[iani]

Mmh I will try setting it tighter or less tight and see if it helps. I am always uncertain of how tight is right, as there seems to be a lot of room between “it budges if you try to move it or spin on it” and “it does not spin freely”.

The screws are the original and it did that since the start, I think :/

[iani]

Hijacking thread for another X-pole question.

I notice that lately, if I screw the pole to static position, after a couple spins it loosens a bit. It will not go back to spinning position on its own (and thank god for that), but it always seems to have this half inch spinning back and forth rather than being perfectly static.

It’s not that annoying once I know to expect it, but I wanna be sure I am not breaking my pole… anyone else has this?

[iani]

just made an instagram account and got myself a small camcorder for Christmas, for the challenge =) I should receive it on saturday, I’ll start late but so excited! @iani_ancilla

[iani]

The good news: I tried all advice and am doing a lot better, on my “weak” side.
The bad: after feeling around my knees looking for a reason why my right side hurt so much, it turns out I have a cyst the size of a cherry in my right knee pit, which will probably need surgery, and the pain I felt was the cyst pressing into the pole on pone side and my knee on the other. I have no clue yet how long that will mean no pole for me though 🙁

But yay!, at least I get how knee holds should work!

[iani]

*when I said “dead hang”, apparently the meaning in English is not the same as I was thinking of. I meant “hanging without engaging your shoulders and back, the way a dead body would hang if tied by the wrists”. Which sadly is what a lot of people will “naturally” do if asked to reach for something overhead or hang from it.

[iani]

Someone will probably answer this better than me, and bear in mind I come to this from a calisthenichs and lifting perspective rather than a purely poledancing one. The body we have is the same though, and it works on the same principles whatever we do with it.
EVERYONE: if I am wrong please correct me =)

SHORT ANSWER: yes, neutral shoulder/scapula position is needed in most polework, namely in all work requiring you to use strength.

LONG ANSWER (bit of a novel, sorry):
Shoulders are (should be) a fairly “free” joint, so that your arms can move in several directions. You can roll shoulders forward, push them back, scrunch them up… All these have their uses. But shoulder position is directly linked to what your spine is doing, and for ANYTHING that requires strength (be it an invert, an iron x, the strength moment of a climb, a deadlift or bench press) you want your back (spine) to be in PERFECT position, for 2 reasons:
– SAFETY: a bendy/unstable back will make you more likely to get injured
– PERFORMANCE: your back and your core are the stabilizing point of all your body. You cannot perform any arm or leg (or anything else) movement with any real strength if your foundations (your back and core) are not solid and stable. If you do headstands, think of how solid your neck feels during a headstand. Now imagine (DON’T TRY!) to be in one and bend your back this way or that. Even just imagining it makes you cringe at the thought of your neck collapsing under you, right? That’s because your back would not be engaged.

So, to engage your back, you need a few things. You need your hips to be level, your spine to be aligned (think of having your lower ribs pointing “down” rather than forward), your shoulders to be flat and in neutral position, and your abs to be engaged (how much depends on how much tension your back will be under to tolerate what the rest of the body is doing).

From here, you can extend your arms up, but this should not be done by overreaching. That means, your arm should go up, but if you keep your other hand on your shoulder, you should notice how the shoulder is down and engaged, how it feels “solid”, rather than feeling like it’s stretched upwards. If you watch any gymnastics videos, it will be easy to notice how a gymnast’s shoulders are normally pushed down even when the arms are up. Rings are especially good to see the difference between an engaged back/shoulders and a dead hang (what we do not normally want).
If you cannot raise your arm much this way, that usually means you are lacking shoulder mobility, which many of us do. The good news is it’s fairly easy to work on to get acceptable levels =)

sorry for the superlong post, got a bit carried away, but I can outdo many male friends at pullups despite having fairly weak arms (especially weaker than most guys!), all because I focus on working pullups (on and off the pole) from my back rather than from poor biceps trying to work against the rest of my body… so it’s a special pet subject of mine ^^

[iani]

Was sick all weekend and doubly frustrated cause I wanna try this stuff out =) Hopefully tonight… in the meanwhile huge thanks for the help and tips!

