[poledanceromance]

Holy shit I am so sorry you’re dealing with that kind of injury 🙁 that sounds really painful! If you’re really going nuts, this may sound silly but I absolutely love walking outside! Really power walking for cardio, very fast pace. It’s a great way to see an area, take in all the little details you don’t notice just driving by. When the weather is nice, it’s really just enjoyable and gets the blood flowing. I like to walk through areas with historic homes!

[poledanceromance]

Without experience, it can be really hard to craft a whole pole curriculum. But you can relatively easily do kind of micro-curriculum that will get you to your goals. I suggest picking a few moves that aren’t hugely over your head but you currently have trouble with, perhaps a few spins and a few upright poses, and make these your goals. Pick probably no more than 5 things to have on your plate.
What you would do is basically break those moves down into their parts or skill elements, then write down exercises and pole moves that directly boost that skill. For example, you might notice that the basic reverse grab is basically a one-handed spin with the body coming around the pole into attitude legs. So for that you might write down that one handed spins help build strength, especially one handed front hooks for getting the hips forward and attitude spins for getting the attitude legs. You might also notice that a corkscrew spin brings your body around the pole in a way similar to the RG. So you could work on perfecting those spins to build the skills necessary to do the RG.
You can do this for ALL pole moves, figuring out the elements and looking at what other pole moves you can work on to master each element.
As you master each move, you can put new ones on your list.Then it’s just a matter of coming up with some kind of schedule that works for you, so that you have pole time and perhaps some days just for doing strength or cardio conditioning, stretching time, and of course rest days in between your strength days. It takes a little work to do it but a little structure can make you feel a lot better about your progress!

Now remember when it comes time to sign up for veena lessons and/or join a studio, that veena and good in-studio instructors are basically doing that same work for themselves, PLUS doing the same for the students such that every individual who comes through the door has a plan for success that works with each student’s strengths and needs. Your small monthly fee to veena’s lessons gets you the benefit of all her expertise in planning pole curriculum that will ultimately help you take charge of your own pole learning. Basically, veena’s lessons not only teach you how to get a trick, they also teach you basically how to do what I described above. So with your own ability to plan developed plus veena’s lessons, you basically have access to a pole curriculum foundation that will help you learn to adjust your own personal pole curriculum.

Sorry this post is super long!!

[poledanceromance]

I will be honest that I am a super sweaty person and chrome is not ideal for me but okay. Brass and powder coated however are my two least favorite finishes. They are both almost unusable for me, especially in winter. My favorite finish is stainless steel. It works noticeably far better for me than any other finish and in almost all weather conditions.

I don’t say this to be contradictory, just to underscore the point that every person is different and so the best thing is to try before buying if possible, at a studio or even an xpole store. I’ve come to believe that my preference for stainless steel and total hopelessness with brass or powder coated poles is at least partly because, while I sweat extremely heavily when exerting myself, my skin is also very dry and flaky and very sensitive under that. I’m sure my personal chemistry in my sweat is a factor too. Just wanted to throw in my perspective because I am a “sweaty type” yet my preferences go totally against what is thought to be the best with regards to finish and grip aids for sweaty people, and it used to make me feel inadequate and generally down. So when I see sweaty folks having trouble with some of the suggestions generally given to sweaty people I want to encourage them to be persistent because grip is extremely personal and unique to each dancer and it’s okay if products advertised for sweaty people don’t work for you.

[poledanceromance]

I’m so sorry for your loss. I share common ground with you on pole as therapy. It can be therapeutic in so many ways. Not only can it be a medium to touch and work through pain too hot to touch any other way, but it can be simply an escape to a private moment of joy when everything else feels joyless. Sometimes pole has been serious therapy time for me, and sometimes–when things have been at their darkest–I’ve unexplainably felt the need to put on a high energy, sexy song and shake it. Perhaps just to feel joy in every part of my body when I’m having trouble believing I will ever feel joy in my heart again. I think pole dancing is therapeutic for many people and for many reasons.

[poledanceromance]

http://archneurpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=645725

Here’s an abstract for a study comparing the different sensations that come from stimulating nerves on the surface of the skin versus stimulating the “trunks” or central hubs/bundles of nerves where they branch off from the nervous system. It’s behind a paywall, but the study found that stimulating nerves at the roots produces different and more intense sensations in the subject that stimulating those same nerves at their end point, under the skin.

[poledanceromance]

I guess the same thing could happen with other areas of the body if you’re doing stretches at your maximum range of motion because of the stretching’s effect on the nervous system in those areas, changed soft tissue positions creating different/new stimulation.

