Around four years ago, I developed Achilles Tendonitis in my achilles, which is the tendon that runs from the back of your heel far up your leg. Put short, Achilles Tendonitis is when your achilles tendon is overused because you put intense strain on it. When walking, running, or jumping you can feel pain in your achilles. To treat my achilles, I had weekly treatments with a physiotherapist (who always gave me chocolate wafers afterward), and she gave me stretching poses to do at home. The stretches were intended to help lengthen and relax my achilles. As a result of the repetitive stretches, my achilles healed and the once short tendon became unusually long. Now, my achilles tendon is very, very long, which means that I can bend my knees further than most people can without lifting my heels off the ground.
Now, in ballet, there is a move called a fondu. When doing a fondu, you bend one leg and extend the other to the front, side or back. This means that all your body weight is on a bent leg. Because of my long achilles, I can bend the supporting leg further than many people can, but after a certain point of bending, your body weight shifts from being on the entire leg, to only your kneecap. That is the root of my knee pain, apparently, because I bend my knee so far down that all of my body weight is on my kneecap, which causes me a lot of pain.
It’s crazy to think that before this, I never knew the root of my knee pain, but one of my advantages (long achilles), caused my biggest disadvantages (my hurt knees).
Dance Domain 