Courtney @briongloid-gra-dochas - Tumblr Blog

This is your year

Here's to all the dancers who aren't dancing

Maybe this was the first time you didn’t dance at Oireachtas, maybe it’s the fifth. It’s hard to see your old family doing the thing you love without you.

Here’s to the girls who look at those pictures and decide it’s time to go back. Here’s to the girls who are so happy they had that in their lives, but are happy where they are now too.

Dance might have been your whole life, but it’s okay to move on and have new goals. It’s okay to still love dancing and competing but putting other goals above dance for awhile. There are people who can do school and dance, but it’s okay if you can’t.

Its hard to look at pictures of girls you used to dance with, maybe even just a few months ago, and wonder how you would have done. I feel like this community gets wrapped up in itself sometimes and you feel like you have to hang on to dance forever. It’s okay to let go, to redefine your relationship with dance as you grow.

Here’s to girls becoming women and making hard choices. Here’s to taking the lessons you learned with dance with you into the real world. Here’s to always having a place for it in your heart. Here’s to dancing on your own terms, whatever they may be.

I mostly wrote this for myself, but hopefully someone else finds it helpful. I’m so proud of all of you.

a-joyfuljourney

cloudsongs-deactivated20170806

tangled + pink

lots-of-treble

Switching to reel/hornpipe

summers-buffy

flips-wigs-and-jigs

Irish dance is literally one of the best things that's ever happened to me

thepiper76

It is difficult to explain exactly what Irish Dance means to me, because it is so personal and interlaced within me, making up part of who I am. It is permanently engrained in my life as a part of me no one can relinquish or take away.

me (if you can believe it) in an essay I’m writing (via thepiper76)

goldenngays

your shaking shoulders prove that it’s colder, inside your head, than the winter of dead..

thebelchers

kayleighfay-deactivated20170608

Shin Splints

@theshinybuckles and anyone else who deals with these, because they are the WORST. This is roughly what I give out at the studio to dancers with shin splints - sorry it’s long. I didn’t put in pictures for the exercises because of the length, but if you have questions let me know and I can find some or post a video!

First of all, what the frick are they? “Shin splints” is the common term for Medial Tibial Stress Syndrome (MTSS), or pain and inflammation on the front of the lower leg. The most current theory is that MTSS is caused by small tears in the connective tissue surrounding your shins. When the tears begin to heal, the scar tissue sticks to the bone, forming an adhesion. Exercising before the tears heal fully can tear the adhesion away from the bone, causing pain. This repeats and pain worsens until they’re properly treated. Reasons for this include intense training without proper recovery, rapid increases in training with no adjustment period, improper footwear, dancing on poor flooring, and poor movement mechanics.

How do I get rid of them?

Rest – This is the one no one wants to hear. If your shins have only hurt for a few days, you likely only need a few days to rest. If they’ve hurt for more than a week, you probably need to take more time off.

Ice – Especially on days that you dance, aim for 20 minutes, 3x per day. You can also do an ice massage - freeze a few Dixie cups full of water, then peel back the paper and run one up and down your shin where the pain is.

Anti-inflammatories – Taking Advil or Tylenol can help decrease the pain, especially if you have a feis (or worlds) coming up. That being said, if you need to take medication on a daily basis for more than a week in order to be able to dance, see a doctor.

Address underlying causes – In order to prevent shin splints from coming back, it is necessary to solve the underlying issue that is putting stress on your legs. This may mean practicing only on sprung dance floors, buying more supportive sneakers to wear during the day, gradually increasing training instead of jumping right into practicing 6 days a week, fixing biomechanical issues, or all of the above.

Biomechanical Causes of Shin Splints

Tight calf muscles can pull on your achilles tendon and cause your arches to fall or flatten. This decreases your foot’s ability to absorb impact and makes the muscles in the front of your shins do all the work. I’d recommend foam rolling (I use a rolling pin and a baseball to target the knots better) and calf stretches for AT LEAST 30s (if not more) each day. You can also try to draw out the alphabet with your toes, or stand flat and raise your toes off the ground to strengthen the muscles front of your shins and help deactivate overactive calf muscles.

Weakened calf muscles put excess stress on on the front muscles of the shins. This usually occurs in combination with tight calf muscles. Exercises that can help include calf raises, pointing and flexing your foot using a theraband, eccentric calf lowering, etc.

Poor foot strength may lead to lack of balance and affect your foot’s ability to absorb impact. Test for foot strength and balance by standing on one leg with your eyes closed for 30 seconds. If you can’t hold that position without help, start practicing every day until you can, then increase the time to 60 seconds. Also try doing one legged calf raises holding on to as little as possible, eventually with no assistance.

Tight hip flexors and weak external rotator muscles can change the way you land and put too much stress on your lower legs and feet. If you struggle with turnout from the hip, this might a big issue and addressing it will also help the rest of your dancing. Stretching your hip flexors, bridges, and clams will all help with this.

The most important thing I can say about shin splints is that if they won’t go away, get yourself to a doctor, get a bone scan (X-rays DO NOT diagnose shin splints!!!), and go see a physical therapist. The causes above are some of the more common ones in Irish dance but others include weak hamstrings, poor posture, and basically any abnormality in how you stand/dance/walk/etc. If you’ve tried a bunch of different things and they aren’t working, it’s good to see a physical therapist so they can assess your whole body to find imbalances. Otherwise you risk developing stress fractures and having to take more time off.