[poledanceromance]

With the back training in particular, I was taught that the reason for these sensations in the body is that when we do back bending, we are moving our bodies in such a way that nerves along the spine are being physically interacted with/stimulated by the soft tissues that surround them. Those nerves along the spine are central nervous system conduits to the brain and the rest of the body, and they’re not used to being physically stimulated in our natural positions. So when they get physically stimulated in stretches, that stimulation can be perceived as different feelings of intensity and then fatigue during and then after stretching. If you’ve ever felt a kind of head rush feeling right after a back bend, and experienced an almost two beer kind of sensation in the hours following the back bend session, that’s partly what’s happening there as I understand it. Not harmful, just new stimulus.

[poledanceromance]

Epoxy for plastic in the adhesive section of your hardware store. Some look like a syringe with two chambers, you push the plunger to squeeze some on a paper plate, use a Popsicle stick to mix it up and slather it on. Never comes off. Like ever.

[poledanceromance]

There are free legal clinics out there specifically for helping people with this because it can be a bit of a complex process depending on the best option for your friend. I suggest googling for example “Illinois immigration law clinic” or “Cook county immigration law clinic,” obviously substituting your state or county for the search. You can also look up what law schools are in your state. Law schools have free legal clinics, very commonly ones which deal with immigration law. If you get legal help from a clinic, it will either be free or greatly reduced cost. (This is because there is a structure in many states which takes interest from law offices’ checking accounts to fund the legal clinics, so it’s already been paid for when you walk in the door.)

[poledanceromance]

Depends mostly on nail length, hand size, and pole diameter. If you have long nails, larger hands, and a 40mm pole, you’re gonna have a bad time. If your grip feels like it’s pushing on your nails/pressing your nails into the nail bed, I would say go shorter. You can do damage to your nail beds over time with repeated trauma. You can do a lot of really cute stuff with a little bit shorter of a mani!

[poledanceromance]

I do some ballet barre style exercises for this purpose. I have the same issue. I’m not a trained ballet dancer of any sort, but it’s easy to look up on YouTube the basic form for keeping your hips tucked under you and doing LITTLE, controlled front, side, and back kicks. Those, plus a few high knees/ in place jogs, a few squats and a few calf raises altogether take less than 5 minutes. You can look up the different leg exercises (I believe all the ones I mentioned are in the conditioning section here) and put together a little leg warmup just a couple minutes long that you can throw into your stretch session if you feel yourself getting cold. Also, this time of year all the space heaters are going on sale. A very small one is enough to keep a regular sized room quite toasty for stretching and pole without drying the room out as much as forced air heat does. You could probably pick one up for about $20 that you could turn on before you get in your pre-stretch hot shower and by the time you get out, you should have a nice warm space to stretch in. (Insert obvious warning about not leaving a space heater unattended for hours lol)

[poledanceromance]

She could also have a disorder like PCOS or a thyroid imbalance that makes it extremely difficult to lose weight. It’s clear to me that she has spent a lot of time learning proper mechanics, and how to unlock the potential of her own body. I would guess that in her entire time of pole training, she has always been fat. But I don’t use the word fat as a derogatory- body fat % is just one marker of health, and there are many others. Her cardiovascular health and stamina, her muscle development, her joint health and flexibility, are all clearly very good. I say good on her, for loving herself as she is and working hard at being fit. To me the point of this video is partly to show that our society is too obsessed with being skinny as the only/most important marker of health and attractiveness; it’s wrong to judge a person’s abilities, their strengths and weaknesses, from their outward appearance. If I had a dollar for every time I discovered that a pole student who would qualify as “fat” had abilities that I don’t have or advanced in some skills faster than I did/do, I would have a lot more beer money. Under every dress size is a woman, a person, with strengths and weaknesses like ANY of us.

[poledanceromance]

Yes indeed this topic feels familiar. I have had to learn from the experience of fearing that friends will be saying bad things about me as soon as I walk out the door. And those jealous, biting comments in front of others. It was a turning point for me when I realized the comments were always either making fun of things about me that I considered to be good things to be proud of, or showing a total lack of knowledge and understanding about the person I really am. The emotional distance thing resonates for me. I want to gravitate towards those who respect the goals I have and the person I try to be.

[poledanceromance]

Amen to that. ^^^

[poledanceromance]

http://www.lincolnshireecho.co.uk/WATCH-VIDEO-Pole-dancing-star-Emma-Haslam-proves/story-20563782-detail/story.html

I just wanted to leave this here. Pole dance is for EVERY body!