[Cinara]

I'm not an instructor, but I would consider myself an expert in falling :p Here are the things that I do to avoid injury when something goes wrong:

1. The obvious one is cushions around the pole when learning new tricks, of course

2. Cling to the pole with whatever you can! It will either stop your fall, and buy you some time to figure out how to untangle yourself and get down, or at minimum slow you down enough to reduce the impact. A fall flat onto your back could be a disaster from 5 feet in the air, but from 1 foot, it's just kind of embarrassing (that was me in class last week after my stupid sweaty hand slipped off the pole in an aysha).

3. Never let go with your hands! If a hand is on the pole it's just about impossible to land head first. In tricks where you're meant to let go of your hands, make sure you know how to regrasp the pole with them if needed.

4. Before you try a new trick, think about the "escape routes": how you might fall and how to prevent it. For example, in a gemini you might lose leg grip, so practice taking your hands off and then putting them back on and lifting your chest and head up a little. Practice this a few times so if you do slip it's automatic to regrasp the pole with your hands.

5. Practice emergency escapes. Work on going from any inverted trick back to a basic invert (with hands on the pole), or any upright skill to a pole climb position. You could also try inching down the pole one limb as a time from a basic invert – this came in handy once when I got all tangled up on a spinny pole going way too fast!

6. Tuck your head down towards your chest. If you are going to end up head first, this is the best way to minimise damage. That's not to say you wouldn't be hurt at all (I once landed head first on a trampoline from great height. I pulled several muscles in my neck and got a badly bruised sternum, but if I didn't tuck my head in it could have been a broken neck!) 

7. Never land on an outstretched hand (I broke my arm as a kid doing this. Never again.) If you're falling to the side land on your side with your bottom arm straight and palm down just in front of your thigh (if that makes sense).

8. Of course, all of this is kind of hard to actually do once you're falling! Just practice what you would do in a fall, and try to stay calm (if that's even possible). And be safe to prevent falls too!

So that's what I've learned from experience. I'm sure some instructors on here would have plenty of useful stuff to add, or maybe even disagree with me!

[Cinara]

For the first one, maybe the sad girl drop? I'm not sure whether that's only drama queen to drama queen, or whether the crucifix to drama queen version is also called a sad girl. The hints I've heard for this one are to move the back leg back, not just out, and that you don't need to drop very much to make it look good, because you're going from upright to a little ball anyway.

As for the jade drop, I've managed to drop down in little 1ft increments before. There was another thread on it here and someone said that Jenyne had told them that it's "all in the arm". That was how I managed to drop a little bit.

So when I first learnt a jade, I didn't actually have any armpit grip, only leg and side (I almost never use armpit grip). What I had to do was tilt my split backwards a bit (leg you're holding onto closer to the floor) so that I did have armpit grip. Then you just release the armpit grip and the leg grip together. At first I found that I would tilt forward instead of just drop, so I had to almost try to tilt backwards (head first!) to drop down level. I also had to make the split a bit less flat, but I'm not sure if that's just a rookie thing.

I hope that helps. I tend to learn by just trying stuff and seeing how it feels rather than breaking it down so I'm not always the best explainer 🙂

[Cinara]

Wow, what an awful man! I'm so sorry to hear about that. It sounds like you are doing everything that is reasonable to make sure your business isn't a problem. What might be a good idea is to document all the accomodations you've made: scheduling noisy events during off-peak times, having students wait at reception, etc. Also everything that happened with that man, just so the business manager knows what's going on and that he's the difficult one, not you. Do it in a "just so you know" way, nothing defensive or complaining (feel free to write the complainy version first and then revise!)

Maybe you could also get some sort of screen or petition and block off a corner of the studio to make a change room? That would cut down on the amount of traipsing up and down the corridor, so there would be nothing at all to complain about.

I'm not sure how likely you are to change this man's mind about his prejudices, if that's what's happening. But if you keep being the reasonable one, he'll have noone on his side and he'll have to keep quiet at least. 🙂

[Cinara]

Sure! Assuming we mean the same thing by a cradle (aka a Jamilla), it's not too complex. Your hands are already in the split grip position, so all you have to do is unhook your inside leg. It takes a bit of strength and balance, though so that's probably the main challenge.

[Cinara]

I like to go into a regular scorpio, but this combo might be too low for that. You could also try going back into a cradle and down – that would make it like a palindrome combo!

[Cinara]

On the positive side: the fact that your name is in bigger letters than any of the questions in their FAQ gives the impression that you are one of the most important and influential pole teachers in the pole community! If I were a new poler I'd be like, "Wow, that Jessica must be a really famous pole-dancer to be mentioned right at the top of the FAQ. I wonder why those guys don't like her?" And then I'd look you up, and see that you didn't say anything bad about them on your site, and no-one else said anything bad about you and go, "Wow, she's so famous she has hype backlash! I wonder if I can get into her course?"

[Cinara]

Ouchies! The jade took me ages to do too! And if it helps, it's taught in the same level as air shoulder mounts, the superpain and cartwheel mounts at my studio, so certainly not remedial!

