Most dance students understand that you can become more flexible for ballet by stretching your muscles. This is true, muscles can release tension and stretch safely. But many ballet/sports/fitness/cheerleading students and artists don’t understand myofascia. Myofascia is a tissue that surrounds and connects the entire body: all muscle groups and connective tissues from head to toe. This is not a clinical explanation. Just understand that myofascia can hold tension, it can, in its layers, be able to move or be sticky, like pieces of duct tape. This prevents you from becoming more flexible and seeing progress in all your efforts to achieve better movement and higher leg extensions in ballet.

It happens from the top down. You want to release tension and increase flexibility for an upper arabesque, for example. After a barre workout, you do the splits on both sides, lean forward on your front leg to stretch your hamstring, and then do a backbend to increase the stretch in your hip and buttocks. hind thigh, as well as in the psoas, or anterior abdominal postural muscle.

This stretches the leg muscles and the spinal/postural muscles.

But those muscles, and all of your muscles and soft tissues, are wrapped in tissue that might look like clear plastic wrap. I realize this is a rustic image, but picture it. Within the wrapped section of your muscle groups, you are stretching the muscles. But at each end of the section, there is a point of no stretch, no flex.

So, from the hips to the legs, there is a point where it is not stretched, it is not given, in the fascia. What can you do?

You can learn to release tension, from the cranial (scalp) muscles, to the neck/shoulder muscles, spine, hips, and legs. This fascial tissue can be healthy and flexible, or from trauma (tears, impacts) it can become scarred and sticky.

So while you’re warming up and stretching trying to become more flexible in every ballet and dance class, workout, or cheerleading practice, you’ve got this invisible “silent partner” for your muscle groups that can’t stretch anymore.

Of course there is a solution to this problem. Adding a myofascial release stretching regimen starting at the scalp/neck/shoulder and working down the body, using a pinky ball when necessary, or a foam roller, will release hidden tension that is keeping you from becoming more flexible.