How to Learn Pole Dance at Home

In this episode of the Science of Slink podcast, Dr. Rosy Boa delves into the intricacies of learning pole dance at home. With a background in pole dance since 2012 and instruction since 2018, she brings extensive experience and scientific insights to the discussion. The episode covers the effectiveness of home-based exercise supported by recent research, methods to maintain motivation, and strategies to avoid common injuries. Dr. Boa shares her 'pyramid of pole' framework to guide beginners through physical conditioning, technical learning, and artistic expression. The episode also explores how to adapt training routines to home environments, addressing space limitations, flooring types, and unique home dynamics like pets or kids. Finally, Dr. Boa highlights the importance of appropriate movement levels and offers specific recommendations for home pole dance practice, urging listeners to be patient and consistent in their training.

Citations: 

McDonagh, S. T., Dalal, H., Moore, S., Clark, C. E., Dean, S. G., Jolly, K., ... & Taylor, R. S. (2023). Home‐based versus centre‐based cardiac rehabilitation. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (10).

Schutzer, K. A., & Graves, B. S. (2004). Barriers and motivations to exercise in older adults. Preventive medicine, 39(5), 1056-1061.

Lee, J. Y., Lin, L., & Tan, A. (2019). Prevalence of pole dance injuries from a global online survey. The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness, 60(2), 270-275.

Nicholas, J., Weir, G., Alderson, J. A., Stubbe, J. H., Van Rijn, R. M., Dimmock, J. A., ... & Donnelly, C. J. (2022). Incidence, mechanisms, and characteristics of injuries in pole dancers: a prospective cohort study. Medical problems of performing artists, 37(3), 151-164.

Dang, Y., Chen, R., Koutedakis, Y., & Wyon, M. A. (2023). The efficacy of physical fitness training on dance injury: a systematic review. International journal of sports medicine, 44(02), 108-116.

Ambegaonkar, J. P., Chong, L., & Joshi, P. (2021). Supplemental training in dance: a systematic review. Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Clinics, 32(1), 117-135.

Bohm, S., Mersmann, F., & Arampatzis, A. (2015). Human tendon adaptation in response to mechanical loading: a systematic review and meta-analysis of exercise intervention studies on healthy adults. Sports medicine-open, 1, 1-18.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to the Science of Slink Podcast

02:24 The Benefits of Home-Based Pole Dance Training

06:54 Building Physical Capacity for Pole Dance

08:23 Cross Training and Injury Prevention

14:09 Considerations for Home Pole Dancers

18:00 Recommendations for Beginners

21:20 The Science of Slink Membership

23:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcription: 

Welcome to the Science of Slink podcast with me, your host, Dr. Rosy Boa. That is a research doctorate, not a, not a medical doctorate. I'm not a medical doctor. None of this is medical advice. And today I wanna talk about how to learn pole dance at home. So, presumably you know this, but in case you don't, I am a home pole dance teacher, so I, everyone that I work with, I work online.

They got their own pole in their own space. I started teaching in 2018 so i've been teaching pole for a while now. I just realized how close I am to 10 years and now I feel old. And I've been doing pole since 2012. So I've been at this for quite a while. And of course as a scientist, I've always wanted to dig into the, the relevant research.

So that's what I'm doing today, right? Pulling together some of those threads for things that you should know about if you are starting or continuing to work at learning pole dance at home. My hope is that you're gonna have some really concrete takeaways from today that you can take and apply right away to your home pole practice wherever you are, whether you're super experienced or, or brand new to it.

You just bought your pole and you're like, I'm ready. What do I do now? Well, I shall tell you what my recommendations are, so we'll talk a little bit about the evidence about how effective home-based exercise could be and some tips and tricks to help you stay with it because I think motivation for a lot of folks tends to be the, the biggest challenge.

And then some discussion around structuring and supporting your training and you know, how to potentially avoid some of the types of common injuries that pole dancers tend to see.

And then also really break down some of the big differences between having a home pole experience in a studio pole experience. 'Cause there are some specific differences that you may not have thought of that you're probably gonna wanna keep in mind. Particularly if you, I mean, I train from my, my home. But if you are, you know, doing any sort of training based on somebody who's teaching in a studio there may be some differences that. They may or may not mention that I would recommend you keep in mind.

And then I'm finally gonna wrap up with some of my specific recommendations for what I would do right if I were you and, and training pole at home and things that I would suggest to make your, your whole situation just a little bit easier, just a little bit nicer, a little bit more pleasant.

