Roll Out!
Before you do anything in class, it is important to get your feet stretched out. An easy way to do this is to use whatever you use to roll out your muscles to roll out your feet. If you use a tennis ball or soft ball, you can even stand up and, rolling the ball underneath your foot, use it to roll out the muscles on the bottom of your foot. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Just roll your muscles until they are all open and ready to go!
Pointe Your Toes
For these exercises, you’ll need a theraband. Sitting on the floor with your knee up, put your theraband around your toes and hold it back to your knee. From there, simply point your toes (not your foot, just your toes). Do this ten times on each foot.
After your toes are warmed up, move on to warming up your whole foot. With the theraband wrapped around your foot and toes, keep your toes pointed. Then point your whole foot 10 times. Make sure to do this with each foot! You can also point your foot with your toes relaxed and once your foot has pointed then point your toes.
Stretch and Hold
Once your feet are starting to feel nice and stretched out, you can move on to stretches that last a bit longer. Simply practice pointing your foot and holding it. Hold it for as long as you feel comfortable. You can do 10-second stretches or 30-second stretches. Just make sure that you are not pushing too hard. Over-stretching can be just as bad as not stretching at all.
Develop a Routine
Using a combination of these exercises, put together a warm up routine 5-10 minutes long that you can do before class to prepare your feet. It is important to stretch and warm up every part of your foot so that you can give it all you’ve got when it is time to dance.