Poledancefan
Forum Replies Created
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Happy Birthday, Neke! Congratulations on getting a new move on your birthday, too…
Joel
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Welcome to the forum, Jungle_Cat!
My sister lives in the DC area also–near one of the overpasses that goes over Rock Creek park–and teaches in a private middle school there…
DC/Maryland actually has quite a lively pole scene, at least according to the pole studio directories–although I do not know if there are many opportunities for lessons for men.
Yep, poling does present some challenges for male anatomy. It’s not just different parts–but size and weight, too. The most sensible advice is to go REAL slow on any moves involving the thigh area–developing the pose or move incrementally. For sit moves, you are either going to have to tilt BACK a little more to get the pole seated more on the pelvic bone–OR hold the move farther away in the thighs, closer to the knees. Either compromise presents its own problems. Tipping back, it’s real easy to lose your grip on the dom (top) hand and just fall back and off, LOL! On the other hand, holding mounts away from the thicker fatty area around the thighs just takes plain more MUSCLE power and squeeze to stay up.
Guys just tend to be bigger, period–so the impact of weight on the mass to skin area ratio is not in our favor. I’m fairly heavy (190 pounds) and I just could not get enough skin on the pole with the smaller diameter pole. Even with the 2 incher (50.8MM), I use some grip aids–especially in the winter.
I’m a big believer in mats–especially if you don’t have a spotter. Before I got the gym mats, I used piles of old welcome mats and bathroom rugs. It looks stupid, but will help save the noggin’…
It’s great to have another male poler on the forum. Welcome to Studio Veena. Post some vids as soon as you feel confident (Or even before you feel confident, LOL! Some of my earlier vids are pretty horrendous…well, some of my current ones are, too!).
Joel
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I did…the tutorials are still up on my You-Tube site. (POLEDANCEFAN)
I’m not necessarily sure this is always the way to go, however. In my case, the pole project sort of evolved out of a half serious performance skit I did on You-Tube poking fun at my own obsession with watching pole videos See "poledancefan’s wife lays down the law." Buying and putting up a real pole upstairs where there was decent ceiling height was never an option. I’m still poling with the graceful forebearance of my wife–but that pole is never leaving the basement.
Of course, now, when I look back on it, I know that I probably always intended to try it out. Building the pole from electrical conduit as a do it yourself project gave me the "cover" I needed to do just exactly what I always intended to do without exactly having to declare my intentions, LOL! Of course my wife was never fooled by this charade..we are an odd marriage of extemely stubborn first borns. I think she knew the moment she saw that first pipe fitting there was going to be a pole in the house one day.
The homemade pole is very rough and doesn’t have a finish that grips well. It was cheap, however. If you are putting one up in a basement where cosmetics don’t matter, you can get a pole up for less than 100$. My biggest expense was the tubing cutter tool–24$. I was real paranoid about safety, so I surrounded the mounting hooks with an extra Oak board and a steel strap on the joist. You can’t really do this sort of thing in a Living Room!
Polemistress in Canada has a homemade pole. Her husband is a professional machinist who had the ability to mill the surface to better specifications. He was also able to replicate a powder coat–something beyond the abilities of most people’s home hardware set-up. There is a new poler on you-tube named Trena with a homebuilt also.
Frankly, now that I’m serious about it, I wish I had a real pole with a nice grippy finish. It’s no secret that in North America, Platinum Stages and X-pole are the 2 brands everbody talks about. Depending upon the particularities of your dwelling, one or the other will suit you best. If X-pole is that brand, order it through Veena!
Joel
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If you sew or do crafts, keep an eye on the back of the store at Michael’s or the Fabric/Singer shops.
I have grabbed up several remnants of styrofoam sheets and large pieces of fiberfill stuffing for 5-10 dollars. It’s not a gym quality mat, but if you put the foam remnants under bathroom rugs or carpet remnants, you get a fairly soft surface that resists breakthrough.
I did eventually get regular gym mats at the sporting goods store, but I still stack up my layers of foam underneath the regulation mats. I am a heavy guy (almost 200 lbs, nearly 50 years old), so I can’t really take too many chances with a fall. I’ve landed hard on my butt a few times on top of my stack of foam rubber and gym mats and not gotten seriously hurt…
Joel
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Glitter…no way are you giving up pole! It took me four or five months to sit on the pole, and I still cannot do it reliably. I was terrified of inverting…and I still am!
