Exercise Science 101: Build Strength for Pole Dance Without Weights
No weights for home pole dance conditioning? No problem! Dr. Rosy Boa addresses how pole dancers can build strength at home without gym access or heavy weights. She explains the basic strength principle of applying load and allowing recovery, noting weights are the most efficient for rapid, targeted gains, with free weights often preferable to machines for pole due to stabilization and range-of-motion demands. She then covers three accessible alternatives: isometrics (80–100% maximal effort holds for 1–5 seconds, scaling well but joint-angle specific), scalable bodyweight training (using variations such as changing points of contact, lever length, duration, reps, and power), and resistance bands (types, selecting by length/shape/resistance, variable tension through range, latex cautions, and use for assistance/spotting). She emphasizes consistency, enjoyable training, and doing the conditioning you will actually do.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome and Topic
00:58 Membership Shoutouts
02:59 Strength Basics
05:56 Isometrics Explained
09:11 Bodyweight Training
12:04 Scaling Difficulty
16:55 Resistance Bands
24:52 Consistency Over Intensity
28:47 Wrap Up and Invite
Citations:
Weights (machines or free weights) do have the largest effect size in building strength... but that’s not necessarily our only goal
Wiedenmann T, Held S, Morat T, Rappelt L, Isenmann E, Berndsen E, Hopp NH, Donath L. The Effects of Different Resistance Training Modalities on Muscle Strength in Community-Dwelling Older Adults: A Network Meta-Analysis. Gerontology. 2025;71(7):576-588. doi: 10.1159/000546346. Epub 2025 May 27. PMID: 40452461.
Isometrics scale with strength! (but you gotta PUSH: 80 - 100% effort and hold for a couple seconds)
Lum D, Barbosa TM. Brief Review: Effects of Isometric Strength Training on Strength and Dynamic Performance. Int J Sports Med. 2019 May;40(6):363-375. doi: 10.1055/a-0863-4539. Epub 2019 Apr 3. PMID: 30943568.
Bands do help with strength, might be more helpful with explosive/power
Stanković D, Lazić A, Trajković N, Okičić M, Bubanj A, Vencúrik T, Gašić T, Bubanj S. Effects of Elastic Band Training on Physical Performance in Team Sports: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. J Funct Morphol Kinesiol. 2025 Oct 17;10(4):402. doi: 10.3390/jfmk10040402. PMID: 41133592; PMCID: PMC12551113.
Transcript:
Hey, pole dancer. Welcome to Science of Slink, the evidence-based pole podcast with me, your host, Dr. Rosy Boa, big pole nerd. I know you are too. That's why you're here. And today, we're gonna be talking about something that I get a lot of questions about, A, B, I- if I do say so myself, I kind of specialize in as a teacher and that, woo, I wish I'd known, I wish I'd known all this stuff like 10 years ago. It would have made my pole journey so much easier. I was gonna say 10 years ago when I started pole. 14 years ago when I started pole, as I turn to dust before your eyes. But if I'd known all of this stuff when I started out in pole, uh, it would have made my life significantly easier, and that is: How do we build strength if we don't have access to weights, if we don't have a gym membership?
What can we do at home? Uh, what can we do with minimal or little equipment that will help us build strength to support ourselves on the pole? What are the options? What are the pros and cons? How do you do it?
Before we get into the meat of this episode, as always, gotta say, shout out to my members. Y'all rock. You make this possible in a very, very real way. Um, wouldn't be able to do the podcast if I didn't have folks in my, in my membership, uh, supporting the studio. And if you are interested in joining us, we got a couple options
There's Science of Slink, the membership, not the podcast, uh, which is everything I do. Um, I've started doing monthly specialty workshops in addition to my, uh, usual classes every week. Those are taught live. You get the recording. Everything's included. Easy peasy. You don't need to sign up for anything once you sign up that's the, that's the Cadillac option. That's if you're like, "Rosy, I'm all in."
And if you're like, "Rosy, I'm a little in." "I've got an hour a week. I wanna train with you. Uh, what are my options?" Well, then you should check out Essentials of Slink, which is my more lightweight membership.
And I have three options now. So I've got two set schedules where just like Science of Slink, you sign up, everything happens for you. You don't have to worry about anything. Um, there's one for, uh, EU, uh, slash US mornings, and that's on Tuesdays. Uh, and then there's one for, uh, US evenings slash Oceania, Asia mornings, and that's on Thursdays.
