Fallen off the Pole Wagon :(

[TaraLee]

Oh, I get this! I was off the Pole for a bit, and haven’t been to the studio in months now, with my health crisis. I see videos of everyone progressing at my studio, and sometimes find myself feeling left in the dust. It’s been a rough go honestly. I’m so grateful for this program here and all the support I find in this community with all of the Veeners! Some days I spend more time watching other people’s pole videos than actually working on my own poling.

[Lula Geddes]

I work as a tour leader and every year I have to take months off and cannot even do a little bit of exercise to maintain strength when I’m away for work. Until this year it wasn’t so bad, used to do around 3-4 tours per year and managed to get exercise in between, but this year I’ve run out of the savings I had to do my PhD so had to up my work schedule starting in March.
Back then it was my birthday and I also wanted to get the snake tattoo on my leg finished this year. First I had a delayed allergic reaction 14 days after getting it done (after 20 years of inking and having had that color before!). I had to keep working with it and finally it got infected 30 days on… ended up in hospital twice and wasn’t been able to do any exercise for 4 months, but had to push through 4 months of work intermitted with dermatologist visits, my eyes suffering allergies and infections (never had it before!) and getting infected cists in my groin (that I always did suffer from!) and my body getting side effects from antibiotics… When I finally started exercising a little again for 2 weeks I could do nothing but 15 minutes max of mobilization, my back was in pain because of the lack of exercise and I could not bend at all my left knee without suffering extreme pain because of walking and sitting awkwardly on that leg for so long…
At times in the past I felt envious seeing people progress with their tricks while I had to be away for work and lost some of my skills and had to work so hard to build up strength again. This time… I really don’t care! I actually realized that I don’t care much for tricks – nothing wrong with them and all great workouts, but after all I only really care for dancing! And most often the people I was envying cannot put two moves together… not that I am a great dancer either and since I moved out here to Cyprus there isn’t much good dance training for over-18s so I lost a bit of those skill too.
Anyway, not sure what’s my point… a) I’m grateful too for this program so I can start again and get myself back to a certain level without facing the outside world! b) I think sometimes we all get a bit worked up about trying to get the next trick, trying to get back into a ‘super-fitness’ routine; at some point perhaps we should just do the tricks we enjoy doing and it’s much more important and impressive to pole dance with passion, intention, expression and creativity than trying to impress, show you can do something more difficult or trying to lose a kilo or two! c) thanks for starting this conversation, I really wanted (and needed!) to talk about this, but was worried about feeling like a ‘moaner’.

[Jacey]

Thanks for all the replies and encouragement. I’m trying to get back to class with one of my favourite instructors. The reason for this is that I like her style and also her positive attitude that doesn’t make me feel like a loser for dropping off. I have 3 of those instructors that I feel comfortable with going back after failing, the others are more enthusiastic to receive students who fare better than others. However I thought I’d be starting slow so I went by continuing air yoga. The silks can be really nasty and leave some very long bruise lines. However it didn’t discourage me. I manage to even pull a move :). I’m not a slender person, I’m somewhere between, chunky-chubby, short and clumsy so it takes me time to do things. I’m not discouraged and I do feel healthier doing pole and air yoga and I believe the two compliments each other well. I haven’t been able to book a class this week but hoping I can get there next week. I agree with Lula that I can’t do tricks but I do love to dance and sometimes I focus too much on how to do the tricks I forget to enjoy myself..isn’t that the whole point of doing pole? To have fun? I do plan to get Veena’s classes but I need to also commit to having offline classes because I need a spotter. I don’t feel confident enough to do some things without one. Otherwise I can use Veena’s tips for warm ups (which I tend to ignore or neglect :/). I’m not the most disciplined of students xD.

I’ve added a pic that a classmate manage to capture from after air-yoga class :).

[travelerunderstars4916]

Good luck! I’ve also had to take a forced break, my jobs hours have gone up and I seem to come home so exhausted at night it’s hard to get the energy to do anything, much less work out! I have really loved having the warm ups and stretches on here which I can get to two or three days a week but would love to really be able to pole! This was very encouraging for me since I would really like to get back to it, hopefully in the next month.