Don’t talk to me about body image–ten years of dieting and weights and treadmills,I STILL cannot see my shoelaces over my belly, LOL!
This weekend, one of my vids went "viral" and I was deluged with comments like bald, old, fat, numerous homophobic remarks,and racial slurs. I answered each and every comment with a personal thank you, no matter what they said because I wasn’t going to give the a******’s the satisfaction of thinking I was rattled. After a while, I started looking at their channels. Most of the time, they had NOTHING of their own creation posted. If they had videos,it was something they ripped off from another website or the television. Basically, these are people who have acheived nothing on their own merits. The only way they can feel better about themselves is to pull somebody else down. I suspect a good number of them are just teenagers with nothing better to do than just slag other people’s websites. A good number of the nasty comments left on my video didn’t have a single word spelled correctly.
There is nothing wrong with the way you look. You are active and getting regular physical activity.
Set up a friends list on You-Tube, upload your vids to PRIVATE, then SELECT from the friends list the people you want to send the vid to. I believe you can go up to 25 people.
Put that pole up, take a deep breath, and tell yourself that this is something you are doing for YOURSELF and for the enjoyment of sharing it with other people who care about you and your creative dancing. To hell with everybody else!
Joel
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Chris and Veena–nice job on the redesign. I love the look. I also noticed the vastly improved functionality with the Forum Index Return Buttons ("NEW POST") –I always had a problem with my touchy mouse not retaining the proper highlighting of the button. Great job!
Joel
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Welcome to Studio Veena, Frida! Seja Bem-vindo no foro do poledance Studio Veena!
Joel
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Welcome to Studio Veena, Kat!
Joel
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You can get by by simply repeating the same few functions over and over againin WMM to make a video.
1. Import the first clip from the file it is stored in.
2. Drag that clip to the time line.
3. Press play and let it run until you see the cool trick you want to put on you-tube.
4. Press PAUSE where the action starts–like say when you are lifting your leg up to the pole. (Little secret–you can move the video frame by frame with ALT RIGHT ARROW OR ALT LEFT ARROW)
5. Mouse up to CLIP in the menu bar.
6. Punch SPLIT. Now there is a line down the middle. The "garbage" (i.e., windexing the pole, adjusting your clothes, etc.) is on the left, the stuff you want to keep is on the right of that line.
7. Highlight the junky stuff on the left with the mouse, and right click, and DELETE it.
8. PLAY the video some more until the trick you want to put on You-Tube ends.
9. Press PAUSE again when the trick or pose is over. Mouse up to CLIP again. Punch SPLIT again. Now there is a line again.
9. Now, don’t delete the stuff to the right YET, because you may have another trick or pose later in the clip…so let it PLAY some more until the next trick or pose. When you get to the next trick or pose, let that pose PLAY all the way until it is finished. Now punch SPLIT in the CLIP menu again.
10. Go back to the BEGINNING of this second trick or pose, and put a line at a nice point for editing. ( I always pick the moment when my foot lifts off the ground) Again, you make this line by going to CLIP, then punch SPLIT.
11. Now the "garbage" is between the line at the end of the first pose and the line at the beginning of the second pose. DELETE it. (by right clicking and punching DELETE.)
12. You cannot make a mistake. If you screw up the timeline, delete the entire clip. It’s still there "in the editing can"–i.e., the original file you imported it from. Just re-import it and make it nice again. The source clip is always there until you delete it from the holding file it is in.
13. Do this over and over with however many clips you have (I’ve dragged 20 clips to make a 7 minute movie)–or just the one long clip you want to edit. By the way, you don’t have to put the clips in any set order. You can drag Friday’s practice to the left of Monday’s practice and it will knock Monday over to the left like a falling domino. You can drop and drag clips any old way you want to–in any order.
14. Do frequent saves of the PROJECT–not the Movie, while you work. If you get up and the computer crashes, you’ll lose the PROJECT.
15. Use the TOOLS menu to put in fades. CLICK TOOLS Pick the fade you want. DRAG the fade to the lines in between the cuts. A little blue line will pop up in between the clips where you put in fades.
16. When all is said and done, convert the PROJECT to a MOVIE. Pick SAVE. Pick SAVE as a MOVIE.
17. Remember where you put the MOVIE file. Give the File a name related to the pose, i.e., Gemini. Don’t use a personal name on the file because You-Tube pops that up as the title and if you are slow getting on line to write your narrative, whatever you stick in that file name will show up, LOL!
