What exactly is turnout?

I recently asked a group of dancers where their turnout was coming from, most responded with “your butt”. Yes, but where around “your butt”, they couldn’t answer.

Turnout is defined a total rotation from the hip, knee and ankle joint. In a nutshell, a group of 6 muscles located at the back of your hip, known as the deep hip rotators, are responsible for correct turnout. The muscles include the piriformis, superior and inferior gemellus, the internal and external obturator and the quadratus femoris. To avoid compensations like foot pronation (‘rolling’), or an anterior pelvic tilt (‘arching’), these muscles require initial activation and endurance. Studies go on to suggest that using your deep hip rotators can reduce the risk of injury.

Some common cues used for turning out tend to use the words “squeeze” or “tuck”, which may actually cause the wrong turnout muscles to work. The secondary muscles used in turnout include the biceps femoris (lateral hamstring), satorius, and gluteus medius and maximus. If the secondary muscles activate before the deep rotators a dancer may find they become very tight around their hips, which can lead to hip hitching or reduce turnout range and potentially lead to an injury.

Over the last few months I have been working intensely with dancers to educate and help correctly activate their deep rotators to improve their turnout range; something I can only wish I was taught as a young dancer. I am constantly astounded by the amount of information in dance science and medicine that has come about in the last decade. If you have any questions in regards to turnout, ensure you ask your physio to ‘pointe’ you in the right direction.

Before you do though, I encourage you to look up the deep hip rotators mentioned above and try to visualise where they lye around the hip and pelvis. This will give you a better understanding about your anatomy.

Until next time.. keep pointing your toes 🙂

Mel

I’d like to thank and acknowledge IADMS for the paraphrased information on anatomy and turnout in this blog. For more information please refer to their website, iadms.org.