Enhance your Pole Training

Enhancement of training comes from repetition, increasing your strength, your endurance, improving or creating the lines you want and improving your confidence and love for pole dance.

Read below for practical tips on how to get the most out of your training!
Although it may feel like a million miles away and something that requires a lot of hard work (which it kinda does!) If you want to compete, teach or even create beautiful videos for others or just for yourself, then taking on the following advice is going to be important for you. This advice will help you get stronger at pole and improve your endurance and personal aesthetics.

A lot of people get in to pole and have grand goals of advanced tricks... that was definitely me when I started pole back in 2010! It's absolutely great to have goals but the problem with this mindset is that it can make us rush through the beginner or intermediate stuff, we just tick it off and move on rather than really savouring the process of progression.

Today, I want to encourage you to train lower-level drills and tricks, whatever level that is for you. These are likely to feel 'too easy' for you at first glance, but there are ways to change that so you get more from even the simplest drill. Here are some ways you can make these drills more challenging for you.

Practical Tips

  1. Increase sets and reps
    For example, try doing 5 repetitions and repeat twice on each side, rather than doing 3 on each side.
  2. Decrease rest time between sets, within reason!
    If you need to rest then do, but try getting back on the pole for the next set a bit quicker each time you train to improve your endurance.
  3. Changing up the tempo
    Completing movements very slowly or super speedy changes the feels of a movement hugely!
  4. Create longer levers
    Completing movements with straight legs, extended arms. This will make you heavier, therefore adding load to the movement and it'll make you use your brain more.
  5. Unique movements
    Add in some movements that are new to you, like a leg twirl, flexed feet etc. You may find your own style by experimenting with this.
  6. Adding an isometric element 
    This is a fun one! Rather than moving through a full movement without stopping, try pausing multiple times throughout the movement and holding each position for a breath or 2.
  7. Breathing!
    Try steadily breathing throughout the exercise, a lot of people hold their breath when training something that challenges them. This will help you with recovery between sets and improve your endurance.

Personally, when I started pole, I was all about the arms only stuff! But when it came to me teaching, I couldn’t do heavy leg grip moves at all. I actually remember falling in front of a class full of people because my legs weren’t grippy enough! I had to work on my leg grip to become a better teacher and this enabled me to create better routines as I had a much bigger repertoire to work with. To do this I used the above list and related them to leg based drills such as gemini climb overs.

The takeaway from this is that no matter what level you are at, always work on the basics. This can be great for mental health too, when we first start learning stuff it feels like it takes ages. How long did it take you to get your first *insert any difficult trick here*, spin, invert or handspring? It can be very demoralising going through the journey of a trick, but by working on lower-level tricks you will remind yourself how much you can already do and keep up your confidence at the same time as building your strength. This will ultimately help you with the tricks you want to achieve! Win, win!
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