tendonitis treatment

[Guest dancinsweetie]

Recently i've been feeling a little bit of pain every once in a while in my achilles tendon. For some reason i havn't been worrying about it until now. Today at rehearsal, our teacher had us line up to stretch our feet. My achilles had been hurting more than usual earlier in rehearsal, but i just kept stretching it thinking that it would go away. When my teacher stretched my foot suddenly I had a horrible pain and told him to stop because i could have tenditis. Once I told him this he started to press his thumb into the inside of my ankle write by the tendon. He said that that would help but it hurt soo much! Unfortunatly, I don't remmber whether it felt better or worse afterwards. All I remember is that it hurt a lot. Is this technique useful??

 

PS don't worry i'll be taking a short break from pointe work and some other things until my achilles gets better.

[Victoria Leigh]

Sweetie, the best treatment for tendenitis is rest, ice, and elevation. Some anti-inflammatories could also be helpful. It is an overuse injury, and if you keep stretching it and keep dancing, it will not get better. It must be rested and treated with ice.

[xxjan3rz]

I've had tendinitis four times so far, and I have it right now. I had it in the Achilles over this previous summer, and I found that massaging it gently really helps. Also, just keep in mind that it probably won't heal quickly if you continue to dance full blast on it. Try taking half of class, or as long as you can before it starts to hurt. Ace bandages also work miracles, if you wear it correctly.

I hope you feel better!

-xxjan3rz

P.S. I'm not sure if this counts as un-needed advice...feel free to delete Ms. Leigh if necessary!

[Mel Johnson]

The difficulty with achilles' tendinitis is that it seems to fly in the face of other tendinitises, and requires SOFT compression rather than the tight support others need. And by soft compression, I mean just the pressure of the ankle lying on a pillow or other soft, wide surface.

[Dolphingirl]

I should add that this is not our normal teacher, though he may be added to faculty next year, and there are other things that he does that go against normal school policy. This foot stretching thing, for example, was required of all dancers about to rehearse the dance on pointe, to "warm up" our feet for dancing on pointe. Each person's toes had to reach the floor, knees straight, before he'd stop. As soon as it was too much for me, I bent my knee, and when he told me to keep it straight, I couldn't, so I just didn't. It certainly didn't help me in any way, and, aside from the possibilities of hurting someone from stretching way too far way too fast, it also bent my shoes far more than normal, in a slightly wierd place, and they are now entirely dead.

 

The other problems with the class were that it lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes. Most of that time was spent standing, waiting for him to decide on an exercise, or find the right music, or give corrections that go entirely against things our teachers have worked hard on over the years (more in a sec on that) We have 3 hours every Friday, usually spent about half and half class/rehearsal, or sometimes just a short (45-60 min) warm up and then rehearsal. Tonight, that left us with only 20 minutes to rehearse two pieces, one of which has two different casts to rehearse. We ended up going over by 15 minutes, and didn't actually get all that much out of the rehearsing anyways. It still would have been better, though, to rehearse the dances, than have such a long class, because he was doing things like forcing legs to go all the way to people's noses on extensions, paying absolutely no attention to placement Indeed, I noticed that he has near perfect turnout, but only because he rolls in and his knees are not over his toes. This is exactly what happened when he forced legs up. One girl in particular, came from the school where he used to teach. He looked utterly dismayed that her legs were not nearly as high as they used to be. I will say that this girl's placement has improved a whole lot since she started dancing with our school, and it all went down the drain.

 

I understand that having a teacher like this every once in a while probably won't hurt us, especially if we're smart about it, but I don't think that he is a good teacher for our school. I guess I'll talk to the AD about it. In the meantime, I guess this is just a crazy rant to get it off my back, even though this probably isn't quite the right thread.

[Guest dancinsweetie]

Thanks so much for all of the fast replys. Last night I iced my achilles and did this ice massage treatment that I learned from a physical therapist last summer at ABT. Thismorning when I woke upit felt like new!!!! It was unbelievable. My plie has never been this deep and I can point my foot whithout the slightest bit of pain! I don't know if it is just from what the teacher did to it or from resting it but whatever it is, it worked! Hopefully it will stay like this but i'm still going to take it easy for awhile.

Thanks again!