And now I have a new option, uh, Flex, which lets you pick your schedule. You get five hours of class a month to distribute however you like, whatever makes sense to you, whatever works with your schedule. So all that information is on my website if you're interested.
As part of my memberships, as part of my teaching, I teach- equipment-free/minimal equipment, uh, at-home conditioning for pole.
Uh, I teach strength and I teach flexibility, but today I wanna talk about strength and some of our options for if we don't have access to a gym, we don't have access to a bunch of weights. Uh, because even if we do have weights at home, like I've got a set of, of adjustable dumbbells, but I think they only go up to, like, 27, and, like, that's no longer in a strength-building range for me for a lot of things, but I wanna keep getting stronger, so how do I do that? What do I do? What are my options? I've got a lot of them, and we're gonna talk about some of them today.
So this is Exercise Science 101, of course. Basic principle of exercise science, in order to build strength, you have to expose your muscles to load and then give yourself time to recover. I know I talk about recovery all the time. Recovery is when the actual strength building happens, but you also need that stimulus, that load, uh, that tension, you might say, on the system so your body's like, "Oh, dang, we can't keep doing what we, what we've been doing. We gotta upgrade the system," right? "This is, this is the new normal. Uh, we have to be able to have the capacity to handle this. Let's build up some muscles. Let's build up some strength." And that's true for any adaptation, right? Like cardiovascular adaptation, um, building flexibility. Because you are putting this additional stimulus on your body, your body is reacting to it and, and making changes, right? And that's what we want.
And in order to increase strength, you need some sort of resistance. You need some sort of challenge to your muscles. Uh, now I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. If you are looking to build strength quickly, you are going to see the largest effect size with weights.
Specifically if you're looking for very targeted, narrow strength, right? You're like, "I need specifically hamstring strength, and just hamstring strength," uh, machines are going to be the fastest way to do that because they're designed to sort of limit your motion in a way that allows you to very specifically target one part of your body. That's, that's the benefit of the machine is they sort of do the proprioceptive, you know, h- what's my positioning work.
That's all taken out, so you can just focus on, on maximal load. Free weights are like the next step down. So free weights are just weights that aren't attached to anything, right? Like your, your barbells, your dumbbells, kettlebells, right? Things that are, you know, free in space and that you are moving and that are heavy.
In general, just, uh, my preference as a trainer for pole dancers is if you are choosing between those things, unless you have a very specific movement goal, I would say go with the free weights. Uh, because we do a lot of things where we have to- Be our own stability, right? We're doing things in the air. We're doing spins. We're doing climbs. We're moving into more extreme ranges of motion than we usually do in our day to day. So for us, stabilization and range of motion and building proprioception is a really, really important part of our training and especially our off pole training. If you're like, "Oh, should I use the squat machine or should I do, you know, a barbell squat or, like, a goblet squat with with a dumbbell?" I would personally push you towards free weights over machines
Uh, but that's just my preference as a trainer. And also I'm not training elite pole artists. I'm really here for people who, are, are like me. We're doing pole at home. We want to take care of our bodies. We want to move. We want to feel good. We want to have our little goblin dances in our rooms by ourselves and with our online friends, and that's what we're looking for. And we don't need to be in, like, the best shape that one could possibly be in to do that.
So you need resistance. Weights are gonna get you there a little bit faster, but they are not your only option.
Uh, and I'm going to talk about three different things today. So I'm gonna talk about isometrics. I'm gonna talk about body weight exercises. Uh, and then I'm gonna talk about bands, uh, and resistance bands.
So let's get into the first one, isometrics. If you have trained with me, you have done isometrics at some point.
So isometrics are movements where you find tension, where you find contraction, and you don't move. So maybe movements is actually a misnomer, right? It is a, an exercise where you are exerting yourself basically as hard as possible if you'd like to be in the strength building range. So about 80 to 100% of your maximum capacity for a couple seconds and holding that. Isometrics can absolutely help you build strength.
And a couple other things that I, I... Reasons that I really like isometrics. So one is that they scale with strength. So I mentioned that thing where like I've got free weights, but they, they are no longer challenging for some exercises, right? So now, like, the heaviest free weights I have are basically my warmup for a row. Um, and they're very helpful, and I do use them in that capacity, but it's no longer strength building for me. If I wanna strength build in that position, I have to do something else.
