have typical shoulder pain (think of upper back pain or pain in your shoulder blades), this is the culprit. This is the one muscle that gets tight on most people. This muscle connects the lower tip of your shoulder blades and upper arm.
When you move your arm up, this muscle should get longer, allowing your shoulder blade to stay in place as much as possible.
But too often, this muscle is tight causing your shoulder to move while lifting your arm. Even worse is when you bring your arm in front of you, your shoulder moves with it.
It can cause pain in your upper body, and your neck will get tight. And when your neck gets tight, that can lead to tightness in many other places, like your hamstrings.
Lateral rotators of the hip
Sometimes known as the “deep six,” these muscles are located deep under the gluteus maximus. They create lateral rotation of the hip.
Ballet dancers know it as…turnout!
Fact: When you turnout, these muscles can activate.
Another fact: You don’t need these muscles to turn out. And it will be healthier if you don’t.
Gasp! You don’t need to actively think about your hips when you turn out? That’s right, when you use these muscles to turn out, that is going to cause you some major hip issues (which can also cause twisting knees and back pain).
Another common problem?
Take a look at the piriformis muscle, which attaches to your tail bone and the top of thigh bone. It is right next to the sciatic nerve. You know where I’m going with this…
When the piriformis gets too tight, it puts pressure on the nerve, causing sciatica pain.
More importantly, and similar to the shoulder rotator, when this group of muscles gets tight, it fuses the ball and socket joint in the hip. And we need it to move freely.
Instead of you legs moving in the ball and socket joint, we tend to move our lower back to move our legs. And if that happens, you’re going to be in major pain.
Let’s bring in the tennis ball!
Time to get rid of the tightness. We don’t want fused joints any longer. We want our joints to move freely in their ball and sockets, like they are designed to.
These massage exercises are the first step to making that possible.
Do this on one side of your body before moving onto the other side: e.g. If you massage right hip, then massage right shoulder.
Lateral rotator muscles of the hips
Lay on a tennis ball and roll from next to the top of your tail bone to the outside, all the way to the top of your thigh bone.
Work your way down to the lower deep six, from inside to outside.
The reason you are massaging them through your gluteus is because the tight muscles are deep under your gluteus.
Shoulder blades
Lay on a tennis ball and roll the muscles on top of your shoulder blades.
Same as glutes, inside to outside, and top to bottom.
Under armpit (teres major)
Place your tennis ball just on the backside of your shoulder blade.
Start from the tip of your shoulder blade and work towards your upper arm.
Tips for your next ballet class
Before getting into preparation, try keeping your core engaged and the gluteus disengaged. And keep your gluteus disengaged. This will help your rotator muscles to stay relaxed.
Try not to use your gluteus to turn out your legs. What this means is, don’t tense your butt muscles in turn out. Turnout is tricky and we will have to come back to it, but for now keep your gluteus relaxed and think about engaging your hamstrings instead.
Before moving your arms, engage your core, then rotate the bottom of your shoulder blades slightly in using rhomboids (see the red part of the image below), then initiate your arm movements.
When you move your arms into 1st position, fold the front part of your armpit and keep your shoulder blades stabilized by using rhomboids.
Be patient!
Oh, by the way, if you haven’t tried massaging these areas yet I have to warn you…
It will probably hurt to massage them!!
But keep at it. Because the pain that you get from this massage is better than getting injuries, that could have been prevented if you just endured the pain from a tennis ball.
And yes, I introduced “the correct movement pattern is to move in the ball and socket.” You might be eager to get the correct movement of your limbs right away.
We are ballet dancers after all. I know, we are perfectionists.
But the truth is, our body and nervous system are much smarter than we think.
All the movement patterns that you have right now are probably automatic motions, and it takes un-learning and re-learning to correct them.
So, I am going to continue the deep dive into how we can re-train our bodies, and will keep giving exercises to help you get there.
In the meantime, know that this is a process. Trust me when I say, this will make you a better dancer.
If you got any value from this information, please share this article with your friends. You can also hit the ❤️ button.
Let me know if you have any questions, discoveries, or struggles. You can reply to this email, or leave a comment.