Welcome back to another XPERT blog, and this month, we’re talking all about just why we even do pole and aerial in the first place. After all, you’ve got to be a certain
kind of person (an awesome one, of course), to willingly hang upside down for fun. We contort ourselves into the craziest positions, hang off equipment by just a hooked knee, and throw ourselves around our equipment in whatever new trick our instructor has lined up for us that week.
All that being said, there can come a certain point where pole and aerial can become quite frustrating – after all, it’s actually quite physically demanding as far as hobbies
go, and the more you progress, the more you start to realise it takes longer to gain new tricks and transitions along the way.
I posted a photoshoot image of this on my social media not too long ago of my Bird of Paradise on pole, and it got me thinking back to the journey I went on to train this
move. The road was frustrating for sure – when I first started out, the move seemed literally impossible. As I chipped away at all the tips and tricks and micro-maneuvers
over time, I slowly managed to get my arm better positioned overhead, and that leg ever so straighter and closer to where it needed to be. I nearly got it to a point where
I could do it without a mat. Then, life got in the way, and I forgot about my BoP for a few months. Unsurprisingly, when I tried to pick up where I left off, it was almost as
though I’d never even tried this move before in my life. The frustration was real – I so envied the days where I came to a beginners class and seemed to get to try something brand new every week, and always achieved something, coming away with a sense of accomplishment even if all that was was a cheer from my instructor that I had tried hard that day.
This made me realise – we have a lot to learn from the early stages in our pole and aerial training. As someone who teaches beginner and lower intermediate students
all the time, I started to look at them for how they approach their pole and aerial classes. They still had goals, sure, but the way that my students talked about pole dancing was so different to how I had been viewing it myself those past few weeks. The main thing that they looked for in what they achieved in that class that day was whether or not they enjoyed the move. This made me totally reframe how I was looking at my Bird of Paradise training.
Sure, I wasn’t really getting the move at the time and it was verging on being a bit annoying. But, I was having such a laugh as my fellow instructors cheered for me,
spotted me when I needed it, giggled along with me at my fails and squished-up faces in videos. I was enjoying the challenge – I’m not a massive trickster as far as pole dancers go, so to have an awesome move so closely within my grasp was actually really exciting, as despite the frustration, I knew with time I would ultimately get my BoP. I also just loved being in the studio training so much, pole and aerial is my happy place and every second spent nurturing that part of me is a second well spent. Pole and aerial practice for me is supposed to be joyful – and it should be for you, too.
With our lives becoming increasingly online, there is an unavoidable shift towards comparing our progress to what other people on the internet are up to. In a world where photos and videos are available in a matter of seconds of pole dancers and aerialists who have been perfecting their craft for decades, it’s easy to see why we can become discouraged and disillusioned easily. Unfortunately, social media doesn’t come with a fact checker – we don’t know how long that pole dancer has been training that trick, we can’t easily see if that aerialist is a trained contortionist and that’s why their flexibility is so incredible, and we certainly don’t get to find out how often that pole dancer or aerialist found themselves losing faith in their artform a
little. Despite our brains being fully aware that no one wakes up one day and is an advanced level aerialist without putting in any work beforehand, it doesn’t always feel that way.
But what if we threw all of that out the window? What if, instead of worrying about how things look and what others might think of us, or how we wish our dancing
looked – we just did stuff that we liked, because we enjoyed it? Progress feels better when it’s being fuelled by joy. This doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about what you’re doing – if you’re on a hardcore conditioning programme to take your training to the next level, you do you. If you have a list of tricks you’re working through like you’re collecting Pokemon – feel free to keep going.
But don’t be afraid to take a step back to smell the roses once in a while. Don’t just measure your sessions based on whether a move has been achieved or not, or if you were on ‘top form’. What did you enjoy doing the most that day? Did you get to catch up with your best pole or aerial pal in class? How does your body feel after getting to move and flow? You’ll soon start to realise that there are so many reasons you feel great after class that have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not a new trick panned out or not.
If you’re still finding it tricky to find your joy – don’t sweat it. Reflection isn’t for everyone, and often, we’re tired after training. So instead of searching retrospectively, set yourself some goals to inject some fun into your pole and aerial life. Set up a playdate session with a training buddy, find some random things for you to try, and enjoy the process of working things out as you explore, laugh, and achieve together.
Another thing you can do is re-assessing how you plan your training sessions – are you just writing a list of stuff that you can’t do yet and need to work on? Put some stuff in there that you really like, and that makes you feel good. I personally absolutely love putting on my heels and having a freestyle flow, so I always make sure I have some time in my session to explore and dance, even if I’m at the studio to train some heavy tricks.
Following on from this – have you got an epic, feel-good playlist to train to? It might sound daft, but there are literal studies that show that you perform better athletically, and feel good mentally, if you undertake exercise listening to music you like. So head to your Spotify, chuck together a playlist of your favourite songs that bring you that sing-along, ‘I can conquer anything’ energy and cue it up next time you’re training.
Joyfulness isn’t always the easiest thing to find, but without it, our pole and aerial life can be a little flat. Next time you find yourself stuck in a training rut, take a little time to assess just why that is. Are you actually a massive failure at pole and aerial, or is it just because you’re focusing on all the wrong things? I’d put my bets on it being the
latter. This blog post is your permission slip to take a step back and take some time to reassess what makes you happy in your pole and aerial life. If you concentrate on what you enjoy, and what makes you feel joyful in your practice, you will never have a bad session again. Anyway, that’s enough from me – if anyone’s looking for me, tell them I’ll be flowing around the pole like no-one’s watching listening to Lady Gaga (after all, it’d be a real shame if I didn’t practice what I preach!)