[Cinara]

LillyBilly, I have the same problem with jade drop! As for the sad girl drop, I went to a workshop with Jenyne Butterfly, and she said the secret is to make your legs more parallel with the pole to drop, and tilt the, back to the usual angle to stop. I still can't do it, but I'm closer with that tip. 🙂

[Cinara]

Hmm… I honestly must not use my feet very much for climbing, because those shoes look fine to me. Now granted I mainly use 38mm brass, but I have also worn shoes with satin ribbons on 50mm chrome. I guess I use a different technique?

I started learning barefoot, but then I transferred to a new studio, where heels aren't compulsory, but everyone wears them, so I felt all short and dumpy as the only one barefoot. I found I needed to wear heels all the time to get used to them, and I slowly adapted. Even now I wear them at all time at pole unless I'm learning a new move where I might fall feet first. Here's some of the stuff I figured out:

With climbing I grip mainly with my shin and calf, which means depending on the weather I might need a bit of tite grip or shaving gel to help grip.

Things like star and cupid take a bit of practice to get the pole into the right spot. You have the inside of your calf and outside of your ankle on the pole. It feels really insecure at first and like your foot will just slip forward into genie, but it gets better. Maybe wearing heels builds your calves until they get big enough to get a good grip on the pole?

Balance is hard! I found a lot of it comes from the core. But your ankles also need to build strength of course

Standing up from the floor without the pole took me awhile. I found the trick is to stick your butt out. Actually,that helps in general, so again keeping your core engaged will help protect your lower back. But watch for lower back pain!

Everything is different and scary at first, so go easy on yourself, and take your time.

It might be a good idea to get some grippier shoes to start with anyway, because the ones you like won't be the easiest to use. I like to have nice shoes and practice shoes, because my poor shoes really take a beating.  But I think they would be doable eventually, so there is hope!

[Cinara]

It's at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEnnelQUh54

So cool but looks so painful!

[Cinara]

Lol, no idea where I got "kamikaze spin" from – I actually meant suicide back hook 🙂

[Cinara]

I like cradle to extended butterfly.Do you need a move for static or spinning? These are the others I can think of – all crazy strength moves, I can sorta do or not do at all…

Back hook spin to figure head to shoulder mount

Oona spin (reverse grab, spin around to back hook, invert to butterfly)

Phoenix

Chair spin into handspring

On spinning you could probably do quite a few spins, release your leg position, swing your hips in front of the pole and switch hands as you invert (this was in a Bobbi's routine and nearly killed me!)

Not sure if these three count, because you end up pretty low on the pole

Kamikaze spin which can go into hip holds, scorpio or jade

I've also done this spin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wpzZc4Tq4&list=UUZ9VIvGCCjvLBxw8ELw1PAQ&index=6&feature=plcphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wpzZc4Tq4&list=UUZ9VIvGCCjvLBxw8ELw1PAQ&index=6&feature=plcp and then gone into a double brass monkey

Cradle to scorpio like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zRub5WDmIo&feature=youtu.be

Good luck on the comp!

[Cinara]

Congrats! I'm too much of a pain wuss to even try a yogini.

All the leg grabbing stuff seems to be about hip flexor and back flexibility, and also strength, I guess. As someone who really lacks back flexibility despite my best efforts, it find the easiest thing to do is to bend my heel right to my butt like a quad stretch, grab it there and then extend out. Other people might have some more "correct" advice to give, but that's what works for me 🙂

[Cinara]

Hi Angel,

Funnily enough, I'm actually asking my Dr about Ehler-Danlos type III today! It's kind of hard to say.

On the one hand, I have hypermobility in my ankles, knees, hips, elbows, and also my back and shoulders as a child, along with jount pain, injuries, very easy bruising and soft skin. Plus, these traits seem to run in my family in a way consistent with an autosomal dominant pattern. (My brother, my Mum, her Mum – who could perform contortion tricks as a kid without training!)

But, on the other hand (quite literally!) my wrists and fingers have average to below average mobility, and while I've read you don't need hypermobility in every joint to meet diagnostic criteria, there seems to be a lot of focus on fingers and wrists in the beighton scale. Also, I don't have a lot of dysautonomic issues like orthostatic hypotension, but when I looked at it, I wondered if I had some milder dysautonomic symptoms, and maybe I don't notice like with pain? Also  I do tend to get tired easily, and especially my muscles tend to fatigue quickly (I mostly notice in warm-ups), so who knows?

I'm happy you finally had a diagnosis, and even if there's not a whole lot that can be done about EDS, at least you can know what's going on and get help to manage it. It's also cool to see your pic with a strong-looking jacknife – it gives me hope that maybe I'll still be doing that at 40, 🙂

Thank you everyone else as well for your responses. It brought a tear to my eye last night. It's great to go to Veeners for help https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_cheers.gif

[Cinara]

Thank you so much for respondng everyone! As it turns out, the results of the survey so far agree with my husband, so he's quite smug now 🙂 Now the responses have slowed down, I'll let you know why I was asking, and how I'll use the information, because I know people are worried, and I'm touched that you are!

