Turnout Exercises for Ballet Dancers

Ballet dancers are always trying to find ways to improve their dance technique, and that's no different when it comes to a ballet turnout. We've put together a list of turnout exercies for ballet dancers that can help to improve turnout in ballet. You can do these either at home or before warm up, each exercise will help to improve your ballet turnout.

 Please note If you are not built in a certain way it's almost impossible to achieve full 180 degree turnout, however there are still ways to improve your turnout safely without causing damage or injury. 

Side lying clam

• Lying on your side in the centre of your mat. Stack your hips on top of eachother, and try to maintain a neutral spine.
• Loop your resistance band just above your knees, we recommend one of the Tendu Dancers Exercise Bands, you can choose from 3 different resistances light, medium and heavy depending on how challenging you want to make it.
• Keep your feet together and then lift your knees up, engaging your core to avoid any movement in the upper body.
• Lift up your top knee slowly and then slowly bring it back together to join your bottom knee and repeat.

Bridge

• Keeping a neutral spine, lie on your back with your feet hip distance apart and knees bent.
• Using the same resistance band, loop this around your legs just above the knees.
• Engage the core, scoop your stomach and lift the pelvis up, you want to aim for your body to be in a straight line almost like a ski slope.
• Once you are at the top and your glutes are engaged slightly push your knees outward and bring them back to neutral again.
• Do this a few times then slowly lower down, try to go through your spine as you lower imprinting each vertebrae into the mat.

Retiré with resistance

• Standing in parallel with one hand on the barre and the other hand on your hip, wrap your resistance band around your legs and slowly bring your foot up to your knee.
• Take the knee out to the side into a turned out retiré position and slowly bring it back to parallel.
• Make sure that you are not putting all of your body weight onto the barre and keep your hips as straight as possible.
• Do this a few times before switching sides.

Rond de jambe

• Standing in first position with one hand on the barre and the other on your hip,
• take your resistance band and wrap it around your legs, tendue the foot in front of you and then slowly take it out to the side.
• Close back into first and then repeat.
• Once you have done this a few times, turn around and repeat on the other side.

 Parallel leg lift with rotation

• Stay where you are at the barre, turn your feet back parallel, lift the leg to the front, don't lift the leg too high, a 45 degree angle is the height you need to be at, avoid bringing your leg up any higher.
• Lift the leg and with small movements turn the leg in and out, it will help if you think of the action coming from the end of your toe.
• Lower the leg and repeat a few times to the front.
• Once you have done the front tendue the foot to the side and repeat the same action.
• When you are turning the leg out in second try and tuck the hip under, if you find your hip is sticking out lower the leg slightly.
• Repeat and few times and then turn around and repeat on the other side.

So there you go, 5 exercies to improve turn out for ballet dancers. Hopefully this has been helpful, but remember we can only do what our body is capable of. Plrase note do not try and force your turnout as this can cause injury.

Now your technique is en pointe, get a ballet look for class. Shop dance leotards, dance tights and ballet shoes. 

For more technique tips have a read of our Top 5 Tips To Improve Your Pirouette blog! 

Enjoy!

The Move Dance Team

08/08/23