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Competition Training
Ive signed up for my 4th attempt at Ms Xpose. Im at a point where im starting to doubt myself a bit so its almost like walking on egg shells trying to prepare for it. My scores from last time were middle of the road – so the judges saw me as an average dancer. Ok, fine thats their opinon.
Ive put alot of thought about my music selection, costume choices, choreo etc. I think Ive set myself up for some mind blowing routines – stuff people have never seen me do before. Im really going to push myself to where I and my body have never been before. I plan to have my body look like Edward Nortions face from Fight Club – LMAO!
Some of the stuff I want to do but cant, which im not stressed about yet. I know I need to be training. I thought I had a training schedule set up but with my life schedule with the way it is – its super hard to even find a time to breathe in it.
Any tips anyone can give me about training – should I do cardio/weight, focus on all my routines, strength training etc? Or even things youve learned from past training experiences!
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27 Replies
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When is the competition?
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We had a class w/ Jessyln Mediary. She has traveled through Italy on tour and she owns 3 or 4 studios in the Maryland, VA area. She was at the USPDF teaching a class. She does train woman to go to the USPDF.
Anyway, we asked her about competitions and her response is to do even the most basic moves well. If you do some tricks but can't transition or don't flow, it doesn't do as high of a score as the woman who does all floor, spins and transitions and flows great. You have to feel comfortable on the pole.
My advice is get lost in the moment. I forget everyone is around when doing shows or competeing. I hear the music and unwind. Don't worry about doing the best, or winning. Focus on doing your best, for you and you will probably fare out better.
Good luck!
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Amy – Its in February. Its the prelimnary round. If I win one of the catagories then I advance to the finals. I want to win the whole thing but ill take a win in the prelims and be happy.
roamy – I know Jessalynn! She was my instructor for a few years before she opened Pole Pressure. She knows its a goal of mine to win Ms Xpose – heck she came up with the idea. I just love her to bits! She knows I have the potential to win it and surpise them all. I had thought about booking a private with her and work on my routines. The girls and guys of PP are hardcore and have amazing talent!
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I love her attitude. She gos and gos and I was inspired from her from the start. After a 1 1/2 hour class, she still was available for individual tricks.
Her advice is to also do tricks that you know. She said that someone(maybe it was Atlethea or Jenyne) does an awesome jade split(I think they both do-so I can't remember which one she said) but if she threw it into a USPDF than she wouldn't score so high, b/c her specialty trick isn't the same as what someone elses is. Just do what you do really well. Don't worry! Good luck!
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mini– you say that you barely have time to breathe, but then you are asking about putting together a really intense and rigorous training regimen? girl, if you don't have time for yourself now, you won't have any more time for yourself in three months when the competition is a month away and you're freaking out. i remember how upset you've been in the past and i think that maybe if you thought about the competition a little differently and put yourself under less pressure you might enjoy it more and be happier with the outcome, no matter what hte result?
i personally think you should forget about trying to learn crazy new tricks that you aren't even able to do right now. you want everythign to be clean, confident, and to be able to dance through all of it, not just "get" your tricks. if you're already working on stuff, fine, give yourself another couple months to really clean it up or pick one trick and work towards it with focus. take the time to strengthen when you can but i think it's important to be realistic about what you want to work on and how much time a week you can give to this.
think about being the best YOU that you can be, not the best YOU you could be if you had infinite time to train and lift and take privates.
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Right now im hitting the rought part of my schedule. My load should lighten up after my event is over. I also took on a role as the Cookie manager for my daughters Girl Scout troop. That wont let up until Dec. Plus with her cheer schedule, that will also let in Nov after it becomes just competitions. But once the Battle is done, I can spend more time getting training done.
Im not planing on doing moves I know cant do yet. I have some that im so close to getting that I just need some off pole training to get to and stay consistant in working on. I do go to class weekly so I am getting something in, plus getting some ideas for combos, transitions etc. If it doesnt look good by Jan – its getting omitted for something else.