[iani]

Can’t say about filming as I do not do it yet.
About body image: I have pretty bad body image problems, I think. I used to do ski racing till 16 so was used to have a killer athlete body. At the same time I’m ugly and everybody always felt the need to point it out to me, so I was always very self-conscious about people watching me. After 16 I had to stop all sports because of an injury, and my body got soft, fat, and awful without me fully realizing (I never looked at myself) until I was 25. I am 30 now, I lost most of that (gym and now pole as well), but it’s still impossible for me to like myself. I feel like my upper body is too thin now, and the lower too fat. If I have a bit of a bloated belly from eating sth that does that (pulses, too much milk… you know, NORMAL stuff) it’s hard for me to get out of the house in the morning, thinking people will notice and judge me and despise me. I feel fat, I feel like my body is ruined and no amount of working out will get it back to how it was. Then the next day I notice I lost 2 cups bra-size in a year and I hate myself for losing that weight.
This was just to say: I am a fucked up case 🙂

The good news: I was afraid pole would make this worse. All those unreachable models, all the skin-showing, all the looking for a good figure rather than a good lift/time/whatever. Pole is a sport that wants you to make sth LOOK good. I really feared I would get in bad places by starting this sport, but it fascinated me and I started anyway.
Man, am I glad I did. It’s still not all ok, granted. But knowing that my abs are there even on a “bloated” day and I can still lift my body with them, knowing that my arms and back are maybe too skinny but they can now do 20 pullups, knowing my legs are still fat but I am closer to splits than I ever was in my life… Knowing that I can show up in class half naked and NOBODY cares about any of this, knowing that people DO watch my body but nobody, NOBODY hates me because of it… That actually makes getting out of the house on bloaty days a lot easier.

Sorry for the novel-length post, but it was liberating, somehow. Most people I know think I have absolutely no image issues and I am fully at home in body… so I guess this was kind of a coming out, sorry to have made you all the victims, it’s what you get for being awesome!

[iani]

If you check Veena’s lessons she has extra good explanation on how to train your knee and ankle releases from the floor 😉

[iani]

My pole is called Paul. It started cause someone asked me for weekend plans and I said “gonna do pole the whole weekend”, and that person asked “who’s this Paul??? What about your boyfriend???”. I love it

[iani]

I have no poleshame, generally, more of a “this is what I do, like it and stay, despise me and walk” attitude to all things in life. I admit it does not get you MANY friends, but it gets you good ones.
When someone asks the usual “you’re a stripper, then?”, I answer “if you think I’m nearly hot enough for that, you’ve been going to the wrong clubs”. It normally ends in sheepish laughter when the person realises what they said and we’re all friends again.

That said, it’s an attitude not everyone can afford. I work in a gaming company. I pole. One of my best friends has half of his body (the normally exposed half) covered in tattoos and shows up to work with face bruised from MMA training. People come to work dressed in ANY way, including multicoloured wigs and corsets. And I love it.
And nobody is gonna give me any pain about my poling.

But if I worked in a law firm (this is from past experience, it probably applies to many jobs), I know things would be different. I used to be a secretary and I remembered my boss giving me trouble because during the weekend he had met me at a bar and I was drunk. On a weekend.
If you think sharing your pole is gonna give you real trouble with your job, studies, career homelife, whatever… weigh it VERY carefully.
If you keep something secret, you can share it any time. If you share it, you cannot unshare it if you change your mind.
We all love pole and we should not be ashamed to. But if you let the fact you pole ruin your life (because others are stupid), you might end up hating pole, and nobody wants that. (nobody wants your life ruined, either!!!)

[iani]

Well, I don’t haven even the shadow of a thigh gap, so I cannot give great advice… what I have seen others say many times is that if you have one, you have to squeeze extra hard, and that turning your knees in towards each other helps a lot. Again, I cannot say whether this can solve problems, my thighs are very friendly with each other and touch aaaaall the time 🙂

I guess this is obvious, but maybe try practicing stuff from the floor until you are sure you have an extra safe and consistent grip with your new thigh-shape? Would suck to find it’s not really working when you’re 2 meters up with your hands somewhere far from the pole.

[iani]

I live in Germany and the authority in charge of this here, GEMA, are quite strict, unreasonable, and annoying.
Half the videos from the Poleranking yt channel, and a lot of other pole videos are blocked on yt from Germany, and you get the usual message “this video is not available in your country due to copyright blablabla”. It does not even remove the audio only, the entire vid is blocked.

[iani]

for me it’s easy to tell the difference: if te pole is making me dizzy, then I am dizzy AND nauseous. In which case, ginger is yoyur friend.
If it’s low sugar or dehydration, I get dizzy + strong headache + I lose periphereal vision and start seeing dots floating all over the place. In which case, drink more (maybe add some lemon or lime juice to your water, it helps me a lot, especially if you also belong to the heavy sweating family like me), and try to take better care of yourself in the eat/sleep/nostress departments =)

[iani]

I think who wrote the lyrics was a closet poledancer!