18. Open You-Tube. Select UPLOAD. BROWSE to the location. SELECT the Location. OPEN the location. Punch UPLOAD.
19. Upload will take 10 minutes or so. Use the narrative screen to write a short description of your video. Select if you want vid public or private, or if you want to prohibit embeds from other sites. You-Tube menu is straightforward Yes/No questions.
20. Go to My Videos on You-Tube menu. Wait for video to GO LIVE.
Joel
PS: Once you delete the original clip or clips, or source clip from the "can"–the holding file you imported it from, you CANNOT recover the project. Wait a few days if you plan on dumping the can. One time I misspelled Veena’s name in the credits, LOL! Had to go back, change the credits, and re-save a brand new movie. It took about 2 minutes. If I had dumped the editing can, I would have had to re-edit the entire movie from scratch–hours of work!
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Hi, Shelly! Welcome to Studio Veena! I think we akready know each other from You-Tube, LOL!
Joel
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Wow…congratulations on your first show. The vid looked great…and so did you!
Joel
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OK, I would probably never say this outside this forum because it’s a fairly small group of us regular posters so I’ve got that comfort level and I’ll just say the other posters are absolutely right. But what I will add is that when I first saw your lap dance moves post, I was convinced that maybe you had meant to put it on private and maybe I shouldn’t even be watching it because it was VERY sexy! Of course I watched it anyway, LOL! I mean, what guy wouldn’t! Then I wrote a comment, then I deleted it, because I was thinking she really meant it to be on private, she’ll be really p****d off because it’ll look like I was being creepy! But then I thought, Jeez…you’ve commented on a million pole dances, so just go ahead, leave a nice comment and don’t worry about it.
So what I am trying to say is that you were so GOOD you got me rattled–and that was just on a video! I think you will do just fine. The key in any situation is putting the other person at ease. I would be willing to bet that while he is in total control at the fire station, when he walks into a room of ladies practicing lap dances, he’ll be nervous as hell! He will have his game face on, trying hard not to screw up in front of his friend.
The class is where you are in control. If he’s a decent, normal, polite guy, he will go along with the situation and follow your lead. You know that winning, friendly manner you have in the video like you are talking to your friend Denise? Just use that same personality–you’ll knock him dead–I know it for a fact because I saw you do it on You-Tube!
And as for this post, shhhhh…. ::holds finger to lips, face red with embarrassment::
…..it’s a secret, between us–and everybody else who joins the forum, LOL!Joel
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Welcome to Studio Veena. I believe we have another competition dancer in Latin Dance–Verenndha–who is a member of the forum.
Joel
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I sit in traffic a lot on my job. I bought two hand squeezers at the Sports Authority. Every red light, ten reps with the right hand, ten reps with the left. I’ve got one sitting right by the gear shifter in the Honda.
Check out Samsara Pole Studio’s video on hand printing kinesthesics. I have to admit I thought this whole idea was nutty when I first saw it–but it really works. She steps you through this mental sequence of pressing your hand into the the wall–or the pole. You imagine more of your skin "flowing" into the wall or the pole to get more "fleshy" part into the grip area. This is an exercise that many Pilates and Anatomy/Kinesthesics therapists practitioners use with their patients. I’m not sure how it works–but it may just heighten awareness of your surface area on the palm of the hand and help you think better about hand placement.
It’s a workout, too. After ten minutes of "pressing your hand into the wall," you are out of breath!
Joel
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I went back and looked at the original Lorenzia777 video and decided that the move is really a hybrid of the shoulder mounted inclined (or tilted) V–but with a significant variation. Instead of staying in the shoulder mounted grip, the poler moves the arms into an ARCHER grip–that is, with one hand moving lengthwise UP the pole, the other lengthwise DOWN the pole. I can see that it would be almost impossibly hard to make that transition with the arms and stay gripped on the pole. I have seen the sholder mounted tilted V before (Shelley does it–EXDIVA69), but never with the arms ALONG the pole, like the Archer.
In the Lorenzia777 video, she does not get the bottom hand along the pole, it is simply hanging free off to the side. But she has partially outstretched the upper arm somewhat up the pole. I think it was really just a slip–but it gave me the idea for what the move would look like.
I wish I was good enough to try these things out myself! ::Green with Envy::
Joel