 The way I got it was to go from gemini, but before you take your hands off the pole for the gemini, use your arms to lift your body up slightly and make sure the pole is running along the squidgy bit of your waist below your ribs (you'll need side grip, so no long tops). Hopefully the quick rearrangement of your side grip in the gemini will keep the pole off your ribs! The other thing that helped me was to make sure I pulled my leg across your body diagonally to get the lock. 

[Cinara]

Welcome and congrats on your first comp! Personally, I prefer to do choreographed than freestyle routines, but it depends on the person. If you have a dance background, or freestyle regularly freestyle is probably easy. I don't have either so I sometimes find that I get stuck and don't know what to do.

The other thing you can do is a semi-choreographed routine. Plan beforehand what tricks you want to do, and roughly when you want to them. Then freestyle it and film. You'll probably find bits you really like and then you can keep them in the routine. You'll find you slowly start choreographing from there. Plan moments of hip rolls, body rolls and the like that you can be flexible with on the timing so you have something to do if you're ahead or behind, or just forget what to do.

It really depends on what works for you though. I have a gymnastics background so I make pole routines as though they're floor routines. A bit of dance, three separate combos of tricks in place of tumble runs, a floorwork sequence, a pirouette and spins in place of the leap series and acro-gym-acro combination. So you'll probably find what works for you. For now just have a bit of a play around and you'll figure it all out.

Good luck!

[Cinara]

Other alternatives would be a physio or sports doctor. I add them because I once had a chiro fail to diagnose a fracture in my back and just try to "click" it into place right over the fracture site (!) And he was the official chiropractor for the Olympics too! That said, chiro works great for my Nanna, so I'm sure they're not all bad.

It's probably a good idea to get someone to have a look at it to make sure there's nothing serious and make sure practice won't make it worse. Otherwise, there's RICE – rest, ice, compression, elevation (only the first two are easy on a shoulder) for the first 24 or 48 hours (google will help with the correct amount of time) and then massage and heat after I think it's 48 hours.

Hope it's feeling better soon!

[Cinara]

I've been there before, and I wonder if you're experiencing the same thing I did. I had a look at your profile pics and you have learnt an impressive amount of stuff very quickly and with some nice lines too! That, plus how you mentioned you enjoy learning new tricks makes me wonder if you're very achievement-oriented like me?

What I found was happening was that I started being too hard on myself and getting very focussed on learning new tricks, and progressing. I'm naturally quite self-critical and I started comparing myself to other, better polers and getting frustrated that I wasn't as good as them. I suspect this all had a lot to do with frustrations in my non-pole life as well.

What I did is make a very strict rule for one practice that I was going only do stuff that was fun. No goal setting, no "shoulds", no strength practice, no drilling weaker skills to improve them, no trying stuff that I feel I should be able to do but just can't get (helloooo knee hold). Just doing whatever tricks I felt like doing and doing goofy dancing to the music.

If you do this kind of practice every day you won't improve as quickly as with more disciplined training. But, it will keep you from quitting. You might find you don't care about more disciplined training and just want to have fun every session. Or, it might reconnect you with you love of pole, so that then you can start setting goals and being more disciplined again without being so hard on yourself.

The other thing you can do is just change up the kind of training you're doing. So if you've been learning tricks, switch to learning how to freestyle. If you've been inverting a lot, switch to learning booty-popping or getting flatter splits. Or something like that.

Hope that helps 🙂

[Cinara]

Yeah, the "marion amber" is crazy right? I couldn't even get as close as you so well done!

 I also learnt an important lesson: If you are going to try a new trick on Pole Dance Dictionary, pay attention to how to get out of it, not just how to get into it! I tried a "dangerous bird" and got into it fairly easily, and apparently it looked quite nice… but then I realised I was stuck! Plus for some bizarre reason I was trying it up the pole instead of near the ground.

I eventually got out of it by kind of flicking my free leg and jumping down into a ninja crouch (or a clumsy facsimile thereof). So yeah, really should have planned that better :p

[Cinara]

Is it the thing Jenyne does at 3:20 in this video? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvqGI56e-9c&feature=PlayList&p=651F146EFC0CF2C2&index=3

[Cinara]

The reverse grab spin took me a few months to figure out and I used to have the exact same problem. I first started trying at about the stage you're at now. I'm not sure if the reason I finally got it was just more experience or being taught by someone different with different technique (in my experience it's not uncommon to get a new skill simply by having it taught to you in a second way.) What I changed was to step out away from the pole on my last step on my outside leg, rather than just stepping forward like I would for other spins.

I've never come close to getting into a flying ballerina from the pretzel spin (in fact I only just figured out a pretzel spin), but you can also get into it from an upright crucifix position. It takes a lot of flexibility in some sort of weird direction I don't entirely understand and it's a bit bruisy, but worth giving a go for the prettiness.

Here's a video of me getting into it: 

https://www.studioveena.com/videos/view/4dac4e91-0264-4e67-9c08-1ee20ac37250

And here'sone from Blueeyes that I favourited to learn it myself. (Blueeyes, I hope you don't mind me posting this, but it's been so helpful for me https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif&nbsp😉

https://www.studioveena.com/videos/view/eae66438-bb68-11df-856f-001b214581be

Of course the way pole terminology goes, you could have meant something entirely different, and this is all useless to you but oh well…

 

[Cinara]

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).

[Cinara]

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