knuckling

[Marjolein]

I think I knuckle with my left foot. My right foot is up perfectly straight though. My shoes seem broken in just about the same. I think my right foot is a little stronger than my left one. I really try to keep my toes straight, but it's like I can't. How can I stop knuckling?

[Victoria Leigh]

Marjolein, this is a technique question, not a shoe question, so I am moving it to YD 16-22. If that is not the right forum for you, please let me know.

 

Knuckling is a technical problem because it means you are sinking down into your shoe instead of lifting out of it. This will cause many problems, both with your feet and with your shoes, which will break. Talk to your teacher about this and have her/him work with you to show you how to get where you need to be. It could be lack of use of abs, quads, glutes, or just poor weight placement. Find out what is causing it, and then you will be able to fix it.

[Marjolein]

Oops, sorry about the wrong board, thanks for moving it, YD 16-22 is the right one. Howcome I only knuckle with one foot though, I think I lift my feet out of my shoes equally. I've tried to lift more out of that shoe, but it's like my toes are stuck curled under. Could this have anything to do with the fact that the profile of my shoes seems a little too high. There's a slight gap between my foot and the vamp. It would sound logical, because my non-knuckling foot has a slightly higher profile. I wear Grishko Vaganova's, which have a very high profile, though my feet aren't very high at all. It's the only shoe I can find that has a box tapered enough. I can't ask my teacher, because she speaks French. She speak Dutch, but I take ballet at a french school. I understand it well enough to take class, but I would never be able to explain about knuckling in French, as I have a very limited vocabulary

[Victoria Leigh]

Well Marjolein, maybe you were right about putting this in pointe shoe topics. However, I think we will leave it here, since there is some doubt.

 

It does sound like it could be the shoe. Is it possible that you are breaking the shank in that shoe? If not, then you need a different shoe. Perhaps a slightly lower profile, or maybe even a bit stronger shank?

[Marjolein]

I don't know if I'm breaking the shoe. I always thought my right foot was stronger, but now that I think about it, my feet have changed so much recently that I really don't know. Is there anything I could do to the shoe that would solve the problem for now? I don't have money for new shoes right now.

 

Now that I'm talking about my feet anyway, I have another problem, with my toes. My big toes go both inward, and they're curved inward. I've had this my entire life, it doesn't have anything to do with pointe. However, even if I wear spacers, my toes still go inward. This is really painful, because I dance on the outer corner of my toe, right at the nail. I never had any problems with this with my first shoes, Repetto 207, which were a lot less tapered than the shoes I have now. After I got more advanced, I found they didn't give me the right support anymore, and I sunk in them (I think my feet got narrower). So in a shoes that is tapered enough to support my very tapered toes, my big toes go inward too much. I have no idea on how to solve this. Should I go for a less tapered shoes?

I'm sorry if this are so many questions. I know I'm quite a pain, when it's about pointe shoes, my feet have been giving me so much trouble recently, and I know I always get great answers here.

 

Thank you so much for your time Miss Leigh

[Victoria Leigh]

Marjolein, if your shoe is broken, then you cannot dance on it. You will have to get new shoes. If you don't know, then show it to your teacher and ask her if it broken or not.

 

As to the shoe problem, that really is a question for Danielle DeVor on the Pointe Shoe Topics forum. Sorry! She has so much more knowledge about all the different shoes there are today than I do.