Correct use of muscles in turnout

[Guest Kelsey]

Hi, hope someone can help me with this.

 

What are the 'correct' muscles that you should engage when you turnout? I was taught that you'll have to feel your inner thigh muscles working and not your outer thigh or your butt...otherwise you'll get really bulky thighs. is that really true..?

 

well, anyways, I've tried working my inner thigh but i still feel my outer thigh muscles working more, especially when i tendu to the front. Am i doing something wrong?

[Mel Johnson]

You're on the right track, Kelsey. The outer thigh muscles can't be totally disengaged of course, but the turnout (where the feet end up on the floor) has to proceed from the rotation (how the femur rotates in the hipsocket) Hip flexors and everything about the pelvic girdle is involved in producing rotation, especially the lower abdominals and the gluteals. But THOSE muscles have to be supported, too, by the muscles next up the torso from them, so that even producing something so basic as rotation is a whole-body process! Maintaining good alignment will help, and feeling the spine as long as possible (without doing any of that nasty "tucking under" of the pelvis) will help.

[Guest Giselle83]

hello! Since my English isn't really good I didn't understand much of the reply given...I just wanted ask something rather simple :-)

so, while trying to maintain the turnout, do you have to keep those 'butt muscles' thight or not? some teacher once said me not to 'squeeze' them so much...But since I don't have her teaching anymore I don't know what to do. Others never even talked about it. I usually keep them thight but I really wonder is that what you gotta do all the time...! I really don't know how else I could try to keep my turnout.

[Mel Johnson]

Your former teacher was right. Tensing the "butt muscles" = gluteals - will not really help with turnout. It will, however, make those muscles bigger, if you have any tendency at all for that happening.

 

You can't forget them entirely, of course, but they have to be balanced by the muscles in front - the lower abdominal muscles. Those should be drawn up and in in order to help the backside muscles support the turnout.

[Victoria Leigh]

I'm not disagreeing with Mr. Johnson here, only adding that the second part of his post, about USING the gluteal muscles is more important than it may have sounded in his post. One must not GRIP the butt muscles, however, they MUST WORK. There are 12 pairs of rotators in the gluteals, and if you leave those muscles hanging loose, with no tension at all, then those rotators don't work. Rotation is not only from the hip socket, it also involves the gluteal muscles.

[Mel Johnson]

Right, the back and the front muscles balance one another, and neither set really TENSE! Too much of that and you won't be able to move your legs, or even breathe!