I still have fun when im doing this it just hurts putting all that time, sweat, bruising etc into something that isnt winning material. Someone told me I did great as always and I think 'well if im so great, why didnt I win?'. Thats the part that eats me up when im sulking over it. I give myself the time to pout and then just move on. I try not to think about the 'i havent won yet, whats wrong with me' parts. I have no time to dwell on it. I want to win but im happy for those who do win.
Ive started to plan to film myself more and see what works what doesnt work. I still have time before the routine is 90% concrete in my mind. Thats something I hadnt been doing, I just thought it was going to look great b/c it was in my mind.
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Ok I have only competed once so I am no expert but I will tell you what I can that might help you –
Everyone is right about the clean tricks over the advanced ones. There were A LOT of moves I wanted to put into my competition routine when I was choreographing it in my head but then I realized I didn't really have time to learn much less polish brand new moves. The category I was in didn't allow any inverted moves so that was challenging as well. I ended up having a fairly simple routine and afterward the judges told me that if my routine was a little more advanced I would have won the whole damn thing!!! That was kind of a slap myself in the forehead moment because I stuck with keeping it simple and placed third. Now I know this if I choose to compete again, but if my routine was more advanced maybe I would have sucked in the execution and not placed at all, I will never know but I am happy with the outcome because my goal was to just perform my routine the best I could and the minute I stepped off stage I felt like I nailed 90% of it so I was happy and placing third was just an unexpected bonus. But also I love playing with the audience and having a really entertaining routine, I don't know if I would have been as engaging with the audience if I was worried about nailing harder tricks. My biggest strength in pole is my audience interaction and not my tricks at all (kind of sad if you think about it LOL) so I do routines that showcase me as a performer, not so much my tricks because I know I can engage the audience well so I use that as a cornerstone of my routines. Pick what your strengths are and focus on those, I have heard tons of people say they'd rather see a simple move done perfectly than a harder move done half assed. Hopefully this helps!
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Clean! Clean! Clean! After spending some time with Natasha and Alethea prior to my second competition I realized that cleanliness, dance, lines and execution would be the key to my performance. I worked with Kelly Yovonne on my routine for midwest and she really acted as a sounding board and coach and honestly I walked away from that experience loving dance more and more open to ideas I hadn't thought of. I was in the advanced division and it was no holds barred but I chose to dance simply with emotion and keep tricks to a minimum within the compulsories. I wanted to dance with passion and make everyone cry. My goal was to get a standing ovation and make people cry – I gave up on "winning" because Glitter pointed out – life wouldn't change but I knew my life would change if I could make someone feel something and I wanted my life to change. So that's what I did.
Never under estimate the power of emotion and expression. Feel the music and tell the story, bring people into your world. No one will miss a trick they didn't see but they will miss well executed tricks if the tricks aren't up to par. I think that setting goals for yourself as a dancer that do not involve winning help make your routine and performance memorable. Sometimes it's just better to remembered, sometimes it's better to have people say they really enjoyed performance and thought you had it. Anyone can go out there and do a whole bunch of tricks but not everyone can make you feel something.
Practice your routine until you can do it without the music, practice dancing without music, make the moves a part of your body and when the time comes you'll be able to connect. In my practices I felt like I was just going through the motions but once I was there in that moment my heart became full and it all came out.
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Charley I thought you did amazing and I'm glad you took my advice to heart so much! I was just thinking about how all the girls in our competition did well and I think that goes for all pole competitions. I can honestly say I have never seen a "bad" competition performance. Yes they may not be one of the winners but I am starting to figure out different competitions look for different things and a winning routine in one competition might not even place in another.
The whole competition experience for me gave me a newfound respect for the girls who do it all the time because it's really hard to put yourself out there and be compared to other people even though at the end of the day I think everyone in a competition was picked for a reason. Since people were paying a decent amount of money to see the competition I was in, I really wanted to give them a good show and I think as a group we put on a great show for everyone. I was somehow able to keep myself from being nervous by thinking about it that way too, so I think bottom line is know your routine, try to do the best you personally can, and have fun! it's okay if you don't have the hardest tricks of the day but if you have a trick you are already good at the best you have ever done it in the competition then to me that is just as good as winning. I was missing tricks in my routine up to a few days before my performance but the actual performance went really smoothly minus a few hiccups which is to be expected in a competition situation. OK I will stop acting like the competition expert now after doing my whopping one competition https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gifbut it was a huge learning experience for me so I just thought I'd share.
