Pedicure for ballerinas

Giving their child to the ballet, moms and dads dream of beautiful slender legs of their daughter or son. But, not all parents know that the hard-working legs of ballet dancers are not just a deplorable, but simply a terrible sight. As they say, I star in a horror film without makeup.

Initial steps

Children from 4 to 8 years old are brought to ballet studios. Moreover, children are supposed to be engaged in the preparatory group from the age of three. Even then, the kids begin to join the high art, learn to control the body and, accordingly, disfigure the legs.

From early infancy, the feet of little laborers suffer from daily exhausting rehearsals. Their work shift lasts at least 7 hours, and this is without a minute break. At the same time, there may be more hours, everything directly depends on what position the future artist should occupy. In ballet, there are:

• corps de ballet dancer;
• stage masters;
• soloist.

At the same time, the female corps de ballet is an integral part in every ballet production. Therefore, the employment in ballet among women is greater than the employment of men. In some cases, ballet dancers can train for more than 9 hours.

According to the famous ballerina Margarita Simonova, when visiting a nail salon, most ballerinas ask not to remove hardened calluses. It is these keratinized places that help protect the legs from being injured by their pointe shoes. But, injuries still can not be avoided. One of the ballerinas, who is also a photographer, published photos that horrified everyone.

Many of those who saw such a nightmare for the first time ask themselves the question of how much it is necessary not to love yourself, not to value your health in order to bring yourself, your legs to such a state. But, as they say, the legs feed the wolf, and there is no exception here.

Foot care for ballet workers

Modern medicine is advancing by leaps and bounds, and doctors have learned not only to pump lips and breasts with silicone. Modern doctors quite successfully cope with protecting the legs from calluses and abrasions. So ballerinas, like all other self-respecting women, have the opportunity to take care of themselves.

Features of foot care for ballerinas

Taking care of the ballerina's feet can be considered her professional duty. If you break the rules of foot care, you can get severe punishment from pointe shoes. The care technique is debugged to the smallest detail and, in addition to pedicure, includes some more nuances:

• Places that are most prone to rubbing must be sealed with a thin plaster before training;
• The heels are lubricated with a specialized wax composition;
• An ordinary plaster is used to seal already downed calluses (this is due to the fact that gauze treated with brilliant green tends to dry and heal worn skin).

A wide medical plaster (sometimes a beige silk plaster can be used) is glued over the usual plaster, the latter is used to fix the first plaster. Fixing the patch is very important, because during training, the feet of ballet dancers become wet, and if the patch is poorly fixed and it slides off, it will hurt even more than it will help.

The best patches for ballerinas

Professional ballerinas who have been trying to take care of their legs for years, almost each of them has their own professional secrets. Some of them use a certain type of patch:

• Skin colored Omnifix woven silicone Compeed;
• Silicone tabs Bloch from Hartmann Cosmos;
• Teips that prevent feet from friction and fingers from the appearance of calluses.

These precautions to some extent ease the load on the dancers' legs during rehearsal. But, of course, none of the above means can fully protect the ballerina's legs from incredible suffering.

Pedicure for ballerinas

Do not hide the fact that most ballerinas prefer to do their own pedicure. This is not particularly convenient and rather troublesome. But, who better than the dancer herself knows exactly how to process the nails - where to walk with a nail file and where to cut. Note that even a master of the highest qualification can make a mistake and cut off too much of the nail, which is completely unacceptable for a ballerina due to the unbearable pain that she will experience after such an unsuccessful procedure.

In no case should the ballerina's nail protrude beyond the edge of the finger . The skin of the fingers, shod in pointe shoes, should not move away from the nail, that is, its length should be medium.

Another feature of the ballerina's pedicure is that calluses and corns are never removed from the legs. Otherwise, the newly tender skin of the feet, shod in soft ballet shoes, will be rubbed again, and with even greater force. The coarsened layer will protect the legs much better.

For the same reason, ballerinas do not cut dry calluses to the last. They are removed only in emergency cases, when there is a risk of so-called spurs or interdigital calluses. With such defects in the feet, dancing is simply unrealistic.

Ballet dancers almost never use shellac. One of them, an extra layer of varnish coating brings a feeling of discomfort in pointe shoes, others periodically apply disinfectant and healing compounds to the legs, which color the varnish or even completely remove it with chemical elements contained in the products.

But, no matter how a woman dancing in ballet watches her legs, the sad consequences are irreversible. So, before sending your child to a ballet school, you should think carefully, is the fame that is so fleeting worth all the torment that ballerinas at the peak of fame are forced to doom themselves to?