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do i need a grip aid
im at day 7 on my pole currently im working on an inverted v, if thats what its called, i was wondering if there is anybody out there whos been polling without any grip aids or if its possible to continue into advace moves without it
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37 Replies
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I did not use grip aids until I learned iguana mount.
What is your background that you are trying inverts after only 7 days? This is a little worrisome….
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I must agree with chemgoddess, I didnt learn the basic invert until a couple of weeks in and even that is really early. 7days! take it slow, these things come with time and are not as easy as they may look. I didnt use grip aids until much later as well. be careful and dont over work yourself doing things too quickly can lead to injusy and nobody wants that,most importantly have fun!!! I know venna has great lesson plans for people just starting out 🙂 if you have any questions or anything feel ferr to send me a message 🙂
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the v invert isnt till the end of veenas intermediate lessons!!!!!!!!! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_eek.gif
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Please note this is just my personal opinion. How soon you might need grip aids is very individual. The way to tell if you need them is if you're holding the pole as tightly as possble, but sliding down. If it's your grip loosening over time (as in, you can hold onto the pole for a second, but then slip), or you can feel your grip getting looser or your fingers peeling off the pole one by one, then it's a strength or endurance issue, and a grip aid won't help. (Same thing applies to leg grip). If you are having none of these problems, you probably don't need a grip aid yet. I'm sure there are some people out there who never use grip aids at all.
If the first problem is happening for you (grip stays tight, but you'restill sliding) that could either be due to your skin (too sweaty or too dry) or not enough grip strength or most likely, both. In my opinion both problems can be improved by grip aids. Some people say not to use grip aids early on or else you'll become reliant on them and not build grip strength. On the other hand (pun not intended), if, like me, you're sliding so much you can't even do anything on the pole, you are not going to be on the pole long enough to build grip strength in the first place. If it wasn't for my Tite Grip, I would never have built my grip strength at all.
The other things to think about with becoming dependent on grip aids are whether you're willing to pay for them (although I'm not sure how expensive they are outside of my ridiculously expensive city) and also how often you need to refresh them. If all you want to do is learn some tricks in the comfort of your own home, it's probably not a big deal to be wiping your hands and applying a grip aid in between each move. If you want to do full routines, you need to be able to pole for at least five minutes without replenishing (ideally you should be able to last for longer than your routine, so getting through the routine is a cinch).
As for the inverted V, I learnt it at my seventh ever pole lesson, and it didn't cause me any injuries. (Learning a cradle spin too early did though, so beware).However, learning an inverted V so soon meant I learnt with poor technique that I'm still trying to unlearn. On the other hand, maybe you're an olympic gymnast/amazon goddess and it's easy for you. This is all assuming that we're all thinking of the same inverted V.
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This is compleatly my own personal preferance and opinion here before I say anything.
I honestly don't belive in using grip aids period. I feel that by using them you cheet yourself into thinking you can do something that without the aid you can not do. (I actually feel the same way about poling in boots) I understand their use for people whos hands sweat a lot and they need it. But other then that I really do fail to understand why people use them. Again this is just me. I do undestand that while learning a new move it can help you grip better but what about once you stop using the grip aid? You basically have to relearn what you just learned. I have tried it out once when a friend of mine convinced me to try it and frankly it made the moves I already knew far more challanging in a bad way sense I couldnt use the grip I had become used to using. I think that if you have not built up the proper strength or techinique for a move you should keep working on it until you do. Sure it takes longer, but you will never have a handi cap that way.
Again this is my own personal opinion and I do not mean any disrespect to anyone. (Ya'll rock)
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Solsticedark, it's funny: I feel the same way about spotting that you do about grip aids! I would never ever use a spotter. Yet, plenty of people believe in spotting new moves and if it works for them, cool.
Just for the fun of debate:
I guess the thing for me is, I have sweaty hands (and shins, shoulders, sides and legs in anything but mid-winter). Without antiperspirant grip aids the pole actually feels (and sometimes looks) wet (gross I know). So I would say that me not having grip aids is like someone without such sweaty hands gripping a wet pole. If you can't do a move on a wet pole (or hey, even a greased pole) does that mean you can't do it?