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Glitter you were phenomenal! I know that as far as training goes you should be taking all sorts of lessons and training aside from pole but I really don't like to do off the pole stuff so I would just practice floorwork or something like that but realistically we should be weight training, working on dropping weight before a comepetition and getting flexibility training. The bottom line is every move can be more effortless, executed better and bendier – it's up to the dancer where she wants to spend her time focusing.
I could have done better if I had prepared more, focused on my body as a whole and did weight training and lost a couple pounds (yes I know I'm skinny – I mean losing a couple pounds right before comp so that you're lighter and the tricks are easier) instead I was bloated and actually PUT ON a couple pounds lol! I didn't weight train, I did work on flexibility but primarily I worked on dancing…for me I chose to work with the body I had not plan on a different body in 6 weeks – when I realized I'm as flexible and as strong as I'm gonna get I began choreographing with what I had to work no matter how happy Iw as with it and decided to focus on presentation. That's just me, if I do another comp I might work harder on other things…and I might think about things a little differently too. This time I just needed to not epically fail like I did at USPDF ECR lol!
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Mini…I think you are looking at things in such a way that's not fair to yourself.
Just because, as someone said, you did great…that doesn't mean you did better than those who placed ahead of you. You have to realize that no matter how hard you try and how good you do, someone can always do better. In fact several people may out do you. So your question "If I did great why didn't I win?" is not being fair to yourself.
Everyone who competes have to be ready for doing a really great job and still not winning. We see that all the time. How many competitions did you see where you felt someone did a phenomenal job but still didn't even place?
It's also about understanding the scoring system and how your performance comes out based on the judging criteria.
Polish is much more important than skill level. If you can do it perfectly…don't even try it in a competition.
However, those who do more advanced moves AND perform better in other ways are simply going to score higher if the rest of their performance (showmanship, creativity, musicality, etc) are also the best.
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yeah i second what the others are saying…. take it easy … dont put too many hard moves … its prettier when moves are easier and well done.
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This is exactly what I needed to see!!! I played around with 2 of my routines this afternoon. I already started omitting stuff that looked great in my head but I cant string it nicely in real life. Im now starting to see its ok to have a 2nd or a 3rd draft of a routine. Before I signed up do try this again I really thought about where my weakness lies and where the areas for improvement. Im a show person by nature, I just dont have alot of tricks. In my mind the area of improvement is the weights and the weight loss. Ive also got to be flexible when it comes to days to train – being a parent and being married to someone who works alot of overtime makes finding the time to train really hard. By the time my kids are in bed the big question is – do I do weights and stretch or do I go to bed b/c im super exhausted and I have to get up at 345a to go to work.
I know I am very hard on myself – this is what happens when youve been comepeting and placed top 3 just about everything you entered since you were 8.
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I know it is hard to stomach-but poling shouldn't be about "winning". If you are doing what you love, that is "winning". I know it sounds corny, but if you focus on winning, you probably will be stressed and may not do as well. If you focus on what you love-spins or transitions that you adore, and fit perfectly with a song-I am sure you will be much happier with your outcome. I never try to do better than anyone else, because I believe in this sport-we all are kickin some a**! I mean come on-next to a man, they usually can't do what we do, AND we do it in HEELS!!! Just enjoy your routine. If you don't love it, change it to fit you. Don't worry about weight loss. Working out on the pole gets you super fit the longer you do it. I have been poling since 2006 and my tummy got super cut the last two years, from inside-if you know what I mean(its expanding right now though cuz of baby:)) but my point is that you don't need to do anything more than pole if you don't want, and you'll still get cut. You just add a lil extra time. This may mean 10 more min of warm up a week, or do a special move 3-5x. Then do a few moves 3-5x each time for muscle memory. You'll build muscle, strength and confidence. Good luck!
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I have nothing to add re: competing, as I don't compete and it's already been said so well, but here's a quote that I love:
"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive.” –Merce Cunningham
This is why I dance–it makes me feel alive. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif
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