Isometrics don't have that problem. They scale with your strength because you are doing a percentage, ideally, uh, again, sort of like 80 to 100% of your maximum contraction, right? You're squeezing as hard as you can, and as you get stronger, you can squeeze harder. So they scale really nicely with your ability to do the output. So that's one really lovely thing about isometrics.
Also, you don't really need equipment for them, right? So, um, I do, you know, I do isometrics on the pole. I do isom- against the pole, right, using that as equipment, against doors, against walls, against the floor. Um, you can definitely, if you have, for example, access to a squat rack, you can, squat up, right? Like, you're under the bar, and the bar's being held in place, and you're pushing. Uh, and you're not going anywhere, but you're finding that isometric contraction just, again, just as hard as you can for one to five seconds. That's the strength building range for those. So the scaling is fantastic.
Another nice thing about isometrics, in general, people find them often more comfortable than, uh, than weightlifting. Uh, it generally feels like a little bit less effortful. Uh, it can be, it can be more enjoyable.
Something to know about isometrics is that the strength that they build is joint angle specific. So if you are doing this to help support you in pole, I would be very careful about exercise selection because you're going to get the greatest benefit at the specific position that your joints are in. So one place that I will often use isometrics is in a, a sort of broad-chested position, working on the strength that we need to hold our body weight in a stronghold.
Uh, I know a lot of folks really struggle with in a stronghold, your shoulders rounding forward, your pecs really taking over, uh, and checking in with the middle traps, the rhomboids to help bring you back to a, a sort of a neutral, flat position where you're gonna have, you know, more mechanical advantage is really beneficial. So we train those with isometrics, and the greatest benefit is going to be in that neutral position where we're gonna feel strongest. Which I mean, ideally once you've done it a lot, you sort of... You've built up that sensation of like, "Oh, yeah, this is where I'm strongest." You're gonna have an easier time going to there once you're in the air, and that's sort of the general idea.
So isometrics, pushing as hard as you can, again, for strength building, 100 to 80%, holding for one to five seconds. And then, uh, you know, doing a couple repetitions of those with, with rest in between. So can be very, very impactful. Be mindful with your exercise selection, but I'm a big fan of isometrics.
I would say I talked about isometrics separately. They are a type of body weight exercise. So, body weight exercises are basically just exercises where the resistance is coming from the weight of your body. Spoiler alert, pole dance is a body weight exercise, right? Unless you are adding additional, quote-unquote "body weight" to something like a weighted vest or ankle weights or wrist weights or heels, which are fancy ankle weights.
Uh, that is the, you know, you're just moving your body around. That's all the pole is. Uh, put that on a T-shirt.
Pros and cons, right? So pro that means that when we are working on body weight strengthening, a lot of what we're doing is going to be very helpful for building sort of our proprioception or understanding for pole. Uh, w- it's very easy to do sport-specific stuff because, again, pole requires body weight strength.
The downside is when we are doing things on the pole, we're moving our body weight. When we're doing body weight training, we're also moving our body weight.
So in order to get to the point where we're building more strength than we need for our tricks, which is always my preference, right? 'Cause I'm all about freestyle, feeling good, flowy. When I'm dancing, I am not working, you know, at 100% of my, you know, strength capacity. I'm always within that envelope. So in order to, like, do more different stuff in my dance, I need to increase the size of the envelope, which means that what I'm doing in my conditioning needs to be harder than what I'm doing in my dance. And if my body weight isn't changing, right, like if I'm not just suddenly lighter when I step up to the pole, uh, to do my dance than I am when I'm training my, my body weight conditioning, like adding some sort of weight what I have to do instead is I have to make the exercises more challenging.
So structuring your body weight exercises so that you are finding the appropriate amount of challenge can be tricky, and it really requires understanding what it is you're trying to do and how to make that movement easier and harder. Um, so if you've ever done any of my conditioning classes, you know that when I introduce an exercise, right, we're going through our sets, and I'm like, "We're gonna do one of these," I'll usually introduce five to six variations in there. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Really depends on the exercise. But that's not just like, well, if you're good, you're gonna do the hardest one, and everyone else can get down there in the, like, uh, the easy section. That's not at all what it is. This is the exact same as me putting out a set of dumbbells and being like, "Pick the one that's appropriate for you today," right?