And as always this episode, like all my episodes, is brought to you by the members of the Science of Slink Home Pole membership. Like I said, I, I do this professionally, have been for a while. So, I don't know, I think I'm pretty well qualified to talk about learning how to pole at home 'cause that's, that's what I do.

So first of all can you effectively exercise at home? Does it work? Yes. So there's a really nice study by McDon at all 2023. Home base versus center, except it's, is how it's spelled 'cause it's a British study cardiac rehabilitation. And basically they were looking at folks who had had you know, some sort of cardiac medical problem and had been prescribed exercise to help improve their cardiovascular health. And whether they were more likely to do it, if they did it at home, or if they did it sort of in a guided in-person training scenario.

So very similar to like a home pole versus going into a studio and taking a pole class. And what they found out was that people were actually slightly more likely to actually do the intervention if they could do it at home, just because there was that lower barrier of entry, right? You didn't have to, you know, get dressed, get in your car, or I guess public transit or however you get into your studio.

Go to the studio. Except this of course wasn't a pole studio, it was like a, a fitness center sort of thing. So. Yes evidence suggests that home exercise absolutely can be as effective as in-center exercise. And also that potentially you might be slightly more likely to actually do it. To be fair, people who've had a cardiac and medical event, I think probably particularly motivated to to follow this cardiovascular training regime 'cause it's for, for their, their health in a very concrete and obvious way.

But something that is very important and this is drawing on in particular certain graves barriers and motivations to exercise in older adults. It's really important, especially if you're working at home, that you are doing level appropriate movements, right?

So you are really working at a level of intensity, a level of challenge that is slightly challenging for you, but still doable. And the reason for that is because if you are working at something that is slightly challenging, but within your capabilities, you're likely to see success. You're likely to build a sense of self-efficacy, right?

You're gonna see evidence that like, yes, if I do this, I do get better. And that sort of, virtuous cycle, I would say is really strongly associated with long-term motivation to continue with moving. Because if you're listening to this, presumably you bought a home pole and they like, it's not structural, right?

Hopefully you bought it 'cause you wanna use it and you wanna learn how to fold dance and you wanna have a good time and feel good in your body and have fun. And if you immediately start jumping in, trying to do, you know, random stuff you see on Instagram or YouTube and like things that are, your body's not prepared for.

And that's gonna really vary individual to individual, depending on your movement background. Right. If you were coming in as like so I know somebody who came into pole dance as a a very serious competitive bodybuilder. Obviously already had body awareness already had quite a bit of strength and knew how to exercise, knew what exercise felt like in their body as opposed to, like me.

When I started pole, I was completely sedentary. I was in grad school and I went to school and I worked all day. And then I came home and I worked most of the night. And then I went to school and I worked all day and I was like 80% burnt out. I was, I was not in a good way. So when I came to pole class, like.

Not only did I not know how to pole dance, I didn't really know how to exercise. I didn't really know what stretches were supposed to feel like. I didn't like I needed to rebuild the ability to connect with my body in addition to learning how to do the pole things. So for me, learning to pole and learning pole movements, it took way longer than this bodybuilder who was able to pick things up really quickly because he had that like basis of, you know, fitness fundamentals that did transfer over a little bit.

So. What it is that's gonna be available to you when you first start. First start out varies tremendously person to person. But you do wanna be staying in that, that challenge zone where it's like a little bit challenging, right? There's a little bit of struggle, but you can do it so that you see that you can do it rather than trying something that's not available to you and then failing over and over and over and over because that builds the opposite of a sense of self-efficacy. And you sort of reach that place of like, I can't do this. I'm never gonna be able to do this. And then you sort of stop, right? You lose motivation. So. I don't want that for you.

All of that is to say if you were training at home, you were sort of responsible for determining which level appropriate for you, especially if you're doing your own training, you're not working with an instructor. And even though you know, maybe it's easier to more consistently like show up and do it, you gotta make sure that what you're doing is the right thing to support you and your, your current level of of movement and activity.

At this point you might be like, okay, great. How do I begin to build that physical capacity so I can do more stuff? So if you listen to a bunch of my podcast episodes, you follow me on Instagram for a while. You may be familiar with this idea of the pyramid of pole that I use where the bottom layer of the three pyramid, it's got three layers.

The bottom layer is physical capacity, right? Building that conditioning, building your strength, your flexibility. Your mobility, your cardiovascular endurance, your balance. You know, power, if you're working on power moves all of those things that you need before you can really lock into the motor learning and the skill learning of the second level, which is technical learning.

And then the top level is artistry, right? Really beginning to incorporate the movements that you've learned into your free dance and begin to play with them and express with them and just get, just get a little bit funky with it. But first you gotta be able to do the stuff you're getting funky with, right.

