So, this may be a bit random, but I’m hoping the ballet community can help. As a tennis player who likes to grind out long points, I have lost a couple of toenails from the intensity of the direction changes. Throughout the years, friends with ballet backgrounds and multi-genre dancers always say that ballet dancers are the most metal of artists. No one deals with physical pain like them—in particular, the frequency of bloody toes and ripped off toenails. I have a couple that ripped off from the rigors of tennis, and I haven’t gotten very good help from the tennis community and tennis-related sub-Reddits (generally, suggestions that I need to find better fitting shoes).
So my ask is **how do ballet dancers treat their ripped off toenails**? Right now, I am trying to let the fully missing toenails grow back, but they never seem to grow back correctly, and they are prone to just rip off again quite easily. **Are there any secrets from the ballet world on how to mitigate future ripped toenails and on how they can be treated or taped to let the toenail grow back properly?** I am hoping that I don’t have to just give up on having nails on my third and fourth toe on my right foot.
In case helpful, tennis is pretty gnarly on the toes, as it involves some intense change of direction and moving forward. Thus, if there is too much room in a shoe, you can really jam your toenail into the toebox. If you have too tight a fit, then it could pull up constantly on your toenails. For me, it took me awhile to find the right width (generally requiring a special wide version of the shoe) and toebox shape to mitigate how much my toenails were bruising and/or tearing off my toenails. But even so, ever since the toenails pulled up from their nailbeds, it never really heals properly.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.