I guess it becomes a question of where you draw the line: At what degree of friction could you say someone can truly do a move? And if we were to somehow measure the friction between someone's hand and the pole, would all people and poles be equal? Does one person using iTac 4 equal one person's Tite Grip, equal one person's nothng at all?
And there's the fact that weightlifters and gymnasts use grip aids and gloves/grips. And golfers, tennis players, plenty of other sports are fine with it too. From an aesthetic standpoint gloves might not go with some forms of poledancing (although pole-fitness focussed stuff suits them), but other than that, why is pole any different from any other physical activity that relies on grip? (Just being rhetorical).
No grip aid is so good that it would "glue" you to the pole (that I know of!). I personally don't use anything with tack in it (except shaving gel on my legs on cold dry winter days) because I sweat through it and it makes the pole even more slick. But I don't think compensating for my sweaty hands by applying Tite Grip before a routine is in any way cheating.
Just debating for fun 🙂
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If you start using grip aids too soon, you risk stunting your progress as you build your grip. I didn't use them for the first 6 months I was on the pole & spun, inverted, & learned aerial positions without them. But really what harm comes from delaying the use of them? Build your grip, make sure you've got your strength holds down first!
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For most people, yeah, there's no harm in putting them off. And as I said in my last post, unless you are just sliding down and frustrated, there's no point using one at that point.
But, for some people, they know that no matter how much strength work they do, how much they try to grip onto the pole, how good they are with everything else: leg grip, balance, arm and abdominal strength, flexibility, aerial awareness, all they hear is "sorry, you can't participate in pole dancing because for some reason people have decided that this is the ONE THING that matters".
You know what happens when you arbitrarily decide to ban grip aids for newbies? People with sweaty hands quit. They just quit. How are you supposed to builld your grip strength, when you can't even grip to build your grip strength? I mean, sure there's gyro balls, and tennis balls, but come on, if you (general) were forced to sit around with a tennis ball and watch everyone else progress and just KNOW you could join them if only you could put a bit of antiperspirant on your hands, would you really feel like continuing?
Here's the thing: I don't go to threads about people with motion sickness and say " oh you shouldn't be learning any inverts while you get dizzy. Because if you're having trouble with the movement of the spinning pole you clearly haven't developed the right sort of balance and aerial awareness to be up on the pole. And you're a CHEATER CHEATER CHEATER and you can never progress and never get better and you have to just sit there clinging to a spinny pole because obviously everyone is exactly the same and if you don't have the same tolerance as me you obviously aren't good enough to be a pole dancer.
The next person who implies I'm cheating gets my un-grip-aided hands wiped on them :p
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Sorry to get so heated, and sorry to Kaygee for the highjack. This is my last post on this, I promise.
But this site gets so demoralising at times. I look at everything I've achieved, and it's the only area of my life where I have any sort of confidence in myself, and then I get onto this website and people like to tell me everything I do is cheating. (And all the artistic gymnasts in the world are also cheating apparently).
This is usually such an awesome, positive, supportive site, but the tendency some more advanced dancers have to tell everyone else that they shouldn't be progressing so fast, they're not good enough to try whatever yet, or their achievements don't really count is actually really depressing. (I mean if there's a safety concern state it by all means, but don't come down from on high and tell people what they can and can't do). It just shakes people's confidence.
A nasty thought sneaks into my head that in a small sport such as pole dancing there is an incentive to keep newbie dancers from improving: one day they might be better or know more than you. (General you and general they).
