As a ballet dancer, one of my greatest sources of stress is turnout. I have absolutely no natural turnout (unlike my non-ballet-dancing boyfriend, who has perfect turnout. Don’t you hate when that happens?!), so I have always looked for ways to help improve my turnout. For a while I was doing pretty well, but then I had to stop dancing for a couple of years and completely lost all my turnout. So how does one improve their turnout? Here are a few tips:
- Ronde de jambes. Keep your leg turned out as far as you can, keeping the top of the foot facing the ceiling until your leg is at 4 or 5 o’clock (where tendu en avant is 12 o’clock), then only letting your leg turn in until the top of the foot is facing away from the barre. This forces you to be aware of the muscles used to turn out your leg, and work the muscles so you have better control of them.
- The “frog” stretch. This is the popular stretch where you lay on your stomach with your knees bent, legs turned out, and feet pressed together. This stretches your inner thighs, which will help enable better turnout, especially in pliè.
- Stretching your hips. There are two ways you can stretch your hips out. The first is by laying on your back with one leg stretched out away from your head, bend the other leg to your stomach and then twist slightly so that leg is going over your body. You should feel a stretch in your hip and butt areas. The other way to stretch your hips is to sit up with your knees bent and your feet on the floor (as if you were about to do sit-ups), and then taking one foot, flexing it, and putting it above your other knee, then pushing the knee of the turned out leg away from you gently. These should be done after exercises that work your hip muscles, so you don’t bulk up around your hips and make it harder to achieve the turnout you want.
- Always turn out from your hips!!!! This is extremely important. If you turn out from your knees or your ankles while trying to get a perfect first or fifth position, you risk serious injury and lifelong problems, which can ruin a dance career.
If you follow these tips on a regular basis, you will be on your way to the turnout that you desire!
How long will it take you to recieve the turn out that you want. When i plie my knees are slightly infront of my ears. how long will it take me to get them behind my ears beacuse i have an exam coming up in 2 weeks!!!!!
thanks! i just got put en pointe this month and my teacher said i need to work on my turnout. this is very helpful!
Thanks for the tips this will really help my turn out hope this really helps cause I have been working on exercises that will help and so will this THANKS!
thank you so much
i am going to melbourne to audition for dance soon this help me a lot
Thankyou very much! I am just starting so this helps alot!
This was so what I needed. I am naturally knock kneed. My knees come in a tad. I didn’t start dancing until I was 30. I took some ballet at that point and then stopped for about 5 years. My legs are weak and my feet are flat, but I SO want to dance. Any tips for more flexible feet?