Without going into too much detail, these are the experiences and beliefs I always had growing up:

1. Everyone has aches and pains = everyone's joints always hurt, and to bring it up is weak, or attention seeking (Well, if I mention aches and pains it's for attention. If someone else complains about pain, it's because it's worse than mine).

2. I did not realise that children's pain could or should be treated. I always thought children's Tylenol (Panadol here in Aus) was for fever only. In fact, as a child I thought the reason adults could take Tylenol/ibuprofen etc (struggling with cross-cultural names here) and I couldn't was because children don't feel bad pain in the same way adults do. And adult headaches are way, way more hurtful than even broken bones are for children.

3. I never, ever saw an adult cry until the age of 15, and even then it was a music teacher who was a bit of a loose cannon anyway. So it only occurred to me the other day that maybe I'm not somehow defective for having had other people see me cry. At the moment, yes there are reasons I'm crying more than is healthy, and I'm working on that. I do tend to excuse myself quietly, or try to wait until I can get home to cry, but it doesn't always work out that way.

4. Hmm, this was a bit of a silly question, firstly because pole dancers are more likely to ache than the average person, and secondly there's no consideration to severity, and it's kind of like if you think about itching you'll be itchy. Still, I just wanted to get an idea of what exactly the oft repeated "everyone has aches and pains from time to time" (and my self-added addendum: "so shut up and stop being so weak about your pain") actually translates to.

So what I take from your responses is:

I have had some uncommon beliefs growing up,

They may have caused me to ignore pain and push myself too hard.

I'm probably way too hard on myself in general

I have the right to seek treatment for injuries, even if they aren't severe enough to show up on xray.

Just to add a bit more about my experience of injuries:

From the age of 8, I have had at least one joint injury per year, including sprains, subluxations and stress fractures. I have probably spent more of my life injured than not injured. Almost all of these are from overuse. To be fair, I've done a lot of sport, but I still seem to get injured more than everyone else doing the same activity. My childhood PT, coaches, and actually everyone started to become skeptical that I was really hurt AGAIN after awhile. I figure the knowledge that the amount of aches and pains I have is above average helps me justify the expense of continuing clinical pilates (it's working woo!) and makes me feel less like a hypochondriac or an attention seeker.

I will tend to avoid getting treatment for injuries because I'm afraid the doctor, PT, etc will tell me there's nothing wrong with me, and if there's nothing wrong with me I'm a hypochondriac and an attention seeker and a waster of medical resources. I have even avoided getting neck injuries or suspected broken toes checked out in the past, because I'm afraid I'm somehow imagining them or overreacting.

I think the reason I'm prone to overuse injuries is partly some hypermobile joints and strange muscle inbalances, but I'm beginning to realise that maybe some of it is also not listening to my body. I've been under the impression that any pain I feel is actually not a big deal, and it would be weak to stop because of it, so I would push through to the point of doing damage. I don't know if my pain tolerance is too high, or if my expectation of how much pain I should put up with is the problem. Or maybe neither and I'm just injury prone?

As for accidents: I almost never have them, and if I do, I almost never get injured. For me it's because 1) I've done enough acrobatic type sports to have gained a good sense of my abilities, 2) I'm naturally quite cautious, and 3) years of ju-jitsu as a kid taught me how to fall safely like without even thinking about it.  But not everyone has the same background and for someone else it might not be as easy to not get injured. 

I would also say that in my opinion listening to your body is not a natural or automatic skill for everybody (hence my survey), but it's a skill everyone really should learn 🙂 And that's what I'm trying to do now.

Thanks again if you read my novel and/or took my survey 🙂

[Cinara]

Count me in for the hip popping and sternum popping! No idea about the sternum, but the hip popping/grinding/or feeling stuck is usually caused by tendons in the hip sliding past various pointy bits of the pelvis and getting caught on them. If it's painless it's not a problem, but contant rubbing can cause irritation and inflamation, so it can progress. I've had tendonitis in my left hip for over a year now, and it's just killing my flexibility, so maybe have a look at some PT proactively before it gets bad.

My glutes turned out to be really weak too – most of the reason was that I was not aware that my pelvis was so unstable so I never "turned them on" with walking/dancing/standing, etc. (Poor proprioception is a common issue with my joint hypermoility). A few weeks of clinical pilates made a big difference!

[Cinara]

Here's a reverse aysha

http://www.triagedesign.co.uk/wikipole/index.php5?title=Split_V

[Cinara]

Ooh, this took me ages!  I think I had the same problem: my shoulder would get caught on the pole and my top hand would start peeling off. I'm not sure exactly what I changed but here's what I think helped me:

1. Practice going from a reverse aysha into tg aysha. I found once I was comfortable with this, going from scorpio to tg aysha was really just a shortcut version of scorpio-reverse aysha-tg aysha.