And it will change day to day. Again, if you've, if you've trained with me, right, I, uh, especially with the conditioning I will choose which variation I pick based on, how I'm feeling, how much effort things are, how much energy I have, right?
I am looking for something that by the, like, fifth to sixth repetition is starting to feel hard, but the first couple are easy. That's really the sweet spot. And especially with body weight exercises, because the way that we make it more difficult, is that we change the exercise itself, it means we need to have a lot of options so we can really fine-tune on what's going to be appropriate f- appropriate for us that day.
General principles of making body weight exercises harder or easier. So I said we can't really change your body weight, but you can change what's supporting your body weight, right? So, I know, uh, Chloe, I know you're working on your pull-ups. Uh, and we talked about this. If you have something that can support part of your body weight while you're working on your pull-ups that can help reduce the load on your upper body, so a great example for this is, uh, if you have a chair, you can put your feet on the chair, uh, and you can take more weight in your legs if you need to, uh, as you, you know, pull up and then as you come down. So you- you're helping support some of the weight, uh, with your legs so that your upper body isn't doing everything.
Um, and of course, you can adjust that, right? Like, how much do you push with your legs? How much do you pull with your back? And as it gets easier and easier and easier, you can do less and less and less. You could move towards one leg rather than two legs, or if one leg isn't enough, you can do two legs.
Same thing, you know, arms. The... Generally, the more points of contact with whatever it is that you're doing, the easier things will be. The fewer points of contact, the harder things will be, right? If a 30-second plank hold is nothing for you and you're like, " I wanna take this up a notch," try lifting up one leg at a time so you're just on one foot. Try lifting up opposite arm and leg. You're really gonna be, be stressing your stabilizers more to hold you in a stable position once you start to remove points of contact. You can also do things for longer, right?
So I mentioned 30-second plank, especially if we are working for endurance, especially if we are working for strength and endurance together, which is something we need in pole because we wanna do hard things for, like, three to five minutes, right? Like, my goal is certainly to be able to dance to an entire song, be able to, you know, add those cool tricks that I've been working on that feel really good to play with, uh, and to have that feel pretty easy so I can focus on just having a nice time.
And that's, you know, three to five minutes of high intensity exertion is quite a bit. So we can help to prepare ourselves by that, by exerting ourselves for a longer duration. So again, if you've, if you've taken my classes , you'll know that my conditioning class includes a endurance segment. Uh, and over the course of the month, we lengthen how long we are doing a specific movement for.
Uh, and then the next month, we change the movement, and we, we go back to that, that shorter duration that we slowly increase over time. So as we become more accustomed to an exercise, as we are increasing the intensity of our workout overall through our, you know, month-long periodization cycle- We are doing things for longer, so it's another way to increase your, your challenge.
You can also, uh, add more of a power component. Uh, I am not a big power pole person. I am not particularly a dynamics person. Those of y'all who, who are familiar with my dance style, uh, I'm much more, uh, a s- cobra than flying squirrel. If I had to sort of, like, pick one of those animals, which one do I move like?
It's definitely, like, the python or the boa, perhaps. Rosy boas are not arbo- arboreal, uh, unfortunately. They are fossorial. They're very... I think they're cute. They might be a little bit of a, an acquired taste. But point being adding a power component can be another way to make things more challenging.
So instead of, say, uh, you know, body weight squats, you might do jumps. Star jumps, uh, an exercise that I personally find horrible. Not my favorite. Very effective at building cardiovascular endurance and very effective at building power. So changing where you're holding your weight using, you know, more, fewer points of contact, doing things for longer, uh, doing things with more power, doing things with more repetitions.
In general, you know, sort of basic physical principles, the longer the lever is, the harder it is. So for plank progression, for example I will often offer folks the, the option of being on all fours because that helps you find the core and the spinal alignment.
And then you can do a plank with your hands on the wall. You can start to walk your hands down to, uh, increase the amount of tension. Uh, you can do a plank from your knees, which shortens the lever. You can do a plank from your toes, which lengthens the lever. You can, you know, I mentioned picking up arms and feet. Uh, you can begin to walk your feet up the wall, walk, walking towards a handstand plank, which is definitely gonna make it a larger challenge, uh, in terms of your, your upper body. You can hold it for a long time. Uh, you can add powers. You can add pushups working towards clapping pushups can be really impactful there. So lots of different ways to adjust a movement. And when you are picking what exercise you do for a specific day, uh, pick something where the first couple feel easy, and then by the end of the set, it's really, really challenging.
