Toe Spacers

A long time ago when I was trying on my first ballroom shoes in a ballet-oriented store, the sales lady said something about toe spacers, which was promptly all but forgotten.

A few years later, I've been off and on worried about the way in which working towards the extremes of the feet in ballroom, combined with the un-natural shape of the shoes, puts an uncomfortable side load on my big toe knuckle. So yesterday I finally opened the toe spacers I bought in a pharmacy foot care aisle a few months ago - little chunks of silicone rubber that go between the big toe and the others. Put those on, put on the old pair of half-size larger shoes.

And wow... much, much more supported footwork, with far less discomfort. The spacer keeps the knuckle aligned, so it's far easier to take my weight extremely forward in the toes - which goes directly into a better feather step.

I'm not sure if I'm going to wear them all the time - ideally I'd like to strengthen whatever normally aligns that joint. Also doing a lot of wiggling bare feet around trying to identify the muscles that might spread the toes...

Interesting observation. Maybe I should get toe spacers and my 1/2 size old ballroom suede shoes wil fit better. Know where I can buy any as I have never heard of these before?

If all you want to do is tighten them up, the thinnest foam insole should do the trick - in fact it may be too much. These spacers came from a pharmacy foot care aisle, but I have no idea which one...

Just found what's left of the packaging - try a google search on the brand name, "PediFix" and you will find plenty.

Acutally, in looking at the larger shoes the issue on mine is that the edges of the lacing gap tend to meet. I wonder about cutting that back somehow (and re-finishing the edge) to end up with something wider in the toe, and narrower elsewhere. Or maybe one of these days I'll go get some leather scraps and embark on an ambitious project...

This is an interesting thread. It's amazing to me how many cool foot/toe/arch thingies there are on the market. And it's more amazing yet how few ballroom people use them. Maybe they don't know. :? If you pick up a copy of any self-respecting ballet catalog, there are at least two to three fixes for any foot problem you can imagine -- maybe because ballet dancers' feet take such a beating. I don't know.

But it really behooves any dancer to at least look around. There are toe spacers, bunion pads, little tube-shaped toe protectors to prevent corns, gel toe box pads, you name it. Pretty cool.

Oh gosh yes. Back in *the day* (when I danced en pointe), they didn't have those newfangled inventions. All we had was wadded up lambs wool and we were HAPPY to get it. And then we kept a bottle of aspirin and a box of bandaids in the shoe bag for *after* class...

DancingMommy said:

Oh gosh yes. Back in *the day* (when I danced en pointe), they didn't have those newfangled inventions. All we had was wadded up lambs wool and we were HAPPY to get it.

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Yeah, well, we can't all be afford to be picky, so sometimes we have to make do with what is available. NYC has more pharmacies than farms...

Do you NOT see the irony here????

I have mangled feet because they didn't have those things. It was either lambs wool or NOTHING back then.

:roll:

Yeah. I've seen some ex-ballerina feet that just made me shudder, Bunions! And other scary, scary things. Ballerinas paid a high price for their art, back in the day. Young people today have no idea ... :roll: :lol:

:shock: I had no clue that toe spacers were used by ballroom dancers. I thought that only pointe dancers used them. I will be taking pointe either next year or the year after that. :? I don't think that women can use toe spacers, though, since most wear open-toe shoes.

Ahhh, one of the joys of dancing Standard -- there's a lot of things you can hide in your shoes. I've been known to use gel inserts, heel grips, extra padding in the heels and toes, and those little "jellies" things that slip on over your toes.

And then I finally found shoes that fit me properly without any of this stuff. Heaven.

labelledanseuse said:

I had no clue that toe spacers were used by ballroom dancers. I thought that only pointe dancers used them.

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Guess who clued me into their existence? A saleswoman who sold the occasional ballroom shoe, and a whole lot of pointe shoes...

Ballroom isn't pointe, but it ideally comes a lot closer to it than anything the rest of the general public does, and it seems like we should be able to learn what not to do from the harsh lessons of broken ballerina feet.

Unless of course you count running into furniture repeatedly with your toes....

I dare ya to slap on a pair of pointe shoes, lol! I double dare ya... I ouble DOG dare ya.

DancingMommy said:

I dare ya to slap on a pair of pointe shoes, lol! I double dare ya... I ouble DOG dare ya.

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Bring some in my size and a really sturdy barre and I'll at least experiment. I must admit I am rather curious how (if at all) the shoes distribute the loads compared to what would happen if you were barefoot...

But the point (sorry) in ballroom is more to get extremely forward in the toes, not vertically over the ends of them. Still, toes that want to fold funny have plenty of encouragement to do so in that situation. Tracking down and really talking to some ballet people (or their doctors) is on my distant to-do list.

Heheheheh

First of all, all your weight is going to be on either your first and second toes or maybe toes 1-3 if you are lucky.

For me, I have an odd shaped foot, so all my weight was nicely distributed over my big toe only. Hence the mangled feet.

It isn't so much that the shoe distributes the load as all your toes are crammed together (sort of)....

Here's some INTERESTING stuff....

dancer.com/peekinside.html <--- This is kind of like the anatomy of a pointe shoe. I use to wear Capezio pointe shoes. Darned uncomfy.

Here's the page on foot types --> dancer.com/foottype.html

I have the middle kind (Egyptian Foot), so my weight distribution would be different than someone else's.

IF I were to dance en pointe again, I'd ONLY ever wear Gaynor-Minden shoes. They are AWESOME. <sigh>

DancingMommy said:

It isn't so much that the shoe distributes the load as all your toes are crammed together (sort of)...

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Kind of what I expected, given what I found myself (probably unwisely) doing while breaking in split-sole patent leather standard shoes...