[MelCat]

Which direction are your knees facing? Especially if your torso is upright, your knees should be as well, with an active feeling of rotating back. This rotation should also come all the way from the hip socket rather than the knee joint to keep everything safely in alignment. If lowering into your splits this way still hurts another alternatives could be to sit in a straddle in front of a wall with your hands behind you to add any desired forward pressure to increase the stretch, again with legs rotated from the hip socket to face the ceiling or as far back as possible. I’ve personally always been taught this from the start of my ballet training. If the knees do face the wall in front of you, the torso and hips should also be along that same horizontal axis to keep everything in alignment, which is much harder to gauge and easier to cheat, and thus can often be more dangerous and lead to knee injuries. Whenever I stretch, I try to keep my hips engaged to control alignment and prevent torsion.

[MelCat]

Ooh one of my favorite go-tos on static is a spinning chopper to an inside leg hang/scorpio and allow the momentum continue your torso around the pole to side switch, so the same leg is now gripping as an outside leg hang/gemini. Let that continue up the pole in a gemini climb and end in a jade split 🙂

[MelCat]

Squeezing your glutes can definitely help but from what it sohnds like, you may have an extended tailbone if even situps hurt you. Some people have this and I’ve know as well as trained a few women who have had this and the best conclusion was that some moves aren’t for everyone. As far as pole went, they pretty much just had to stay away from CARs and did all of their releases aa crossed-knee. They certainly had strong glutes and engaged them, but everyone has different anatomy and you can’t change your bone structure (or at least not without some crazy surgery!) If anyone else has seen this and found a better solution, though, I would love to hear it!

[MelCat]

Like everyone else has said, it totally depends on your own family.  My dad passed a few years ago, but my first big pole competition was close enough for my grandpa to attend, and he did.  I had another family member (who I was never very close to to begin with) disassociate herself from me because I poled…and for which my same grandfather defended me and said what I did was amazing.  I'm the type of person that is very upfront with who I am and what I do.  As for you presenting an invitation to your dad, it also depends on the type of person he is.  If he can accept it for how you view it, it might not be bad to introduce him to what you do.  If you think it may not be the best for your relationship with him, then say you respectfully don't want him to have any awkward feelings about what you do, but you would be happy to find other ways to integrate him into something that has become a part of your life.

[MelCat]

Flexibility is a big part of it.  If you don't feel comfortable standing and holding a straight leg at 90 degrees (which as others have mentioned also includes core and hip flexor strength past flexibility) it only gets harder when you're trying to do both legs while reorienting the rest of your body upside-down!  

But past all of that, if you feel comfortable in those aspects, the biggest tip is to remember that a straight leg line comes from the BACK of your leg.  If you just squeeze all of your muscles your legs won't get quite as straight as if you think of lengthening the back of the knee.  And you can play with this feeling just sitting with your legs straight in front of you.  Think like someone is pulling directly behind your knee and it will give you a lovely line and also reduce gripping in your quads. 

I love the tape idea too.  Sports tape would also be a good one to use since it's made to go on your body 😉

[MelCat]

Like katana and pokeyd said, definitely make sure the pole is lying in the fleshy area between your ribs and hips so it's not pressing into the bone in the first place.  After that I'd make sure that you're allowing your hips to open when you rotate your torso.   

When you're in your scorpio, your pelvis is more upright, facing the ceiling, and your leg is oriented more to the front of your body.  As you grab the pole around your leg and rotate your torso away from the pole, be sure to not grip the hip flexors of the inside leg but relax them so the hip can open.  You should feel your hips opening down and away from the leg so then the inside leg is oriented more to the side of your body.  Then if all goes well it should be a feeling more of lengthening than crunching, bone crushing pain 🙂

[MelCat]

I perform pretty regularly at a local bar for some friends and typically make 20-30 per song freestyling, but I also get total promotion for my studio for new students and clients looking for parties, future performances etc. Otherwise it depends on the event, the reach it will get, and expectations of performance. Typically minimum 50/song, bigger events around 75. Dealing with rude a**holes is also a totally legitimate extra charge 🙂

[MelCat]

Here are a few things I think about or look for in these:
-try to get as close to a straight line from your bottom wrist through your shoulder to your hips as you can before you release your legs so you already have a good line of stability set up. Then make sure to engage your abs.
-keep your focus up to the ceiling. If you actually let your head lie along the bottom arm it will help keep your shoulders level which is typically the cause of the wobbly unstable feeling and falling out of it.
-also if you invert on the side of which arm you want on top, you don’t have to change your grip with that hand so you’ll already have a secure placement for it.
Good luck 🙂

[MelCat]

Something similar happened to a friend of mine in the US. She ordered a PS stage pole and it arrived with scratches on the pole, something wrong with where the pole inserted to the base, and some wear and tear on the base boards. It looked like a recycled pole. She called customer service with the complaints and told them she wanted a new one and to properly dispose of that one herself to ensure they didn’t try reselling it to anyone else when they wouldn’t offer a guarantee of them doing that themselves.

[MelCat]

I include stretching in my classes and am always hearing from students how their flexibility has improved since starting pole, so it certainly does help improve flexibility.  I also try to structure my warm-ups using the principles behind the structure of ballet and Pilates classes.  Proper stretching if you want to be able to use the flexibility should include strengthening.  And in activating the muscles in different ways, you prepare them for whatever they might encounter in the rest of class.  Everyone's different and influenced by our own backgrounds but I know I'd personally feel less comfortable and successful going into a move that requires flexibility if I had done no stretching beforehand.

[MelCat]

I love all these ideas.  Also if there are any particular things, normal or personal quirks, that boost your happiness or energy those can come in handy on down days.  Which would be like coffee for me.  Coffee always boosts my mood so whenever I'm down and want to be more upbeat for teaching I have a cup of coffee first so that I'm more likely to be fun and make jokes (even if they're bad ones, I'd rather my students be laughing at me than not at all!)  Congrats on working to become a teacher!

[MelCat]

I like the list idea.  I've been trying to find an opportunity to take a class somewhere but the closest studios to me are 2 hours in any direction.  That's what I miss the most is being able to take class!  I have some extra time this week so I look forward to being able to spend some more time on the pole one way or another 🙂

[MelCat]

Ahhh I can pretty much ditto Danielle's comment.  So excited and nervous to be in the Venus Pole Festival! (Jordan Mazur)  First big pole competition 🙂

[MelCat]

It sounds like the piriformis to me, that’s where it is located and its stretches like the butterfly that help you actually stretch it. Stretch it and also you might want to check that your pelvis is in alignment so that nothing is pulling it as well. But some simple stretches to hold for a long time that can help are crossing your legs with that one in front, relax forward and then walk your hands to the side away from it, keeping that hip on the ground. Also pidgeon stretch helps, the closer you can get the front leg to a right angle the deeper it will stretch it. Good luck!

[MelCat]

Going off what Charley said, it'd be great to have competition opportunities set up similar to a lot of regular dance competitions, in that it has more of a feel of competing against yourself.  That way you get the exposure to dancing with others and getting to see what else is out there and get feedback in a comparative manner that has a focus on improving as an individual rather than getting the perfect formula of tricks, types of tricks, floorwork, etc that will result in winning a competition.