Exercise Science 101: How often should you pole dance?

In this episode of 'Science of Slink,' Dr. Rosy Boa explains how often and how intensely recreational adult pole dancers should practice based on findings from exercise science. Dr. Boa shares the American College of Sports Medicine's guidelines for aerobic physical activity, which recommend either 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise spread over five days or 60 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise across three days weekly. She discusses the importance of balancing exercise with proper rest and recovery and emphasizes that even short, less than 10-minute sessions can provide significant health benefits. Lastly, Dr. Boa introduces her Science of Slink membership options for those interested in structured, evidence-based pole dance training.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Exercise Science for Pole Dancers

01:00 Membership Options and Podcast Shoutout

01:35 Caveats and Target Audience

02:41 Top Line Recommendations for Pole Dance Frequency

03:49 Understanding Exercise Intensity

04:53 Practical Tips for Monitoring Intensity

07:52 Importance of Rest and Recovery

09:20 Cognitive Benefits of Physical Activity

10:38 Consistency and Habit Formation

12:37 Final Recommendations and Conclusion

Citations: 

Erickson, K. I., Hillman, C., Stillman, C. M., Ballard, R. M., Bloodgood, B., Conroy, D. E., ... & Powell, K. E. (2019). Physical activity, cognition, and brain outcomes: a review of the 2018 physical activity guidelines. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 51(6), 1242.

Haskell, W. L., Lee, I. M., Pate, R. R., Powell, K. E., Blair, S. N., Franklin, B. A., ... & Bauman, A. (2007). Physical activity and public health: updated recommendation for adults from the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association. Circulation, 116(9), 1081.

Jakicic, J. M., Kraus, W. E., Powell, K. E., Campbell, W. W., Janz, K. F., Troiano, R. P., ... & 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Committee. (2019). Association between bout duration of physical activity and health: systematic review. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 51(6), 1213.

Kaushal, N., & Rhodes, R. E. (2015). Exercise habit formation in new gym members: a longitudinal study. Journal of behavioral medicine, 38(4), 652-663.

Transcript: 

Pole dancer. Have you ever wondered what the research says about how often you should be doing pole dance? Today we're gonna dig into it. So this is a new series, exercise Science 1 0 1, where I'm gonna be bringing in some of the core findings from exercise science and talking about how they apply to pole dance.

For us as recreational pole dancers. Uh, and today we're really gonna be digging into how often, uh, and how intensely we should be doing pole and how those things interact. And give you some, uh, general information so that you can make more informed decisions. And I want you to come away from this with a general understanding of the current guidelines and what they mean, how they apply to you and your pole life, so you can feel really empowered to make the decisions that are best for you and your body.

If you don't know me, my name is Dr. Rosy Boa and I run Slink through Strength an online Pole Studio for nerds who wanna build a better relationship with their body through pole dance and science. Of course, hence the podcast. Uh, and also I, I have a podcast. It's this. Science of Slink, the evidence-based pole podcast, we're gonna get real nerdy with it.

Before we get in, I just wanna say, shout out to my members. Big hearts to y'all. Uh, you make this possible and you know how much I appreciate you. And if you wanna join us, uh, as one of my members, uh, you got a couple options. You've got Science of Slink the Premier membership, which is basically everything I teach live and recorded.

And then there's Essentials of Slink, which is if you've only got an hour a week, I'll hook you up with classes that are all structured and based on exercise science. So you can, uh, get the benefit of that without having to read a bunch of papers. But knowing you and the fact that you're here listening to this. You, you're probably actually interested in the papers, so let's get into it.

I have a couple caveats before we get in. A: I am talking today to recreational adult pole dancers. If you are a high level competitive pole dancer, if you are looking to, uh, really push your athleticism, anything like that, uh, this is not going to be as relevant for you. This is for recreational pole dancers who are doing this for fun and are like, "how much should I be doing? How much is too much? How much is too little? What's the, what's the recommendations with the guidance here?"

Uh, two this is based on recommendations for general health and wellbeing. This is not. Medical advice. I am not that type of doctor. This is not intended to identify or treat anything. I just wanna give you the information and tell you where you can find more information so that you can be a more informed mover.

And part of the reason why I'm doing this is when I started pole, I had zero knowledge about exercise science. I had never been a gym person. No one had ever told me like, Hey, uh, duration and intensity should have a relationship to each other, and this is what it should look like. So this is stuff like I did not know when I started pole, and if I had, oh, it would've made my life so much better. That's what I'm telling you so I can make your life better.

So with that, let's get into it. Top line recommendations. So these are from the American College of Sports Medicine, uh, which they do, uh, personal training, certifications and more exercise science and sports.

