I just realized I never responded to you – my apologies! I am not a Zumba instructor so I can’t say what the best footwear for your class would be. However, finding something with good arch support should lessen the strain on your knees.

Also, a doctor or physical therapist will best be able to help you find the right exercises to strengthen your supporting muscles. Generally strengthening the opposing muscles – the ones that cause supination helps dancers with pronation tendencies.

There are several ways to do this but one way is to sit in a chair and cross one foot so that the ankle is resting on the other thigh. If you relax the foot, it will dangle in pronated position. Without moving anything else, lift the toes toward the ceiling as much as possible (supination). Do several sets of these. You can add light resistance with a stretchy exercise band. Place it over the arch/middle of your foot and step on the ends with your other foot. You’ll be pulling the toes upward against the resistance of the band.

The closest activity in terms of foot and angle pressure is probally skateboarding, and skateboarders generally have to deal with a much harder surfaces than dancers.

A dancer will generally prefer bare feet or shoes that give maximum ‘feel’ for the floor. However, in the case of injury, skateboard shoes, which are designed to give protection to the foot in situations of high impact on unyielding surfaces will provide the dancer protection from further damage while the injury heals.

Practiced motor patterns are different, and ALWAYS involve the brain. The motor loops established through practice just make it more efficient to access those movements, which is why someone who was trained in dance 30 years ago can pick up movements more quickly than someone without any training. But the salient point here is that NONE of this happens without the brain and we should be careful when giving examples that they are not functioning by some other rule, such as CPG’s. It’s not didactic, it’s physiology.

If you chop the head off a chicken it will still run about. No signals from the brain. Mary Queen of Scots lips moved as if speaking some 15 minutes after she was decapitated and effectively brain dead.

Muscle tissue is certainly inacapable of movement without neural signals – however, those neural signals (as you point out) don’t have to come from the brain, they can come from a self contained loop that is produced by training.

It is true to say that muscle tissue has ‘no memory’, but the muscle tissue is interwoven with the neural tissue that triggers its contraction.

But this is all didactism that detracts from the main point.

Skills and bad habits of posture learnt in childhood at the most basic level are retained through life.

I regularly encounter women who are returning to dance after a 20 or 30 year gap, having given up in thier mid teens.

They are instantly recognisable as having been dance trained – usually you can identify what form (Highland, Contemporary or Ballet). The skills (balance, agility, timing) they have retained have nothing to do with the muscles (which will have completely replaced themselves several times)

Respectfully, I disagree. It is true that there are neural loops that develop through practice, and this is certainly the case with voluntary motor movements. That’s why certain patterns that have been practiced seem to be automatic. However, the motor loop just makes it more efficient to perform those movements-it doesn’t take the brain out of the picture.

Heart beat, on the other hand, is an involuntary muscular contraction and is controlled by a central pattern generator (CPG). CPG’s such as heart beat, breath, etc. are controlled at the spinal cord level and not at the brain level–they do not require conscious “thought” in order to occur. However, if you remove the heart from the body, severing the connection to the spinal cord, it will cease to function. Any transient “beats” are the result of left over chemical reactions that were stored up in the muscle. After those chemical bonds have been used up, the muscle doesn’t work anymore-it’s just tissue.

Thanks for your comments!

A neural loop exists that drives muscule ocntraction – but the neural signals do not have to be processed in the brain.

A Skateboarder does everything a dancer does in terms of wieght bearing and ankle flexibility – except they are doing it on concrete.

The shoes have to light but very flexible and very well cushioned

I have trouble finding any shoes that suit my high arch. I saw Skateboard shoes thought they would be good for my very broad feet, and found they worked for Lindy Hop and WCS.

I wouldn’t recommend it as a solution for everyone and every situation, but if you do have to dance on concrete, it does save you a lot of pain and injury.

You do have to glue suede to the sole though so you can slide and spin.

Different dance forms definitely have different needs but as you stated before I do think we could learn a bit from the sports world about being willing to invest in the creation and use of good equipment.

We don’t get the option of dancing in bare feet and the floors we dance on (sometimes solid concrete) can often be pretty awful, though of course we all enjoy sprung wood floors. The people who built ballrooms 60 years ago knew how to construct floors.

It’s fascinating how many of these delightful floors are lying about disused.

My personal solution (I have a very high arch) was to discard formal dance shoes and use sueded Skateboard shoes – which because of their cushioning and support work just fine.

Just a suggestion if you find dance sneakers or shoes don’t work for you.

As for shock absorption, much research has been put into dance floor design. The shock absorption factor is a primary reason why it is essential for dancers to rehearse and perform on a quality floor designed for dance. This is unfortunately the area that most dance institutions fail their dancers – this is the area that I’d agree there is a lack of awareness. But often it comes down to money. Many know they should have a good dance floor but the cost is daunting so it is pushed further down the list of priorities, when for the health of dancers it should be at or near the top.

Thanks again for stopping by!

Supination and Pronation should not be confused with high and low arch. It’s about the algnment of the ankle, though with a high arch the foot is more likly to supinate than protonate because that is the easiest way fot he muscles to manage the high arch.

High arch and supination give stability on heel down and toe off, so are an advantage in dancing, but, it results in poor shock absorption, so the supinator/high arch foot dancer is much more likely to get stress injuries of the ankle and knees.

In atheletics running shoes for high arch feet are designed with extra cushioning to overcome this – I’ve yet to hear of a cushioned dance sneaker