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Pole and yoga (and limited time)
Hi everyone,
Short version:
The forms of exercise I like best are: pole, yoga, and walking/jogging. It's pretty hard to schedule regular sessions of all three activities and still have time to work, cook healthy meals, clean my house, run errands, and have a life! Is it possible to do a little bit of everything and still make positive progress? Or does fitness have to become my second job?
Longer version:
I love pole dancing, and I also really like yoga. Although they are both very different, I like aspects of both activities and I know lots of other people feel the same way. I've been trying to make a commitment to pole regularly as of late, but it's hard when I'm juggling so many other demands in my life. Recently, I was also jogging 3x/week, but I stopped because I got too busy with work. The truth is, I still really hate running, so that one was easy to give up. But I love yoga. I even found a studio I really like. But I feel like I have to choose between pole, yoga, or cardio just to get "something" done each day. I can't possibly do it all and it becomes just another source of stress. It feels like every form of exercise requires constant practice, or else I won't get anywhere with it.
How many yoga classes per week are really needed? I see a lot of advice online saying "as many as possible" or "daily." But driving to the studio is time consuming (especially since most of the classes happen right around rush hour.) I have a home pole practice, and there's no reason why I can't do home yoga practice as well.
In that case, would one yoga class a week, supplemented by home practice, be nearly as good as daily yoga classes? There's only seven days in a week, how can I have "rest days" and still do everything I want to do?
Thanks!
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9 Replies
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Thanks chemgoddess. I will definitely check this out. I know pole/yoga fusion isn't a new idea. In fact the first pole studio I attended taught classes in this manner and I really enjoyed it.
I guess what I'm saying is, I like the idea of having a traditional yoga practice in addition to pole. I love the mind body aspects of yoga as well as the yoga community. But I'm not sure I have time to be a full fledged member of both communities. I'm wondering if anyone else has.
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I'm like you. I love both pole and yoga and don't have time for both. I compromise, for a warm-up before pole work I often do Sun Salutations. I use a lot of yoga influence in my stretching routine as well. I try to get the most benefit from both schools of thought for my current goals. 🙂
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Here before I was introduced to pole dancing, I had been rock climbing for a while and loved it. Now I still have time for both but can’t do both of them because my hands hurt so badly. So I’m kinda caught between them. And yoga and ballet to improve pole performance. Where would I find time for studying and working? Not to mention the expenses add up pretty much 🙁
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Ninja, I have the same problem – too many hobbies and not enough time! I think a weekly yoga class plus at-home practice is a good idea. I've started keeping my yoga mat at work too so I can a quick series of asanas at lunch, but I know not every workplace is suitable for this – I'm very lucky to have my own office with a door.
One thing I've been trying to do is to arrange my workouts by *function,* not by activity. I know I need strength, flexibility and cardio training, so I combine activities to meet those goals. For example, a strength workout might include Veena's pole strengthening routine video, traditional strength training like pushups and situps, practicing tough tricks, and ending with some yoga to stretch my muscles. A flexibility workout might be just yoga, just pole, or a little of both. And a cardio workout, I can warm up with a jog, do one of my exercise DVDs and/or have a mostly freestyle pole practice, and cool down with yoga.
So you might try arranging your exercise schedule that way – Monday is Strength, Tuesday is Flexibility, Wednesday rest, Thursday Cardio, etc.
I understand what you mean, though, about practicing them separately too, and getting all the benefits of each without dividing your attention. There's nothing like an hourlong+ yoga session if you ask me. That's a trap I fall into sometimes, though – when I try to block out time for exercise, in my mind it's always at least an hour commitment, even though I could just as easily do a 20-30 minute workout and have more time in the rest of my day for every other damn thing on my to-do list.
Now that I think about it, shorter, more regular practices would probably help me progress more than the occasional hour+ session (where I spend almost as much time wiping off the pole and de-sweating myself as I do actually practicing, and by the end of it I'm too tired to get much out of my moves anyway). Hmmm. Maybe something for both of us to consider?
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Oh, one more thought too, about squeezing in Rest Days and still making progress – in my opinion, a yoga-only day IS a Rest Day. I don't think your body has to recover from yoga the way it does from a hardcore pole session or long runs — provided that you're not working on super-hard poses like inversions or arm balances or something. Or if you had a strength-training workout the day before, try to stick to poses that use different muscle groups than the ones you trained.
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Hi Pankake! Nice to meet you, and glad to hear I'm not alone. You make a lot of really good points.
I think focusing on a theme for each workout (instead of a specific activity or a muscle group) is a great idea. I don't usually like the typical gym routine of breaking down workouts into body parts, like "legs day" and "abs day." It seems to go against the idea of training the body as a whole. But having a dedicated strength or flexibility day sounds much more appealing.
I also think you make a great point about trying to do shorter, tougher workouts. I also sweat a lot, and I spend a lot of time cleaning my pole and taking breaks to stop the sweating. If I only practice pole tricks for 30 minutes, that's still probably about as much actual pole time as I would get from a more leisurely hourlong pole session.
I really want to start doing yoga classes twice a week. I love the positivity of yoga and the fact that no one judges me there (well, maybe they do, but they stay quiet!) It's easy to develop body image issues when pole dancing, and yoga helps keep me grounded. Maybe I can plan to do cardio in the morning on the days I take yoga classes at night. Then I can do strength training and pole practice on the other days.
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Nice to meet you too! And glad my points helped – I think I did myself a favor, too, by thinking about the benefits of shorter but more frequent pole practices. I've been in a pattern of only poling twice a month or so because that's "all I had time for" – except that's not true, I DO have time for more than that, if I stop thinking I need at least an hour to pole!
Another idea would be to designate those shorter sessions to specific objectives – like maybe one short practice for just the basics/beginner stuff, one just for spins, one just for practicing tricks on your "bad" side, and one just for the new moves you want to conquer. That could help if you tend to stare at the pole and think "what should I do next" a lot when practicing, I know I do that.
Thanks for putting this on my mind – November is going to be a crazy busy month for me, so I should take the time now to create an exercise structure that will work around everything else that will be on my plate next month.
P.S. I never realize how much time I spend staring at the pole, wiping sweat off myself and cleaning the pole until I'm editing my video after and have to cut out HUGE chunks of footage where I'm not doing anything. 45 recorded minutes often ends up producing a 4-minute video. Sigh. That alone should be enough to tell me I'm not having the most efficient practices I could be.
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I’m so happy to hear I’m not the only one with balancing out hobbies. I love yoga and pole but I also like to hike wih my dog. And it’s like stressful trying to do them through out the week. I need yoga to help me calm down after a day and well the flexibility is a plus but I like to do pole and well being outside wih my dog it benefits him and its fun to be outside . So it’s I guess it’s a universal problem.
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