How this ONE small thing can help your Irish Dancing technique and prevent injury

As Irish Dancers we all have very busy schedules; from dance class, to practising, strength and conditioning work to flexibility and mobility work…and that is without mentioning Feises, school, social events and homework! This is why we think it is amazing when we discover ways to help our Irish Dancing technique that won’t take you any extra time to do.

Have you heard of Toe Spacers?

After the 2022 World Championships, Meg was working with 45 dancers each week, of which three of them had a fractured metatarsal. This is 6.6% of our dancers who experienced the same injury in such a short amount of time and for Meg this rang alarm bells!

Looking back over the five years (at that point) of running MWM, it was very clear to Meg that there was a clear pattern of injury; not only the types of injuries, but also the times of the year that they occur. So, with one of our key values at MWM being to help as many Dancers as possible, Meg went away and used her own time to research what could be done to prevent certain injuries and this is when she discovered toe spacers.

Why do they help Irish Dancers?

Toe spacers are designed to assist in the realignment of the foot to its natural shape, to stretch and allow space for the strength in the intricate foot muscles and to improve the mobility of the foot’s bone structure. 

As Irish Dancers, we like our feet to look neat and tidy and are guilty of squeezing our feet, our most valuable tool, into shoes that are sizes too small for us. Although this makes our feet look tidier, have you considered the impact that this is having on the structure of your feet and therefore your ability to dance your best consistently? 

Irish dance shoes impact our foot's flexibility and mobility and therefore our strength is reduced/restricted which can impact our ability to arch, dance on our toes, turn out and also increases our risk of injury. 

Since then we have encouraged the use of our ID Spacers for every Dancer, but especially those who struggle with metatarsal injuries, toe height and arching. Even more fantastically, these are to be used after dance class (on the way home from class is the perfect time), so they don’t require you to add any extra time into your busy schedule, but you’ll get all the benefits. 

You can purchase your ID toe spacers for only £15 on our website (we only ship to the UK). Give your Irish Dancer the gift of injury prevention and better technique this Christmas!