So before we get to that technical learning, we wanna make sure we have that base of the pyramid. That that capacity. That ability. So how do we get there? Well, we structure our training, right? And we do specific conditioning for the specific things that we wanna be able to do on the pole, because physical adaptation is specific and not general. Particularly when it comes to a lot of things that we're doing in pole, like isometric movements. Isometric movement, strength adaptation is extremely specific. It is at the specific joint angle that you are training. So really important that you are adapting your training to specifically match your physical goals your, your technical goals that you have on the pole.

So again, let's, let's hop into this research a little bit here. I strongly recommend you do cross training and you do conditioning off the pole even, and especially if you are training at home. So we know from literature so particularly Lee at all 2019 and Nicholas et all 2022. All citations are are in the, the show notes by the way.

So you can always dig into those papers and learn a little bit more. Far and away single. Most common injury between pole dancers is the shoulder. So if you do nothing else. I would recommend you do off pole conditioning for your shoulders. Especially working on external rotation in an overhead position, right?

So like this, if you're watching on the video if you're not, I just did what I, I just said. I reached up overhead and I found external rotation in the shoulder joint. That is a really supported position. It helps to, you know, sort of like three sets of muscles that attach your shoulder blade and really focusing on that means that you're using all three of them and not just the one.

It helps to preserve space here in the acromium process, but your nerves to go down your your arm so you can help reduce the chances of nerve impingement. Really, really important to support our shoulders. And I don't know of studies looking at I specifically looking at the, the benefits of cross training for pole, but in general, studies looking at dance have found that physical fitness training and particular strength and endurance training is associated with lower rates of injury and faster recovery in dance. So that's Donal 2023. The efficacy of physical fitness training on dance injury, a systemic review in the International Journal of Sports Medicine. So they really dig into the literature looking around that relationship between physical fitness training, right, strength training, endurance training, and dance injuries.

Also it improves your performance, right? And that's, you know, that's the reason you're doing it, is so that you can get stronger and do a better job in your skill learning. And so this is another systemic review from apologies if I'm saying this incorrectly. Am Bianca at all 2021 supplemental training and dance, a systemic review.

And they found less evidence for the injury prevention, but they were using different inclusion criteria from the, the dong etal. But they did find much stronger evidence for improved performance. Right? So doing cross training, doing supplementary physical training, working on conditioning can really help.

Performance was their, their main finding. So all of that is just like a bunch of talking for me to say I really want you, if you are training, pole at home to also be cross training and particular to be doing conditioning that's specifically designed to support your on pole training. You know, and this may be, you know, something you design yourself, particularly if you do have that physical fitness background, you may work with somebody.

I teach off pole conditioning classes online, right? That are equipment optional. If you have access to equipment I know Body by Fran and Brita both have training programs for, for doing in the gym to support your, your pole pole training goals. So but whatever you do, make sure that you are supporting your body as you're beginning to, to try and do more pole.

I would also specifically encourage you to be patient. I know, I know that sucks to hear, but pole training is gonna take time and the physical adaptation that you need to do to increase your capacity so you can do that skill learning does take time. So muscle adaptation generally, you're not gonna notice an increase in strength for at least four to six weeks.

So it's gonna be about a month of you training consistently before you're like, ah, the results I wanted, I'm noticing that things are feeling easier. However, just because your muscles are adapted doesn't mean you're ready to start pushing yourself right to the next level just yet because you do gotta worry about your connective tissue, about your tendons and ligaments.

And generally for tendon adaptation to increase load you need about eight to 12 weeks. So we're talking two to three months. So if, for example, you've been working a lot on things and you're noticing, you know, your pole climbs feeling really good, but you're starting to get a little bit of grumpiness in your elbow.

You're starting to get a little bit of grumpiness in your wrist. You're starting to get a little grum grumpiness in your knee or your hip. That to me as. A, as a, as a coach, as a a personal trainer would suggest that you are pushing too hard and you should bring back the skills that you're working on.

You should reduce the strain that those are putting on your body. You should increase your off pole training load or potentially decrease your off pole training load, right? You may need more recovery time. It really depends on your situation but some, something should change. You should not be feeling pain in your joint, especially consistent pain that follows you after you get off the pole.

Pain that we are expecting to see in pole, we are expecting to see pressure. Where the pole presses into us, we're expected to see friction, right where the pole sort of pushes against us. And also skin tension, right? So if you ever had that thing where somebody like grabs your, your arm with two hands and then twists their hands like they're ringing out a hand towel, that's the type of skin feeling that we expect to see on pole.

