The 5 mistakes almost every beginner makes in heels

The first weeks in heels are strange. Your legs feel like they belong to someone else, you watch your feet instead of listening to the music, and every weight transfer turns into a negotiation. That's normal. What's less normal is making that period harder than it needs to be.

Here are five mistakes that come up again and again. None of them is serious. All of them can be fixed in a few sessions, as long as you spot them.

1. Buying heels that are too high

This is mistake number one, and it makes sense: the videos that made you want to dance in heels almost always show impressive heights. But what you're seeing is the result of months, sometimes years, of ankle work.

A heel that's too high does two things. It throws your weight forward, so you compensate by arching your lower back or bending your knees. And it shrinks your contact with the floor, so your ankle is constantly working to catch you. The result: you spend the session surviving instead of dancing.

To start, look for a height where you can stand still, without shaking, for a full minute. If you can hold that, you have room to move. Plenty of dancers start around 7 to 8 centimetres, with a toe box that isn't too narrow and a strap or laces that hold the foot. Lace-up boots often feel more reassuring than pumps at the very beginning, simply because the ankle is supported.

You'll go higher. But go higher because your body is asking for it, not because a video suggested it.

2. Skipping the warm-up

When you've got thirty minutes, the warm-up looks like wasted time. It isn't.

In heels, you're asking a lot of very specific areas: ankles, calves, arches, hips, lower back. A cold joint moves less well and absorbs less well. And since the shoe already limits how much your foot can move, you're starting with less margin than you'd have barefoot.

Ten minutes is enough. Mobilise your ankles in every direction, wake up the calves, open the hips, get your heart rate up a little. Only then do you put the heels on.

Same logic in reverse: if pain shows up during the session — not the burn of effort, but real pain that stings or shoots — you stop. You don't negotiate with it. And if it comes back, or if you have a history of ankle, knee or back injury, talk to a doctor or a physio before continuing. That's not being overly cautious, it's just what lets you still be dancing in six months.

3. Comparing yourself

You open your phone, you see a girl doing a perfect body roll in twelve-centimetre heels, and you close your phone with a knot in your stomach. We've all been there.

The problem with comparison isn't ego. It's that it makes you skip steps. You want to look like what you're seeing, so you force the range of motion, you go higher too soon, you take on choreography your body can't yet support. And then you either hurt yourself or you put yourself off entirely.

Dancing in heels is a discipline of sensation before it's a discipline of image. What will tell you you're progressing isn't the video: it's the moment you walk without looking at your feet, hold a stance without tensing up, hear the music instead of counting.

Film yourself if you want, but compare yourself to yourself. To the version of you from last week.

4. Training on a slippery floor

The kitchen tiles, the polished living room floor, the lino in the hallway. You train where you can, and that's fine — but a floor that slips changes everything.

When the floor gives you nothing back, your body senses it and protects itself. You shorten your steps, you lock your hips, you grip with your toes so you don't slide. You build habits you'll have to unlearn later.

Find a surface with grip: a firm enough rug, a piece of low-pile carpet, a studio with a proper dance floor. Check your soles too: new and smooth, they slide. Some dancers sand them lightly or add a non-slip sole. And if tiles really are all you have, keep them for static work — balance, slow weight transfers — and save travelling steps for a safer floor.

5. Wanting the choreography before the walk

This is the most frustrating one, because we all come to heels for the choreography. The urge to dance to a track you love, right now.

But walking in heels isn't a boring preamble: it's the technical foundation for everything else. It contains pelvic placement, weight transfer, the role of the heel and the ball of the foot, the alignment of shoulders over hips. Choreography is walking in disguise — sped up and decorated.

If you spend three weeks on the walk — really spend them, with music, varying tempos, chasing silent footfalls — you'll learn choreography twice as fast afterwards. And more importantly, you'll dance it instead of executing it.

What changes

These five points share one thing: patience. Not passive patience, the kind that waits. The kind that builds, session after session, a stronger ankle and a body that knows where it is.

If you want to lay some groundwork before committing further, three HEELS SCHOOL classes are available without creating an account: "Welcome", "Choosing your heels" and "Full warm-up". The last two speak directly to two of the mistakes on this list. The video player is built so you can learn with it, not just watch: mirror mode, slow motion, front view and back view. You can replay a weight transfer ten times, from behind, in slow motion, until your body understands. That's often where it clicks.

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