Many ballet dancers struggle to maintain good alignment of their arms second position. We often get so focused on what our feet are doing or if we are maintaining our posture that arms can easily be forgotten. Maybe you start out with a lovely, rounded ballet arm in second, but by halfway through the exercise, your teacher is reminding you to lift your elbow. So how can you improve your arm position without compromising the focus on your foot work?
Dancer are often guilty of neglecting upper body strength, but that’s exactly what you need to improve your ballet arms! In this case, to be able to maintain the alignment of your arm in second position, you need to build strength and control in your rotator cuff muscles. The rotator cuff are a group of muscles and tendons that sit deep around your shoulder joint and are responsible for both stabilizing and moving your shoulder and arms. To maintain lifted elbows in second position, the rotation actually comes from your shoulder joint. Anatomically speaking, you must internally rotate your shoulder joint.
Don’t worry, you don’t need to start bench pressing or become a body builder to get stronger arms! In the video below, I demonstrate a super quick but super-effective exercise that will target those important rotator cuff muscles. Try practicing this exercise 2-3 times a week, and very quickly you’ll notice how much easier it is to hold your arms beautifully a la seconde, even without thinking about it!
For this exercise, you will need a weight of some sort. I’m using a hand weight, but you can easily use a water bottle or anything else you can find! (A client recently told me she’s using a hammer for this exercise!) Lay on your back with your elbow out to the side and hand straight up. Slowly lower the weight forwards and backwards as far as you can keeping your shoulder on the ground. Don’t let your shoulder pop up – it doesn’t matter if your weight doesn’t reach the ground. This exercise is all about control – so keep it really slow and controlled! I recommend starting with about 8 -12 reps, depending on how heavy your weight is. As you get stronger, you can either find a heavy weight, or you can increase the reps up to about 20.
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