Abductors and Adductors
“My thighs are huge!” “I hate my legs!” “I have saddlebags!” “What can I do to make my legs look better?”
Most dancers, in all disciplines, have a love-hate, how-can-I-fix-it, relationship with their legs. They don’t turn out enough. They don’t ‘extend’ upward enough. They don’t stretch far enough. My problem was being laughed at in class for about two years with one particular teacher who loved to point out how I had no muscles in my legs at all. No visible muscles, that is. A slight pear on toothpicks, it didn’t help that I was usually being compared to a very strong dancer in the class who was strength personified.
My students are the same. They want to know how to reshape their thighs and legs and get them higher. One, with hereditary saddlebags, had been in a gym working on the inner-outer thigh machine. One was lying on her side like a mermaid, dutifully and daily lifting her legs up and down. Another had ordered a V-shaped thigh device. And another was thinking of liposuction. All were headed down inefficient and possibly injurious tracks. Conditioning exercises can help, but only if they are done correctly. Liposuction will help in that area, with accompanying side effects from swelling to disfigurement to death. But the fat will come back someplace else, often in a more inconvenient area.
The first problem with what most people try is that there is no outer thigh muscle to work.
Look at any anatomy book. You will find a long band of tissue called the iliotibial band where many think outer thigh muscles exist. This is a classic case of what Jan calls “gym science.” Exercises are handed down from teacher to student, who continue to pass the exercises on without taking time to look at an anatomy book and ask questions. There are ways to help flatten the appearance of saddlebags, which will be covered in the column, but none of the above will help. How can “outer thigh” machines work if there is no outer thigh muscle? And are you willing to have fat return in a possibly more unattractive area than the sides of your legs?
What is on the outside of your legs? The iliotibial band.
If you are looking at an anatomy book, and look higher around the gluteal muscles, you will see how muscles attach to that band. These are abductor muscles. They take the leg away from the body in the anatomical action of Abduction, but they are not located on the outside of the leg along the thigh. Look up by the gluteal muscles; remember that muscles are layered. Four are particularly overworked in dancers. This quartet of the piriformis, obturator internis, and gemellus superior and inferior are the ones dancers are constantly trying to stretch to alleviate pain. You’ll see them maneuvering their hips, inwardly rotating their legs, doing a sort of jazz hip isolation trying to get relief from ‘tight’ hips.
Some try to maneuver the greater trochanter under those muscles to help ‘stretch’ them. The greater trochanter is the ‘leg knob’ you feel when you put your hand around your hip joint and rotate your femur in and out. Some dancers love the trick of watching the greater trochanter slide or “pop” from one side to the other under the abductor muscles and iliotibial band , bragging how they can “pop” their hip out of joint. What you see isn’t what is happening. The head of the femur is inside the acetabulum. It is the greater trochanter that is visible.
Many times dancers forget that their working leg, the one extending, kicking and more is not the real working leg. How about the leg holding up the body so that free leg can extend, kick and more. Abductor muscles are important for that standing leg. They are the muscles that keep you from “sitting on your hip,” as most teachers describe it.
Emily, a student at the Governor’s School for the Arts/Dance in Norfolk, Virginia is shown in a correct tendu a la seconde, using the abductors on her supporting leg properly. Then you see her in an incorrect position.
She is also shown on a foam roller. In this exercise, rolling that part of the leg up and down on the roller, Emily is using her body weight to help ease the inevitable adhesions that build up from overuse.
Emily hadn’t used a roller before. “Wow,” she said. “I’m really sore!” after her first rolling massage. Just after she finished working that side for the photos, she immediately flipped over and worked the other side. “That feels good,” she added. She now knows that she was easing and breaking up adhesions. To her, it felt like a good stretch.
You do have inner thigh muscles (Adductors) but, as with all muscles, students doggedly attacking and possibly overworking those muscles on machines, will find those muscles getting bigger. No need to panic. Look at professional dancers’ legs. ‘Gnarly,’ ‘huge’ and ‘knotty’ aren’t the adjectives that usually come to mind. But the truth is, when you work a muscle, it gets bigger. Females needn’t panic. They lack the testosterone to have thighs the size of dinosaurs, though some may beg to differ.
Emily is shown in a good warm up exercise for the adductors, lunging out on one leg, then using her standing leg to pull the extended back in. Keep the body slightly forward, and keep the supporting knee over the toe. Slight turn-out is fine. The point on this exercise is not how far you slide out and in, but how much control you keep over the standing leg. You can put a dance towel or piece of paper under your sliding leg if you are in bare feet. When students first try this they say, “But I feel this on my standing leg!” Of course you do. Remember that earlier paragraph about what leg is doing the real work? The sliding leg gets a ride, so to speak. The real working leg gets a workout in the gluteals, hamstrings, quadriceps and hip flexors depending on whether you are sliding out or working to pull the extended leg in.
Fat deposits, heredity, proper technical training and other controllable and of the ‘in-your-dreams category,’ affect your legs. So what is a dancer to do? Know your body. Learn how to do things correctly by analyzing the body and asking questions. Many A&P courses teach a traditional method of attachments and bones, but do not emphasize movements of bones and muscles, interaction of the two, or lines of force and gravity. I took courses at UCLA in dance kinesiology from Dr. Sally S. Fitt and also had kinesiology and body movement courses in the Kinesiology Dept at UCLA. I am taking training and courses from Jan Griscom and from Tom Purvis. And I’m still reading and asking questions!
You can begin learning on your own. Your book choices vary in sizes and complexity. Some books are more portable in your dance bag than a textbook, but start searching your library or used book places. Human Kinetics has a wealth of dance oriented books such as “Dance Anatomy and Kinesiology” by Karen Lee Clippinger and “Conditioning for Dance” by Eric Franklin. Look at www.amazon.com or www.bn.com for Sally Fitt’s “Dance Kinesiology.”
In an easier-to-tote paperback category, Eastland Press has “Anatomy of Movement” and “Anatomy of Movement Exercises” by Blandine Calais-Germain (with Andree Lamotte’s help with “Movement”). “Physics of Dance” by Kenneth Laws is another of more and more good books dedicated to the art and anatomy of dance.
My personal favorite is the British “Pocket Atlas of the Moving Body” (Ebury Press, London) by Mel Cash. Compact, but packed with clear drawings, tables and information. It’s practically weightless.
And if time permits, take a Google hike using phrases such a “dance kinesiology,” “conditioning for dance,” “physics of dance” and so on for many, many articles on how the body works, focused on dancers.
Don’t try to memorize anything at first. Just look and wonder. Imagine the positions your body is going through, taking things one exercise at a time. Look at muscular attachments and movements. It also helps to have BOB (aka Bag of Bones), a disarticulated skeleton. Even a tiny plastic one like artists use can be a tremendous help in increasing your awareness of this amazing machine we live in.