poledanceromance
Forum Replies Created
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Do some reverse crunches building up to straight legged reverse crunches and ultimately straight legged choppers and I think you’ll find you’re working out muscles you’ve never worked before 🙂 also you can do just one climb to a static hold, drop the legs straight down, and –keeping them straight–lift them to the sides, up and forward to a crossed ankle pole sit.
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It sounds like you’re describing something I went trough as a beginner. I just felt like my hips were very unstable. I spent time building strength in my legs and hips and you’ve just made me realize it hasn’t happened in ages. Make sure as you strengthen your legs that you are stretching well after every workout. If you build strength without stretching you will lose a lot of flexibility. I certainly did lose a lot of leg flexibility because I didn’t focus enough on stretching as a beginner and I pay for that now. Basically, building strength in a healthy way will stabilize your joints. Proper stretching all the way will result in strong, stable joints with good range of motion.
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Did you remove the “flag user” feature with the new design? I used to just report them as I saw them.
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I once got some very good advice…if you have to hide parts of yourself from people to avoid a sh**storm, don't think of it as something unfair to you. Consider that if they know NOTHING about you and are still willing to treat you badly, they don't deserve to know anything more. Take down the pole, kill them with kindness, and know that everyone with a brain will see they hate you simply because they feel like it and for no other reason. In effect, you just make them look like the overstuffed toddlers they are.
And when they're complete buttheads, do your best southern woman impression and just say "bless your heart!"
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In a front split with a proper point, the bottom of the front foot is angled downward at the floor. This is not possible with 6″+ of heel preventing you from doing that.
Regardless, the simple solution is to stretch similarly to how I described above, focusing on stretching out the muscles which become very tight after lots of pointing and always stretching square.
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And P.S. Chemmie you are so close!!! Remember to keep nice and square when you're stretching to get the most out of it. If that's week 1 you're definitely going to be there at week 6.
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She can't do it in heels because she probably can't do the splits with a flexed front foot. In shoes it's difficult to achieve a pointed line and it does take more calf and hamstring flexibility to flex the front foot in front splits or any forward fold. When the foot is in a flexed position, it stretches those muscles and the associated connective tissues even further.
It's for this reason that my cooldown with my students involves a series of forward fold stretches from the floor where we start with pointed feet for several breathing cycles, flex the foot through a breath stretch and continue the stretch gently pulling back on the balls of the feet. From there we go to the basic split series so the backs of the legs are loosened between class (where I'm constantly on them to have pointed leg lines) and split stretching (where you need the calves and quads to be relaxed to achieve good flexibility).
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You don’t want to put clamps on an electric blanket. There’s a chance it could crimp the wires or cut the wire cover, creating a fire hazard and wrecking the blanket.
To warm your pole up fast, use your hair dryer. Spending at least 10-15 minutes on non-inverted or light-strength cardio helps get it warmed up too. When all else fails, I wrap my pole rag around my hands and make inappropriate motions. My students laugh at me, but with a vigorous rub-down with the towel I can get their poles warmed back up in no time if they’ve cooled down since the studio is chilly in winter and the poles are stainless.
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How much?? PM me! I love stainless but I hate the new model PS poles with their plasticyness.
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I have this problem. I also have a family history of skin cancer, so I absolutely refuse to set foot into a tanning bed, even a low-power one, even for 2 minutes at a time. I just won’t do it. I also see the price tag on those SAD lights is waaaaaaayyy too high for what they are. What are my options?
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AND …..ps Empy, I’d love to hear what you ultimately went with so I can help her on the decision making since shell be busy with the whole birthing a child thing LOL
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Yes, if we had our druthers we’d already have new floors. However we are limited in what kinds of laminates and woods we can choose…it’s an industrial location and you can’t put real wood down on top of concrete floors unless you build up a whole new subfloor on top of it because of the moisture transfer and temperature swings through the slab. So for some studios with cncrete floors, short pile can be the best option and of course heels there can be a safety issue. Especially with the volume of wear which is huge.
Bottom line, I still say I would need to investigate why a studio doesn’t allow shoes. There could be lots of perfectly rational reasons and a studio could still be a fun place to go and a fantastic place to learn even with some shoe limitations. I think if my options were two studios and the one with the better environment, better instruction, and better students also happened to have a no shoe rule–and they had a reasonable explanation as to why–I would choose the better studio and keep the shoes to my home.
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I’d just like to put a different perspective here. The studio I teach at is owned by one awesome young woman, currently 8 months pregnant, and she’s only owned it since March…so you do the math on the sudden collision of finances. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif We have a long wish-list, but we can only accomplish it by chipping away at it a little bit at a time. Next up is hardwood floors and a few more poles. After that, we’re going to do mirrors. None of my students wear shoes for two reasons:
1) they’re still a little too new at this to be able to wear them safely
2) we are genuinely concerned about the floors.Bear with me. It’s short pile carpet. If someone’s heel digs in it can not only trip them but leave a hole in the carpet with a big tag of pile hanging out that could trip someone else or throw someone off balance during a yoga class. We have played around a little in shoes, but at this point I don’t think I’d want people doing a full hour class in heels on it. It’s just a temporary situation until we do the floors in the next few months-after baby-but in the meantime, it’s not that we’re being cheap about it, or that we’re a bad studio because of it. It’s just that current restrictions on the personal lives of everyone involved in the studio means we really don’t want to deal with the headache of having a big, unsafe, expensive rip in the carpet right now, and our students aren’t advanced enough to warrant that kind of wear, anyway.
Our students love us and come to class religiously. They see that we’re doing big things with what we have. We don’t skimp on dedication and quality of experience, and many a wonderful studio have started out–or still are–in carpeted rooms and/or industrial buildings. Before you render total judgment about them not being totally enthusiastic about heels, find out why. There are lots of reasons, and one could simply be "we need this carpet to last two more months." And it’s as simple as asking why and whether they plan to replace the floors soon. There’s always two sides to every story, and the story of most great studios starts small!
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Thanks all! And Amy go right ahead! We’re proud of our mantras. We have a really serious commitment to the overall well-being of our students and I think that’s really important. It’s a very religious and conservative area and all the women who have come so far have started out with mixed emotions-excited, but nervous, unsure…I even have one student whose alarm for her bc pill goes off at the end of class and she is embarassed about taking it. That’s the kind of embarassment at being a woman I want to obliterate and replace with strength-don’t be ashamed of your choices or your body or who you are!
Funnily enough though, one of my most talented and energetic students is actually a virgin, largely because she is young and focused on her career and unwilling to compromise, which I think is great. Since pole is the main outlet for her sensuality, she’s really discovering herself in the process and it’s lovely to watch. It’s such a drastic transformation as you watch your students get stronger and more confident. So I think it proves that no matter your background or your strength level or your sex life, you can learn something important about yourself through the training.
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Diana has it. Teeny weeny pieces, no more than a chopstick. They make jaw clips that go from smaller to larger which I need because my hair is super long. Start with the top of the head and make a quick little bun with it and clip it with the smallest clip. The take a comb or your fingernail and section a row below that crown, flip it up and clip it onto the edge of the smallest clip. Then section around again and clip onto the previous and cotinue until you have a Mohawk of clips on the top of your head. Then you can pull down each row section of hair and keep track of the tiny pieces you have to take. You can also use a loose hair tie or the biggest clip to keep the hair you’ve straightened out of the way without crimping or flattening it, since you want straight but not totally pancake flat on your head.