And it should go away after you come down off the pole in like a couple seconds. It may feel a little bit red, it may feel a little bit inflamed. You may get some bruises, but that should, that should cut out pretty quickly, pretty much immediately, as soon as you get off the pole. If you are feeling longer term pain, if you're feeling pain in the joints, if you're feeling like a lot of tenderness, if you're feeling a lot of delayed onset muscle soreness or doms and if you're noticing signs that your body maybe has not have enough time to slowly adapt to the extra load that you're putting onto it.

Just take some extra time. Give it time to adapt. Do your conditioning, support yourself and, and be patient. I know it's sucks. Someone likes to hear. It's gonna take forever. It's not gonna take forever, but it is gonna take at least a couple months. So give yourself that grace period. Know that going in.

Now some considerations that are specific for home polers that people who've only taught in studios or predominantly taught in studios may not be keeping in mind, but that I recommend that you do as a, as a home pole dancer. So first of all, probably you're gonna have a little bit of a smaller space.

I don't teach a lot of power moves. A they're just not my, my preference as a mover, it's just not something I'm particularly drawn to. But also, you know, a lot of my students are working in. You know, four square feet maybe. Right? You know, they're, they're dancing in their kitchen 'cause that's where they've got hard floor and they can put their pole up, right?

So, really big movements particularly on spin pole, power moves, really big spins. I don't generally teach, and I don't generally recommend for home polers unless you've got like, a really ideal setup, in which case, you know, go wild. Enjoy yourself. But most of us don't. Right? And if you've ever seen videos, I use a, a fish eye lens, so my studio is not as big as it looks on camera.

Lemme tell you. I do have to think about not kicking things. So it is, it is definitely something to keep in mind. If you're interested in training things at home. They're probably gonna be some movements that are just not gonna work in your space size wise. And that's fine. It's just. That's just the, the reality of it, right?

Just like there's probably gonna be some movements you can't do for ceiling reasons. So I don't teach a lot of tumbles. 'Cause you know, I've got, I'm very lucky I have 10 foot ceilings, but that is quite tall for a building, certainly in the United States. And most people don't have that. Right. And I've danced in much shorter rooms before. I think probably six foot was my shortest and I kicked the ceiling a lot trying to do stuff. So you're probably just not gonna have as much space vertically, horizontally, know that you're not gonna be able to fit all movements into a home pole space. But there's still plenty that you can do. There's still lots to explore. It's just not gonna be everything.

Also something to keep in mind is differences in floor covering. And this is really gonna be specific to your situation, right? So if you are on carpet, sliding around a lot is probably not gonna feel as good as it does if you had something slipperier.

And there's certainly things you can do. So there's a material there's a type of garment called like trash bag pants. I will say they tend to be made for dancers and the size range is very bad, but any sort of like slippery slithery kind of polyester material can slide pretty well on carpet.

So that's an option. You can also use pieces of paper or like junk mail, especially like that glossy junk mail that sort of thick cardboard. You can use that as a protective layer to, to slide around on carpet. That's an option. But you are probably not going to enjoy doing a bunch of sort of like slipping across the surface motions on carpet the way that you might on, on harder floor and even if you're a floor is harder. If you have something like really textured tile, if you have something with a lot of grout things where there's a lot of. Skidding are probably just not gonna feel as good. If you don't have, if you have a floor without a subfloor, right, that doesn't have as much give you're probably not going to enjoy things like shoulder stands or things where you're really putting parts of your body on the pole, on the floor quite as much.

If you are on in an apartment, right? Or if you have upstairs, your downstairs neighbors probably you're not gonna wanna do a bunch of jumps. So there's just things to keep in consideration for your situation and your environment.

Also, you know, moving obstacles you know, pets. A lot of my students have cats in particular who really enjoy being involved with the dance experience. So keeping that in mind when you, when you're moving, keeping that situational awareness. You know, things like kids or just objects you have around furniture, all of these things are gonna contribute to what you can and can't do at home.

And it probably just means there's some things that you're gonna choose not to train because they're not convenient or reasonable in your space. And that's fine, right? But good to keep that in mind. When you're, when you're thinking about what your, your goals are and what your movements are.

What are my specific recommendations for people who are interested in learning to pole at home. So the first thing that I would recommend is for the first little bit, especially if you're coming from not particularly active background like I was, I would start with one pole training session a week.

And I know it's there, it's in your space. It's very tempting to get like a little bit every day. But as you're ramping on, as you're increasing, again, start with one. A week, and then wait until you're not sore anymore to continue. And if you're consistently getting sore, and particularly if you're consistently getting really sore, I would reduce your intensity.

