Good
morning!
I hope
you had a good night sleep as I had this time, which it doesn’t
happen really often! I guess my body was actually tired and it really
needed to enjoy a very good rest.
Talking
about rest and recovery, today I’m coming with some hacks and
tricks I’ve learned for my feet. Yes, foot care is very important
for dancers and although we might never have the most beautiful
sandal perfect feet, preventing blasters, infections and just dealing
with nails in general can be really useful to save one of the most
important parts of a ballet dancer’s body.
Let’s
get started!
1.-
Don’t get rid of your callus!
So I
know, this might sound weird and disgusting but believe me, it makes
a lot of sense.
Footwork
comes with callus as a surname and although they might look gross
they’re extremely useful to avoid blisters and cuts. It’s more
than okay to have a good callus layer as it really protects your skin
and well, your own body creates it for this purpose on normal persons
and as long as it’s not an abnormal amount of callus tissue, you
shouldn’t really file the zone. If it’s starts being
uncomfortable, visiting a podiatrist might be the best option because
they cut it with a scalpel and make a DIY version with manicure
scissors at home it’s just not the best and it can go very wrong.
2.-
If you’re having a lot of pointe shoe pain, use oral anesthetic.
So I
learned this tip in a summer intensive where we were doing around
five to six hours of daily pointe work and just imagine the
situation: extremely hot and humid weather was making our feet very
swollen and we were wearing pointe shoes which felt very tight yet
sweaty. Our joints were getting very painful, especially the bunions
for me. A girl came in one day with oral anesthetic and put it on her
feet and she let us all try it and oh man, that is a good one! Of
course, I’m not going to lie, it won’t take the pain away
magically for the next seven hours, but it does release quite a lot
the pressure and it let’s you work for about two more hours without
begging for your feet life.
3.-
To avoid ingrown toe nails cut the corners of your nails often.
It
might be scary to fix an ingrown toe nail by yourself and actually it
can go very wrong when trying to take it off. That’s why in this
case is better to prevent. I always cut the corner of my toe nails
into a bit of a round shape. It’s not pedicure perfect but it gets
the problem solved in advance!
4.-
Use toe spacers to avoid and even correct bunions.
Toe
spacers have been a life changer for me. I used to have very
accentuated bunions, especially the ones from my big toe, and when I
went to visit my podiatrist she told me to use toe spacers. I thought
that a piece of silicone wouldn’t make any difference and that it
would just make my pointe shoe box feel very tight but I could work
with it! And the best of all, it improved my bunion situation
correcting the posture of my feet and although I’ll always have
bunions, not having them as accentuated makes my life much easier and
painless.
By the
way, you can get these in the pharmacy or by internet as well.
There’s a lot of brands that make them and for example Bloch has
several models with different sizes. There’s even one model that
has toe spacer and a cover for the bunion zone.
5.-
If you ever have a blister try this.
Blisters
can be very, very, VERY annoying and painful. You can put Compeed and
I’m telling you, it won’t work well and it’ll take ages to
cure. So I decided to ask again my podologist and she told me this
trick: with a disinfected needle (clean it with alcohol) pop the
blister and let the liquid that’s formed inside come off. Clean it
very well with some cotton and once it’s out put some iodine and
let it uncovered. If you’re going to make pointe work you can put a
tiny bit of cotton covered in iodine and wrap it around the toe with
some tape. It will hurt for a couple of days but it will hurt because
there’s opened skin and not liquid trapped under it. This is for an
emergency blister that needs to be removed as usually it’s best to
let it develop naturally and let it form the usual callus.
6.-
If you have black toe nails, this might be happening
I got
black toe nails around my third year on pointe and they were painful
and I thought it was an infection, which got me pretty scared. What I
didn’t know is that it wasn’t an infection: it was a bruise!
Impressively
enough, sometimes black nails mean that there’s some blood that has
coagulated underneath due to a hit on that nail or a synonym, pointe
work. So, what to do with it?
If
you’re not scared and you can’t go to a podiatrist fast enough, I
always try to cut my nail until I’m closer to the bruise and I use
Thrombocid (a cream that’s meant to stimulate blood
circulation). I massage the nail for the next week and usually it
will alleviate the pain that might cause. Sometimes just cutting the
layers that may form in a nail can already alleviate the pain of this
bruise because usually what happens is that if you have a bruise in a
nail and this nail is growing in layers instead of length wise, every
time you put a tight shoe on or your on your toes (dancing basically)
you’re applying quite a lot of pressure in the bruise and that’s
what causes the pain.
So this
are six hacks that I hope they can be useful for you! If you’re
ever interested in more ballet hacks, just leave a comment down below
and I’ll be more than glad to answer your interests!
I hope
you all have a lovely day and I’ll see you tomorrow!
Love,
Muriel
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