Improve Your Toe Height for Irish Dancing

Are you looking to improve your toe height for Irish dancing? Recently we spent a lot of time talking to dancers, teachers, and parents in our Instagram DMs about what their dancing focus is going to be for the rest of 2024. 

One of the biggest answers we received back was toe height!

Why is toe height so important for Irish dancing? 

Toe height is important for Irish dancing because it is one of the main aspects judges look for. Irish dancing has always required dancers to dance high on their toes, but in recent years toe height has become a main focus for top-level dancers trying to impress the judges. It has become such an important aspect of Irish dancing that certain moves that showcase dancers' toe height have become massively popular in choreography. 

So, how can you improve your toe height for Irish dancing? 

Here are three things you can do every day to work on your toe height at home. Seeing the difference you experience after a month of dedicating yourself to these exercises regularly will be amazing. 

1. One of the main reasons I see dancers who struggle to dance on their toes is ankle mobility. So to work on this stand against a wall and pop your toe against the wall. Use your back foot to help you balance and stabilise yourself. Bend your knee forward to see if your knee can touch the wall, without your heel raising off the floor. If this is comfortable, move your ankle away from the wall and repeat until your knee can no longer touch the wall. You’re aiming to find the distance furthest from the wall you can have your toe and still reach the wall with your knee. Repeat 8 reps when you reach your furthest possible distance. 

Note: make sure your knee stays in line and doesn’t buckle inwards when you get close to the wall. 

2. This is one that dancers neglect but it’s one of the biggest things we use as Irish dancers. What is it….your big toes!!  We need to work on our big toe mobility because as Irish dancers we turn our feet out, which means our big toes don’t need to work as well as they would if we had straight feet. But we need them to dance high on our toes. Confusing right!!! I just want you to kneel and rest your bottom on your ankles with your toes tucked underneath. This is also a great way to stretch the bottom of your foot, which is often something else we neglect. Simple but super effective. 

Note: make sure your ankles don’t roll inwards or outwards

3. Our final exercise is for our balance! I want you to stand up with bare feet for this one. You are going to stand with your feet straight and you’re going to lift one foot off the floor and balance. But… to challenge your balance I want you to slowly turn your head to the left, then to the right, look up, and finally look down. Repeat this 3x on each foot and see if you can maintain your balance throughout. 

For each of these exercises, I want you to measure where you are right now by taking photos or videos of yourself so we can compare these later down the line. Toe height takes a while to see improvement, so I want you to use these images and videos as motivation to prove to yourself that you are improving! Consistency and discipline will be your friend with this task - but think about how you want to dance at your next major championship. If you want your toe height to improve - then start working on it today!

In our MWM Gold Club, we are running a toe height for Irish dancing challenge starting on Monday 15th April (if you’re finding this after that date, don’t worry you can start the 5-Day Challenge whenever suits you best). You will get detailed tips, tricks, and challenges to help you understand how to improve your toe height specifically for Irish dancing. And we plan to make a difference in JUST 5 Days and an even bigger difference in the week following the challenge. 

You can sign up to this here