And really, that's what it comes down to. Um, if you are training for strength, by the time you are finishing an exercise, the final couple of, couple repetitions should feel very, very effortful. If they're not, you need to increase your, uh, your challenge. If the first couple repetitions feel very, very effortful try something a little bit less challenging. Try adjusting one of those things And the exact number of repetitions and how many sets you do and blah, blah, blah, blah. That's gonna depend on your specific programming and what you're working towards.
And finally we come to an option for resistance, uh, that is a little bit more than body weight, uh, but easier to have around than, uh, than free weights, and also for pole dancers is multipurpose, and this is bands. So couple options here. Uh, there are TheraBands, uh, which are generally thinner, uh, a little bit flatter, more like an egg noodle kind of thing, I guess.
Um, there are, uh, rubber bands which are circular. Those are more like a soba noodle, I don't know why I'm using noodle things here. Um, and then you have a, a wide variety of, uh, different configurations of each. You also have, uh, tubular ones that have handles on the end. And the main thing to think about when you are thinking about bands are, for the specific exercise that you are doing, how much length do you need?
What shape do you need? And how much resistance do you need? So length, great example for this, if I'm using a band to work on an overhead press, right? Uh, and let's say I wanna do both hands at the same time, I need a band that's gonna be long enough for me to have my hands up over my head and for it to go all the way down to the floor, underneath my feet, and then me, right?
Like, I need a band that's that long. If I try to do that exercise with a band that's not that long, it will snap . Ask me how I know. So length.
Shape. If you are, uh, putting a band around your elbows, or you're putting your band around your knees, you wanna work on your abductors, uh, a circular band is really helpful.
You can always tie bands to be smaller. It is very hard to make a small circular band longer. I guess you could Möbius strip it, but then you would be changing the resistance, and also I think probably making it more likely to snap. But yeah, if you wanna try it, I'm not gonna stop you.
Then finally, resistance. So there's a wide range of resistances in bands. Uh, generally the physically thicker a band is, the more resistance it's going to provide. If you are looking to buy bands and you're like, "What do I need? What should I get?" My general recommendation, especially if you're getting, uh, the sort of like large circular bands, would be to get several lesser resistance bands, and that way you can pick out a couple, right? And you can use all of them for a lot of resistance, or you can use like two of them for a little bit less, or just one of them for even less.
If you are using the flat bands, the TheraBands, uh, in general, the very low resistance ones tend to degrade and snap more easily. I'm not entirely sure why this is. Someone who knows more about polymers than me, please feel free to like leave it in the comments. I'd love to know. But they do have a lifespan. They do tend to degrade, even if you're using them routinely. Maybe it's something to do with oils on hands, I don't know. Uh, but those will snap, and generally the lower resistance ones will snap more.
Another thing to know is that some bands have latex in them. If you have a latex allergy, double check . Double check. Nothing, uh, nothing as delightful as, uh, finishing a set and being like, "That's a burning sensation I should not be feeling right now."
Uh, nice thing about bands, they are light. They are physically light because the resistance is in the stretch.
Unlike something like a cable machine the amount of resistance that they are providing is not consistent throughout the range of motion. So one of the really nice things about a cable machine is that I'm getting, uh, as much, as much work at both ends of my range of motion as I am in the middle. It's just consistent throughout. It's like a flat force diagram. With bands, the more resistance there is, the more tension, right? So if I am, for example, I've attached a band to a pole and I'm using it to pull down, right, I'm doing like rows or something when my arms are extended and there's less tension in the band, there is going to be less resistance, and there will be more resistance when my arms are down at my side.
Uh, likewise for the overhead press thing I mentioned, when my arms are bent, there's gonna be less resistance in the band, and there will be more resistance in the band when my arms are straight overhead. And that's just something to know if you're really interested in strengthening, you know, one end of the range of motion over the other. The way that you set up the exercise that you choose is going to affect how, how accessible that is to you.
Also a nice thing about particularly the big, like, rubber band shaped bands, uh, is that they can be helpful for spotting, and they can be helpful for reducing your body weight.