Science stuff as well as of course perhaps you can tell from medicine. They also work with physicians, so they're pulling in a lot of the clinical research. And a lot of the sort of like population study research as well, when they're making their recommendations and their recommendation is that healthy adults age 18 to 65.

So if you're, you know, a child or like really a senior, uh, these are maybe not gonna apply to you. Should participate in moderate intensity, aerobic physical activity for a minimum of 30 minutes on five days a week. So that would be five 30 minute classes if you were doing this pole wise or vigorous intensity aerobic activity for a minimum of 20 minutes on three days a week.

So it would be three 20 minute pole classes. I don't know anyone who teaches 20 minute pole classes, but maybe you do, or you know someone who does, or that's just, you know, the time span that makes sense for you and your, your personal practice.

So again, that's five 30 minutes moderate intensity sessions or three 20 minute vigorous intensity sessions.

So something you may immediately pick up on here is they are recommending. Longer duration at lower intensity or lower duration at higher intensity. Uh, and the way that intensity is defined is going to be, uh, based on your heart rate and your target heart rate.

So your target heart rate is going to be calculated based on your max heart rate, uh, your max heart rate. There's several different ways to calculate this. The most common is a formula that's based on your age. And then that is the maximum of your heart rate. And then the percentages are what percentage of your max heart rate are you trying to target?

And the, the sort of general definition is that low intensity is anything below 50%, moderate intensity would be 50 to 70% and vigorous would be 70 to 85.

And you're like, why not a hundred? 'cause a hundred is like, as high as it goes, a hundred is that your heart is working like flat out running from a bear, fear for your life. We don't actually wanna hang out there. That's like very stressful on your system.

So we're trying to get like closer to that. And the closer we are, the more vigorous the exercise is.

Now, I don't wear a heart rate monitor. Maybe you do. I certainly do not. Uh, and even if you do, a lot of the consumer ones are not like, super accurate and you may or may not know actually what your, your target heart rate band is. So what I like to do is I like to use physiological signs.

So for me, uh, a good, a good thing to like reach for, if you're trying to figure out if you're doing moderate intensity: can you talk but not sing? So if you can't talk or sing, uh, I would call that vigorous intensity, right? If you're sort of like really having to gasp for breath.

And if you can talk like in sort of isolated words, you probably couldn't do like a soliloquy, you'd probably sound out a breath if you were recording a podcast, for example. I'd call that more moderate intensity. And if you can easily talk and sing, I would call that more low intensity. A lot of times people also use things like, uh, moderate intensity would be a brisk walk and vigorous intensity would be jogging.

In pole I would call my flexibility classes, for example, are usually low intensity because the focus is not on cardiovascular health. The focus is not on aerobic health focuses on building your range of ocean, uh, and your flexibility and mobility, which is a different training goal. So we train it separately.

Uh, moderate intensity. I would. Say, usually my pole classes are relatively moderate intensity because I want your focus to be on working within your capabilities and doing new motor learning and trying to do new shapes and new things with your body. Whereas freestyle classes where all we're doing is moving for a really long chunk of time, and the self-directed movement, uh, depending on, you know, how how much you're choosing to work is probably gonna be closer to vigorous intensity.

In general, I try to keep most of my classes at moderate intensity, uh, based on research that suggests that people are more likely to actually show up and do moderate intensity exercise.

And the most important thing is that you are making time to move. Even very small amounts of time, like we're talking less than 10 minutes, still have a beneficial, positive impact on your mental and physical wellbeing.

Um, and I don't actually know how to say this name, but J-A-K-I-C-I-C. Jacket kick jack to seasick. Apologies. At all. Uh, 2019 was a big amount of study that looked at, you know, how long do you have to exercise to see some benefit? And again, less than 10 minutes, right?

Any amount of movement is good for your body. Um, similarly, any intensity of movement is gonna be good for your body. We are. Moving is something that we are, I don't like the word designed, but, uh, our bodies have through the process of natural selection, uh, been selected for movement. So it's good to have it as part of your day-to-day life.

The other thing you might notice from these recommendations is that, uh, they say the number of minutes and then the number of days. So for moderate intensity, that's 30 minutes, five days a week rather than say one 150 minute chunk. Uh, so spreading out your exercise spreading out your physical activity, uh, gives your body time to repair.

Especially if you're doing strength building work, which we are in pole, right? If you've taken my Strength for Slink classes, you have done specifically targeted strength building work for pole. Especially if we're doing strength work, especially if you're doing more vigorous things, that places a lot of stress on the system.