If you've been practicing for an hour, may try, maybe try doing half an hour or if you've been doing, you know, 20 reps of something, maybe you try doing five reps of something and just see if you can't get that recovery timed down a little bit.

Also absolutely support yourself with off pole conditioning, and particularly with off pole conditioning that's specifically designed to support you in your pole dance.

You know, that's, that's why I teach my online classes the way that I teach them. They actually are designed to go specifically with the pole classes that I teach. They, they, they all work together. And I am a, I am a certified pole strength and conditioning specialist. It's something that I, I specialize in.

You know, I only work with pole dancers. I only train pole dancers. It's the only thing I do. So very much my wheelhouse. But even if you're not working with me, definitely recommend getting that, that conditioning in and helping to support your body through this adaptation to specific load that you're interested in.

Also really focus on level appropriate movements. Now, there is something available to everybody in pole, right? Whatever your body is like, whatever you're interested in doing, however you're coming to the apparatus, there's going to be something that's available to you, but. Not everything is gonna be available to you.

And a big part of being successful as a new pole dancer is finding and choosing things to work on that are really appropriate for you and your body. And that doesn't just mean somebody on Instagram said, this is a beginner move. That is not a good way to determine what you have the capacity to for. You determine what you have the capacity for based on your actual physical capacity and the demands of the movement.

And if you're not sure how to do that, it's, this is a good place to talk to a pole teacher. Right. You don't need to. But working with a pole teacher, one of the big benefits is that a, you know, we've watched a lot of people pole dance. We understand mechanics, the moves.

Hopefully, hopefully everyone who's, who's teaching pole does and can offer suggestions and modifications and options that are gonna help meet you where you are at and help speed up your learning process. Right. That's really the big benefit of working with a teacher is that you can do things faster because we know how things are structured and I can look at you and be like, okay, yes.

So I want you to try this variation instead. See how that feels. Okay. Does that feel better? Excellent. And then, oh, okay. So I see this is where if you wanna do the first variation, you're gonna wanna support your on pole movement with some off pole movement, and here's what I'd recommend. So having the benefit of that knowledge and experience and understanding can help you make progress faster on pole.

That's one of the big benefits of working with the teacher. And the other one is ideally structuring. So I spend a lot of time structuring all my curriculum to work together. So the conditioning supports what we're doing on the pole, and then the freestyle work that we do you know, helps to play with the themes that we're playing with on the pole, blah, blah, blah.

Right? It all, it all works together. And that's part of the service that I offer is doing all that organizing for you, doing all that structuring for you.

Which leads me nicely into a discussion of probably the easiest way to, to work with me if you were interested in bringing some more structure to your home pole is my membership, the Science of Slink membership. So basically. The way it works is you sign up for the membership, it's month to month.

I don't have like a, a specific contract. And if you ever need to pause for a month, you can absolutely do that. You know, if you get injured, you're gonna be outta town or whatever. And over the course of the month, we'll have a specific movement theme and we will be building on that theme all month in all the classes.

And I teach five classes a week and everything is included. Now I will say if you are just coming in from not having done anything, maybe you start with three of those classes a week. Maybe you start with two of those classes a week. But as long as you take one of them a week, it's still actually cheaper than taking those classes as drop in because I want you to have consistency in your movement.

I think this is one of the things that. People who are newer to fitness don't necessarily understand, especially if you've had a lot of people be like pain is weakness, leaving the body, blah, blah, blah. Consistency is so much more important than intensity when it comes to increasing your physical capacity.

So I do not care that you go super hard, you know, once a month. I would prefer you not do that. I would prefer you come up and go, you know, go medium, go small four times a month, five times a month, eight times a month. As long as you're showing up consistently, you are gonna see progress.

And having someone who helps keep you accountable and helps structure that like me, or you know, whoever else you're working with, or maybe you've got a pole buddy and you help each other. Whatever it is that's helping support you in your movement. Somebody who can help you show up consistently, who can help you you know, evaluate, you know, am I trying to do things that just really aren't in my capacity.

And also help remind you to do your pole conditioning, to support your skill learning with your physical capacity improvements and your specific adaptation will really, really help. So. Hopefully this is helpful for you. Hopefully you've got some, some tidbits that you can take with you. As always, I've got all my citations down there and if you are interested in coming to work with me, I'd love to have you.

If not, perhaps I'll see you on another podcast episode. I got a big backlog, lots of stuff for you to dig into. And I hope to slink with you soon. Bye.