Uh, so, you know, you'll do a lark's head around the pole, uh, usually aiming for like a 45-degree angle with the ground rather than flat, uh, and then looping it over, you know, your knees, your feet, your hands, your elbow, your armpit, whatever's gonna be helpful for the specific thing that you are working on.
Um, so they are multipurpose for pole. They can be a nice tool to have. Watch out for the latex.
Something else to know about bands is that, uh, they definitely do help build strength. They are resistance, right? It's gonna help. They, like free weights, they help to work on stabilizers. They help you, uh, build your, your understanding of where things are in space.
They can be really helpful, uh, if you do struggle with, you know, proprioception 'cause they give you a little bit more haptic feedback than you would have just with, uh, body weight movement in the air. So that can be a really nice bridge, uh, if there's something that you're really struggling with. That's why they get used a lot in physical therapy for, for building, specific strength, but also to, to give you more feedback to help you put your brain where it's supposed to be.
In terms of building strength, it does seem like they're a little bit more helpful, uh, building power, uh, and building sort of explosive strength. So if you're interested in working in more dynamic things, uh, bands can be particularly helpful for that.
I like them. They're a great tool. I know not everybody has them. Uh, I will sometimes offer options for them when I'm teaching. I think they're great to have, uh, but they're definitely not a requirement.
So this is the first thing on the list that really... Uh, well, I guess I mentioned, like, pull-ups. You need something to pull up against, but this is the, the first thing that's, like, a piece of equipment. If I were going to buy sort of accessory equipment to help support my pole training, uh, personally, I think the first thing I would buy would be yoga blocks because being able to change the height of different body parts in a way that is comfortable and non-slip is fantastic.
If you don't have yoga blocks, you can always use... fold up a sweater, roll up a towel, lots of different options. It's nice to have the yoga blocks. Uh, and then bands would probably be the second thing that I would buy. Um, and I would, if I were gonna buy some bands today, I'd probably buy, um, ones with a little bit more resistance, and I'd probably do a set of smaller loops, um, and then a set of, like, long strips. I do use the, the sort of the big rubber bands sometimes. Uh, finding ones without latex is pretty hard, um, which may or may not be an issue for, for you.
So that's bands, another really great option that you can use to help build strength, uh, without f- without weights, which, not everyone has at home.
So some options there. You can do isometrics. Uh, you're just squeezing. You're working against yourself, scales with strength. Fantastic. You can do bodyweight exercises that aren't isometrics, uh, which, uh, can be a little bit more tricky to scale. You really have to pay attention. Uh, you really have to understand the exercise. You really have to have a lot of options to pick what's gonna work for you. Uh, but again, very effective, definitely help with your proprioception, definitely do help you build strength. Uh, and then bands, which add a little bit resistance, a little bit more attainable and accessible and, you know, available for, for the home poler than, you know, your full dumbbell rack or squat rack or whatever.
But I will say, you know, I mentioned at the beginning, weights are going to be the most efficient way to build strength if you have limited time, but, like, the budget for it or, uh, you know, you've got a lot of energy and you can get in the gym. Or if you have, like, a limited timeline, you're like, "Well, I've got two months to build strength, and then I need to get into competition prep and, you know, start working on this routine and, and my technical stuff," and you absolutely... like, you have specific goals you need to meet, weights can be a great way to do that. Again, that's not, that's not really who I'm working with. I'm just working with, us weirdos who just wanna pole at home and have a nice time and feel good in our bodies and maybe don't necessarily have any sort of specific timelines or big competition goals or anything like that.
If you do, I would definitely recommend, um, recommend weight training. It's like it's, it's a good place to start. It's a good skill to have. It's good for your body. I'm never gonna say don't do it.
What I will say is- The most effective conditioning and strength training is the one that you actually do. So as a personal trainer, as a teacher, the number one thing that is going to help you build strength is consistency. It's showing up often. Little and often is so much more powerful and effective than a lot sometimes .
And I think there's, uh, some sort of misconceptions about this. I think there's this belief that like, "Oh, I have to work so hard. I get really sore, and then I can't work out for a couple days," and like that's really what's gonna help me move faster. Not necessarily, right? We're trying to convince our body to adapt. We're trying to convince our body like, "Hey, this is the new normal. We gotta get with the times, man. I don't know. Stuff's just heavier. Don't ask me. We gotta be able to lift it." Right? And having, you know, lots of small pieces of evidence that aren't unduly straining that don't make it so that you can't train for a couple days is going to be much more effective in the long run, especially since most people, and, you know, this may or may not be true for you, but for most people if you are like, "Hey, you have to do really hard things that feel bad forever," um, are gonna be like, "I would prefer not to do that, actually."
