I was 11 when I fell in love with dance. I immediately became addicted to the adrenaline from performing in front of others, whether it be in my living room, a talent show stage or on a football field.
At 21, I was introduced to pole fitness. Falling in love with the risque dance moves and flexible gravity defying tricks, I decided to give it a go. This blog is to simply document my feedback, failures and accomplishments, ALL to better myself! Enjoy!
Today is hump day, oh thank goodness. At least the week is half way over, right? Well the weekdays are for putting in work, in the office and in the gym. "Dance studio counts as a gym?" Bet your butt it does! Just as pole fitness is a sport.
Todays class was at The Girls Room in Irving, taught by AmyHenderson. She's a pole bad ass, and a great teacher. She helped us perfect our climb today, as well as gain comfort in doing our lay backs on the spinner pole. For those reading this that are not familiar with pole, yes the pole spins on it's own. Or the pole can change back into stationary mode with the replacement of a little pin located at the base of the pole. Any who...
I liked todays class because I always find it beneficial to practice climbing. I needed to get my knees re-bruised, anyways. After all, I have to be ready for the Winter Showcase and Toy Drive this Sunday! I am familiar with the knee hold and lay back, thanks to Tricia in Frisco! Amy helped me go further in the exercise by teaching me how to go into a split after my knee hold, love it! I am becoming more and more comfortable doing my split on the pole after just 3 practices.
Two jobs, dance class, and trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle can be a little tiring sometimes. So excuse me while I talk about the bad ass deliciousness I created for myself after dance. Mmmkay. So, It's just eggswithcheese, and baked asparagus. But still, it's so good. I also bagged some up for lunch tomorrow, productive girls say what?!
Alright alright! It's Monday, BOO! Monday is just one more reason to work out even harder, because Mondays suck all the more. And today, I kicked Mondays ASS!
Today, I went to work and did a little flag fooseball practice with my Risk team at Exeter. We are playing in a flag football game on Wednesday as a time-waster to get out of work earlier. Oh, and team bonding of course. We are playing against another group, Credit Review. We are going to cream 'em. *Pictures to come* I got in a little extra 30 minutes of cardio! Man, haave I gotten bad at short distance running. Definitely an opportunity for improvement there! Hi, I like to hate myself publicly.
At dance, we went over: Head stands Hand stands Basic swing Climbing Dancer legs Back bend on the pole
I recorded a little somethin' somethin'. Feast your eyes on the ever famous Crack and Back.
Crack and back is where you keep your legs open in spread eagle while using ONLY your abdominals to make a swiping motion, swiping your butt crack on the pole and tucking in your tail bone with your abs to slide the pole towards your back. Another little tip on keeping an open perspective in this trick, is that it takes a strong core to successfully slide your feet elegantly and get into head/handstand position. You should definitely use legwarmers, you know, if you want you protect your pedicure of course. Or, your flesh on your feet, but whatever. In pole, you shed skin and bang yourself up, in a way your wounds are a sign you accomplished something, or are getting closer.
Here's another little clip, doing essentially the same thing but instead of coming out of the trick into a split, i'm locking my ankles around the pole and sitting up, into a climb. But I have leg warmers and don't want to bust my face, so I simply stand.
That's all I have :( I have been slacking on my dancing this past week, I have no excuse other than i've been going to the gym rather than dancing. I have an extra 20lbs i'm wearing and feel like if I go to the gym instead, i'll come closer to losing that weight. But the truth of the matter is, I have a showcase coming up soon!
**Performances** Raffles**Music**Food**Drinks** Members=FREE Standing Room=$10 VIP Seating= $20"Twas the flight before Christmas" at The Girls Room Dallas! Come out to watch amazing pole performances and celebrate the holidays at the The Girls Room. Purchase tickets online or call 214.821.0123 for more details!
This weeks pole jam sesh was to Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams' cover. Truthfully, I find Marilyn Mansons music to be sexy and full of opportunity for dances. My taste in pole music is definitely the grunge, slower tempo and heavy bass tunes. A sexy song played in the back ground of a sexy pole jam just makes it all the more SEXIER!
So as the title states, critisism galore up in here. I feel like as a dancer, my style is very up-tempo and very lyrical style (created from the fusion of ballet with jazz and contemporary dance), so pole has been a great challenge for me to bring out my inner heavy metal head and combine it with the bad ass moves on the pole.
This FSF (FreeStyle Friday, come on, get with it!) was my 4th attempt! The 3 previous attempts were too huge of fails to post. I'm embarassed to even type that, haha. But, that's what FSF is for - learning and strengthening yourself! We all over analyze the things we do, but that's exactly how we become the dancers we are. That being said, i've been recording about every move I learn in class to later on 1.) REMEMBER the darn move 2.) Critique my performance.
This past week, I attended a spinner pole class and learned a couple moves/little combos and taped them Friday evening at class before my FreeStyle Friday, here they are...
The little combo below was taught by Amy Henderson at the halloween pole dance sesh we had earlier in the week. My goal is to lean back more in my 'Hello Boys' variation so I can more comfortably hold myself.
The clip below was taught to me by Tricia in Frisco and is the first spinner move i've ever really learned. It's very simple and elegant, like I said my back flexibility needs work!
Lastly, this is my Candy cane into one legged basic swing, with a sassy little kick. Candy cane is such a beautiful and powerful trick, it took me a bit to get comfortable with the whole 'running and jumping' motion of it all, but eventually it becomes more fun of a trick to perform, especially when you see the look on everyones faces! ;-)
My goals for the week are to work on my over all technique. No one wants to see some heavy breathing, curved back weirdo spinning around some pole. In order to get where I need to be, I need to be cross training and work on strengthening my muscles. I feel like my core and back flexibility need the most work.
Thanks for reading and if you're a fellow pole sister PLEASE comment some constructive critisim, comments and/or post your own pole blog link! XoXo