2. You need to be comfortable releasing your legs and taking all your weight on your arms before any of the turning into aysha. 

3. When you see other people do it, it looks like they "push" their shoulder forward right past the pole. When you actually do it, it's more of an "unwinding" feeling – at least for me.

4. Play around with how high or low you grip with your top hand. I usually regrasp a little lower down the pole from where my hand originally is in the invert.

5. Grabbing the pole with the bottom hand I used to kind of sit up and twist a bit and it didn;t work. You need more of a reach back behind you. Maybe work on nice form in a "dragon" (the scorpio with hands on the pole that you do before the tg aysha) and check in a mirror/film to make sure you're doing it nicely. That's another thing I was doing just before it clicked.

Hope that helps!

[Cinara]

I've not had the chance to try a titanium pole yet, but I've found that rubbing some shaving gel/foam onto your legs and other gripping bits works nicely on brass, chrome and stainless steel. I also like to warm up wearing a sweater to help build up a bit more of a sweat. It works for the, like, 2 weeks per year that are actually cold and dry here. 🙂

[Cinara]

I think it's better to treat bad behaviour as bad behaviour – keep it lonely and unresponded to regardless of intent  than start worrying about who's a troll, what a troll is, or whether it's trolling to call a troll a troll…

I once got called a troll on another pole dance forum. A group of posters and moderators were talking about a well known studio, claiming dancers took steroids, they looked like men, they had to shave their facial hair, and generally being quite nasty. As someone who'd been to that studio I posted firstly correcting the incorrect belief they had, then pointing out that their comments were mean spirited and that questioning a woman's feminity based on physical traits (especially in a way that implied less feminine = bad person) was not cool.

I had a moderator blast me for being "too politically correct" and tell me I was clearly a troll. I left that forum, and as far as I know they're still all sitting around being catty instead of practicing and wondering why the dancers they criticise are better than them.

I guess my point is, I've seen it happen on a couple on non-pole forums too that when you start thinking about trolls you start seeing them everywhere, and eventually troll comes to mean "everyone who disagrees with the cool group". That hasn't come close to happening here, but I don't want it to ever even get close to that.

I'm talking in general because in the other post things got a bit ridiculous. But, as someone who had the exact same fault with my x-pole as many other people, I'm worried about a slippery slope from "people who make wild and nasty accusations related to x-pole are trolling" which is reasonable to "anyone who says anything negative about x-pole is a troll" which is what I've seen happen elsewhere on the net.

[Cinara]

Yay! Some snapping hip friends! (Strange thing to get excited about I know).I've had the same problem as you, Kyrelle with the pain at the front of my hip and it getting "stuck" at the front of my hip. So I'll pass on what I learnt from online research and my physiotherapist, but obviously I have no authority to give you advice, I'm just a random internet person 🙂

Pain and snapping/clicking/getting stuck on both the inside and outside of the hip are often caused by an overly tight or inflamed muscle or tendon getting caught on the bone when it slides over it. At the front of the hip  it's usually the illiopsoas over one of the pointy bits of the pelvis, on the outside it's usually the illiotibial band getting caught on the greater trochanter. (I love anatomy).

If it's just a click it's harmless, but if it's also painful there's some injury and inflamation there so it'll need a bit of rest. (Not stopping pole altogether, just avoiding the painful bits for awhile). Gently stretching your hip flexors will help. I've found that doing a kneeling lunge and then lifting my back foot off the floor towards my butt (knee still on the floor so you might want a cushion) is really good. Stretching glutes also helps, though I'm not quite clear on why.

Foam roller can help relax the illiotibial band, and I think Veena covers that in lessons, but I found the inflamation in my illiopsoas was too deep to be foam rolled or massaged.

The other thing to do is find some ways to reduce the load on your hip flexors when you are in a V. I agree with strengthening your core so that your abs can take some of the load off your hip flexors. Also, I wonder if some hamstring stretching would help too, because if your hamstrings are tight they will drag your legs back down again.

Again, if you want qualified advice, you've come to the wrong person, but this is what I've learnt through painful experience. 🙂

Oh, and one more thing: if it doesn't go away make sure you go to a doctor/PT/whatever because in rare cases the cause can be torn cartilege and the symptoms are very similar. I had to have an MRI, complete with injection of dye into my hip socket because my hip pain lasted for months – luckily it was tendonitis, not torn cartilege!

[Cinara]

Honestly, I'm not sure how a thin tumbling mat or yoga mat is going to do anything to protect you from major injuries – a crash mat maybe in some circumstances, but the only thing I can see a thin mat preventing is a few bruises. Still, if it's an insurance requirement, there's no choice.

To those who insist on mats and spotters, it's not really relevant because I don't live near you, but, I would certainly respect the rules of your studio and not try to invert without a spotter or try things without a crash mat. I also wouldn't come back, because it wouldn't work for me. But I still support your decision, and I would still recommend your studio to other people. 🙂