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I also have sweaty hands and sometimes I do use grip aids. Other days however I don’t need to. I think the important thing is to not rely on it. If you feel like you can’t dance without it then that could be an issue. Also I hope I didn’t offend with my earlier comment, if you truly are at that level to do the v invert then good for you that’s awesome! Just make sure that you are doing it with proper technique and don’t overwork yourself. I know I did that same thing with the reverse grab spin and had to completely re learn it 🙁
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I'm a beginner and I've been tempted into buying a grip aid. I bought a chrome X-pole recently and while I do stick, after a few minutes my whole pole has this layer of slime on it. Gross! I'm still swearing off buying one, because I've noticed my grip getting better. As others said, it would just be a good idea not to become dependent on them. Suppose I was at a bar that had a dance pole.. I don't wanna be like, "D'oh, I forgot my grip aid, now I can't go on there!" I personally would hold off on using them, because it could be a hand grip issue.
I don't think using a grip aid is cheating. That is almost like saying using a TG or brass pole is cheating because you stick better. A pole instructor I had said spins were much tougher for her when she used grip aid, so I guess it's kinda give or take.
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Warning: I'm about to vent a little and I am not addressing anyone in particular, so I don't mean for anyone to take this personally.
Agreed – using grip aids is not "cheating" – I hate it when people say one thing or another is "cheating." No offense, but it seems like everything is being called cheating lately – certain hand positions, grip aids, even whether a pole is spinning or not. And yet, you're right xcandycoatedx, having a brass pole isn't considered cheating, so what gives?
If you're struggling to stay on the pole because you don't have the strength, that's one thing – and you can probably tell whether you're strong enough or not. It's tempting to say that grip aids are okay as long as you don't rely on them, but if your hands are way too sweaty (a problem I'm very familiar with), then you're making the pole wet. If the pole is wet, it doesn't matter if you have the strongest grip in the world…You will NOT stick, and generally you WILL have to rely on grip aids. And if you can't stick, you can't even use the pole to build your strength. Having extremely dry hands creates a similar problem – there just isn't enough friction.
In my opinion, using grip aids is always a smart thing to do when learning new moves because you will never learn the correct body positioning if you can't grip the pole in the first place. And when you do have those moves down, it's not like you haven't been building up your strength practicing, even if you are using a grip aid to help you stick. Grip aids just don't work THAT well, unfortunately. And anyway, applying grip aid, at least to the pole, is not uncommon in competitions – but why? Aren't those competitors cheating? No – grip aids are applied to the pole so that no one slips, and no one gets hurt…so why, then, would it be called cheating to use grip aids at home?
Of course, I personally think it's fine if you don't believe in using them – you're lucky. The frustrating thing about this whole issue is that if you're on one end of the spectrum (and have sweaty or dry hands), all of the "cheating" accusations get kind of annoying. Every one is different. I don't want to feel ashamed just because I use grip aids – especially when professional dancers also use them and no one seems to blink an eye at that.
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I had a student who swore up and down that her hands were too sweaty to do anything. Someone gave her some grip aid to try and she became hooked. She would literally go through half a bottle in one 60 minute class! She slathered her hands and legs in grip and then would complain that the skin on her inner thighs were "KILLING" her. Well of course they were killing her if she relied on the grip aid instead of building strength! But the fact remained that her hands were so slippery that she couldn't hold on long enough to build any strength. Then I bought her a pair of football receiver gloves ($14) and made her climb and do other strengthening moves with them on. Don't know what happened but after trying on the gloves, her hands miraculously "dried" and she was able to work the pole. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif
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As another biased sweaty-hander, I don't really think an antiperspirant counts as "aid," it's just putting you on the same level as people whose hands don't sweat ridiculously. I can dance fine at the beginning of a practice, before my hands start to sweat, but after that it's all over. I use Tite Grip just so that my hands are reasonably dry, and it certainly doesn't help me stick to the pole at all. So. I think if you don't have sweaty hands, you should be fine, and if you do, try an antiperspirant.
I also think it's fair to use grip aids for new moves to get the positioning down–and maybe even to give you confidence. There are a lot of moves you literally can't do if you're too afraid, like inverting, for example.
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I have sweaty hands and it seems that building up the cauloses on my hands has helped a bit with the slipping. Grip aids are only helpful for about a minute then they come right off onto the pole. I gave up on those. I just wipe my pole and hands often and keep a fan nearby to blow dry my hands.
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