And honestly, I think that's something that's driven a lot of people away from exercise in general, is having, frankly, physical education that sucked, right? Like I am... I do exercise stuff professionally at this point. Uh, I hated PE as a kid so much. It felt bad.
We never warmed up appropriately for, uh, you know, me and my fitness level. I didn't understand what warmups were. They would just be like, "Go outside and run a mile," in, you know, the 90-degree heat. No preparation. We didn't work up towards it.
A well-designed right, a, a movement paradigm, a movement diet, a fitness diet that supports you should not feel bad most of the time, right? There should be effort involved, right? You should need to push yourself a little bit if you wanna get stronger, but it shouldn't be so bad you dread it. It shouldn't feel awful in your body, right? And I think a lot of us are drawn to pole because it's fun, it's enjoyable, and we're not being compressed inside this, you know, uh, puritanical, "You must suffer. It is your lot on Earth to suffer, and moving your body is no different," uh, kind of constricting tentacles of the fitness industrial complex. Um, and instead, we can just like move our body and have a nice time. Have fun, feel good, do something we enjoy. Maybe there's cool music playing. Maybe, uh, you know, maybe we're not pushing ourselves 110%. Maybe we don't wanna feel the burn today. Uh, and for me, as a fitness professional, that's ideal. I want you to do the thing that you're gonna be able to come back and keep doing consistently because that's how you're gonna take care of your body for the long run, right?
Like, I am not training people for the competition next month, I am training people for being able to get up off the floor in 50 years, right? Like, that's what I'm going for. ... And again, my goals may not be your goals. You may be like, "No, Rosy, I know what I want. I'm, I am pushing 110%, and that's what brings me joy in my life and my body."
Uh, I'm not, absolutely not gonna stop you. You do you. Find your joy. But that's not what I'm here for. And resistance training that I can do at home with minimal equipment, with minimal preparation, I actually do. And like, I don't go to the gym. And like, for me, it's for COVID reasons, but for you, you know, maybe you don't have time, maybe you don't have energy, maybe you don't have the budget, uh, maybe there's no gym near you that you like. Whatever it is finding some way to add a little bit of resistance, a little bit of extra work, to give, again, just like evidence for your body that like, hey, we're doing things that are a little bit harder than we normally do. Let's step it up a little bit. And your body's gonna be like, "Absolutely, boss. We'll get a little bit stronger." And then you push yourself a little bit further, a little bit stronger, right? And over time, over weeks, months, years, uh, you'll find that you have a body that supports you in doing more things than you did before because you're asking it to nicely.
And you're getting enough rest, right? Yes. Good. Excellent. I'm glad to hear that you're resting. Fantastic.
Those are my thoughts about building strength for pole dance if you don't have access to weights or if weights don't work for you for whatever reason. Um, also, it's not all or nothing. You can do some body weight stuff, you can do some weights.
Do the thing that it is that you are actually going to do. And it's always gonna be the best movement. It's the movement that you actually show up and do.
So I hope you learned something today. I hope you feel, I don't know, I hope you feel empowered.
I hope you're like, "Yeah, I can do this. And maybe I'm not gonna be doing, you know, barbell squats every Thursday." Maybe you will. Maybe that's something that's in your body and you're really excited for now. But maybe you're like, "Yeah, I can do, you know, a little bit of body weight work, just once a week, a little bit of extra resistance, build a little bit of extra strength, and make my pole movement feel easier, and freer, and more fun and flowing."
And that's, that's the point. At least for me, that's the point, is feeling good in my freestyle flow.
So- Thanks so much for joining me today. Uh, I look forward to talking with you again soon. Uh, if you're interested in coming to dance with me, check out one of my membership options. I'd always be happy to see you.
Uh, and if you're like, "Okay, but what if I, I don't like your teaching style?" I got a free sample class. Try it out. See, uh, see if, see if our vibes match. And if they don't, that is fine. And if they do, hey, maybe we hang out more. Thanks so much for joining, and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