The actual physical adaptation, right, the strength happening, the thing that actually makes you stronger is the rest after you are finished with your physical activity, right? So, if you are not getting rest. Right. If you're just going super, super hard constantly you're not gonna get to the same degree of, you know, health and and wellbeing benefits.

So, spread out a little bit more. I always recommend at least one rest day a week. I have a whole episode where I talk about rest and like, what counts as rest. So you can dig into that if you're interested. But two is great. Uh, and if you're doing very intense exercise, you may need greater rest between, uh, between periods of intense exercise.

So, uh, I recommend that if you are feeling very sore, and especially if that soreness does not improve with gentle movement, wait until soreness starts to improve the gentle movement. Give yourself more time to rest and recuperate.

So that's. Duration, how long, how many days a week? Intensity. In general, the higher the intensity, the less time you have to spend for the same degree of health benefits.

Uh, and we know that these health benefits are not just physical, right. I don't know about you. I. I have had people in my life who have had pretty serious cognitive decline as they grew older. That's something that I'm interested in preventing, uh, for myself and others to the greatest degree possible.

And it turns out that physical movement is one of the most powerful tools that we have in our toolbox, along with social interaction, actually, uh, interacting with people is also super important for aging well and, uh, having, good cognition into your, into your twilight years. But that's another podcast.

We know that physical activity is really strongly associated with long term brain wellbeing. Uh, so Ericsson it all 2019. Uh, so this is one of the papers that, uh, helped to inform the recommendations of the A CSM, uh, goes into a lot of detail. It's a, it's a meta study, so it pulls together a lot of other evidence, and the evidence is quite strong that moving your body is good for your brain. Maybe being a jock turns you into a nerd who can say?

Good for your brain, you wanna be doing it, you wanna be doing it consistently, right? Any amount is good, right? If anything greater than zero is gonna be fantastic.

You're gonna start seeing health benefits. You'll see the greatest health benefits, especially in terms of say, reducing all cause mortality, uh, brain health benefits long term  () and also just like feeling good and having a nice time 'cause hopefully your movement is feeling good) if you do it consistently.

And you may be saying, okay, Rosie. How do I do this consistently? Probably the best evidence-based, uh, suggestion that I can give you is if you can move four times a week, for six weeks, uh, a 2015 study, uh, KO and Rhodes, uh, which was looking at people who were. Brand new to the gym. Uh, and like who actually stuck with this habit, if you could do it four times a week for six weeks.

Those folks who were able to stick with that really developed a habit and became more or less automatic and was pretty easy for them to continue long term.

And if you were, you were wondering, Rosy, where can I train online four times a week. Uh, well try my membership. Science of Slink has four classes a week. Five, but two of them are half hour classes back to back, so you can split them up if you want. What a coincidence. What a circumstantial, uh, happening based on this evidence that that is the precise, uh, quantity of classes that you teach. Odd, weird. I know. What a coincidence.

But top line, any amount is good. Even less than 10 minutes of movement. Any movement that you can add into your day is fantastic, as long as you're getting enough rest. Listen, I know some of you are listening to this and you're being like, Rosy, I'm going to start moving 10 minutes out of every 20 minutes. That's too many. That's too much. There's a ceiling. Uh, and I know some of you are like, Rosy, who are you talking to? You know who you are. You know who you are. There's a ceiling to how much benefit you get. Um, make sure you're resting. Make sure you're fueling yourself. And if you're like, I don't feel like that was at me, then it was not.

The more vigorous your, uh, your movement, your exercise, the less time that you need to spend for the same degree of results. Uh, however based on other research, people tend to find very vigorous, high intensity exercise, less fun, and are less likely to stick with it long term.

So my recommendation is a trainer and a coach is always just to take the intensity down and make it easier for yourself to show up. And that's gonna be so much more important than going super hard, you know, once every two weeks. So that's my recommendation, but take itor leave it.

But in general, 150 minutes of moderate intensity per week spread out over five days. So you get your rest days in or 60 minutes of high intensity exercise a week, spread out over three days is sort of the sweet spot, is the recommendation where you're going to start really seeing, the, the greatest benefits, bang for your buck. More than that, fantastic.

You'll get, you know, additional conditioning until you get to the point where you're starting to overtrain and you're not actually resting enough.

Less than that. Still good, still gonna be good for you. But if you'd like my recommendations, they're not my recommendations. They're, uh, the American College of Sports Medicine's recommendations, but I have prepackaged them for you, uh, and applied them to pole.

There they are. And if you'd like to come, play with me online, come play with me online.

With that, I'm gonna leave you. I hope you are staying healthy, staying safe, taking care of yourself, taking care of your community, and I will talk with you again very soon. Bye.