Turnout Strength Building Excersizes

[London Dancer]

I have very, very flexible hips. They can rotate a TON very easily, as in, you could take my leg in front attitude and rotate it so that my foot was dramatically higher than my heel. My problem, however, is building strength in my hips. I find it very hard to hold a position (especially develope front) turned out, but have no problem with flexibility.

I've really never heard of many things that help this. Any advice?

[vrsfanatic]

It sounds as if you are a very fortunate girl! With good guidance from you teacher, just keep working on strengthening. It needs time and a lot of hard work. There is no magic button to push. Ballet is not like fast food. It is more of a gourmet meal. Excellent ingredience, handled with loving care, great imagination, hot, hard work and viola (if everything comes together as planned)!

[Victoria Leigh]

Strength should come as you get past about 13-14, if you are taking enough classes and working correctly. The best way to help build that is to be very sure that you are correctly aligned and placed and using your abs and back muscles along with the top of the thigh/buttocks muscle on the supporting leg. Then, lower the extended leg a bit and hold it longer, when you are well warmed up, of course. Sometimes those of us with a lot of flexibility have the type of structure that takes longer to develop strength, so patience is importanat here. I was made to work for a while with my extension more controlled (read, considerably lower), in order to work on the strength. If the flexibility is natural, as mine was, it will not go away, so don't worry about that.

[London Dancer]

Thanks so much! I was wondering if you thought it would be good if I focus more on getting my turnout strength in extenions (particularly in front) over height? Im 14, if that helps.

[Victoria Leigh]

I think that question is what I just answered in my post above, London Dancer

[Mel Johnson]

Now you can proceed to build both flexibility AND strength in rotation and turnout, London. And the BIG turnout exercise is called "class"! The whole thing is aimed at developing it, and many other features of ballet. Now that you're maturing, you can work your way toward intelligently coordinating all the components in the proper way.