IT’S THE STORIES YOU WON’T HEAR.
The MDM range is footwear that’s been designed to specifically promote, not only supreme comfort and beauty, but safe dance practice and injury prevention. As such, it might be easy to perceive MDM, or to box MDM into the mould of a piece of equipment for rehabilitation once injury has already occurred, or as a corrective device in cases where dancers have problem feet, but this would be missing the point (excuse the dance pun).
While the MDM range certainly does function and is regularly used by podiatrists and physiotherapists as a corrective or in the rehabilitation of dance related foot issues, this is to vastly underestimate MDM’s more important and longer term value; a value that arguably far outweighs the small, extra cost.
For the value of the MDM range is to prevent injuries before they occur: to ensure young, developing feet are set up correctly during their most vulnerable phase, to reduce the fatigue from pressures that dance training naturally places on the body; to help tired muscles recover faster, to develop a better proprioceptive or kinaesthetic awareness of the foot during dance practice and to help promote the culture and communication of safe dance practice across our industry.
And so while you’ll hear stories of people that have been helped and relieved by MDM, what we really want is for dancers to have less stories of injuries and fatigue to tell. So wearing and promoting MDM is about the stories you won’t hear.
And what of the small, extra cost of MDM?
There is an extra cost when purchasing MDM, as there typically is whenever we buy products made of a higher quality and developed with a higher purpose. This small, extra cost must be balanced against other potentially far more significant costs, such as; the cost of a visit to the local podiatrist or physiotherapist, or worse, to the specialist and perhaps the costs of corrective surgery. The costs both in terms of money to rehabilitate post injury, but also the loss of time and joy in not being able to dance. Or even the costs of orthotics that might need to be worn for a lifetime.
For just as the effects of regularly drinking soft drink, smoking or poor diet and lack of exercise typically aren’t noticed until we’re well into adulthood, so too can incorrect postural alignment and pressures on the bones effect the dancer over time.
Wearing MDM is the equivalent of brushing your teeth everyday, eating an apple, avoiding smoking and developing a culture of basic hygiene. Right now you may not be rehabilitating from injury or suffering from fatigue and the impact forces of dance, but in choosing to wear MDM you’re ensuring you’re doing the best for your feet so that you may never have to.
