Improve Your Pole Dance Training

As with training for any kind of sport it is important to have goals and aims of what you want to achieve. Pole Dancing is different to most sports where your aims need to be specific to what spins you want to try and what moves you want to master.

Getting The Most Out Of Your Training:

• Set yourself goals
• Train your body
• Look after your body
• Train your mind

Set Yourself Goals:

In order to set yourself goals you will need to do your research. Look on you tube, go to pole dancing competitions, watch pole DVDs or even ask your instructor to show you some advanced moves. It is hard to know what moves you want to master, unless you have seen them somewhere.

The moves you want to aim for can be long term goals as well as general strengthening. Aim high as this will help you decide what type of training you will need to do to master future moves.

My personal aims when starting out in pole dancing were to master the Ayesha, Shoulder Mount, Floor sweeper spin and the Superman (and gracefully dismounting). As I knew these would be long term goals rather than having overnight fixes, I devoted a lot of my training time early on in my pole dancing career specifically to train for these moves.

Having goals helps you to keep track of your progress, as well as giving you a training guide to build into your workouts. You also have a great sense of achievement after completing a move on your goal list.

Train Your Body:

After setting your goals you will have more of an idea of which areas of the body you want to train. For my goals of an ayesha and a shoulder mount I knew I would have to work on strengthening my arms to hold my body weight and my legs to hold them up strongly. The exercises I do are always based on the move itself as well as moves specific to that part if the body:

Exercise For Legs:

Begin facing the pole with your arms in a split grip. When you have a good, secure grip on the pole with your hands, begin to bring both legs off the ground. Keep them straight and moving slowly at the same time. When you have lifted them as high as you can, slowly bring them down to the ground again. Take your arms off the pole and shake your legs out. Repeat this from the start 5 times.

Tips:

This exercise works a lot of muscles in your body. Really tense your abs when lifting your legs to keep more control of them. It is more important to keep your legs straight, rather then the height you can lift them, so focus on keeping them straight and the more you do this exercise, the higher you will be able to lift your legs and the stronger you will be.

Look After Your Body:

It is very easy to get swept up in pole dancing and wanting to train everyday. It is recommended to give your body at least one rest day a week. It is very important to stretch out with specific focus on your neck, shoulders and back as they are under extreme pressure. These stretches are simple but are very important after a workout to stop you building up tension and to keep mobility.

Simple Stretches:

• Neck Stretch – Tilt your head to the left and hold. You should feel the stretch in your neck. Repeat on the right. Repeat 3 times.
• Mobility stretch – With your body facing forward, look as far as you can to the left and then to the right. Do this slowly. Repeat 3 times.
• Shoulders – Keeping your arms straight roll them in forward circles 5 times and backward for 5 circles. Repeat 3 times.
• Back – Cat stretch. On all fours push your stomach to the floor as far as you can, arching your back downwards. Hold for 5 secs. Then push your spine in the opposite direction, so you are arching you back upwards. Hold for 5 secs. Repeat 3 times.

Train Your Mind:

It is just as important to have the right attitude towards your training as well as having a strong, capable body. Plan out your workouts week by week. If you have your own pole and are working out by yourself it is a good idea to write down moves that you want to work on and to draw a small picture, in case you forget what the move is meant to be – especially if it is a new move for you.

You need to believe in yourself when pole dancing. You really need to think that you can do each move. When attempting the shoulder mount I had to believe that I was going to be able to kick up and hold my body weight up. Only when I thought this was I able to do the move. With the shoulder mount flip you really have to go for it – if you don’t believe in yourself your body will subconsciously stop yourself from reaching your potential. After being able to invert confidently your body is used to you being upside down and will find the safest way of getting you down should you fall – so there’s no point in thinking about falling!

The most important thing is to enjoy your pole dancing and keeping having fun and improving.