Mastering Pole Dance in Heels
In this episode of 'Science of Slink,' hosted by Dr. Rosy Boa, the focus is on the details of dancing in pole heels, a theme for June 2025. Dr. Boa outlines essential tips for choosing the right shoes, including the benefits of platforms, the significance of a sturdy stiletto, and the importance of proper shoe fit. She delves into the mechanics of balance, the challenges posed by the additional weight of heels, and strategies to avoid foot cramps. Additionally, Dr. Boa emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the roots of pole dancing in strip clubs and supporting sex workers, highlighting her studio's monthly contributions to various support organizations. Lastly, practical advice is offered on warming up properly to prevent foot cramps and ensuring better performance while dancing in heels.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction and Theme Announcement
00:51 Acknowledging the Roots of Pole Dancing
01:49 The Mechanics of Dancing in Heels
06:16 Choosing the Right Pole Heels
12:47 Preventing Foot Cramps and Injuries
16:19 Addressing Bunions and Final Thoughts
Citations:
More information on the intrinsic muscles of the foot
Card, R. K., & Bordoni, B. (2023). Anatomy, Bony Pelvis and Lower Limb, Foot Muscles. In StatPearls [Internet]. StatPearls Publishing.
Despite popular belief there is no strong scientific evidence that shoes or high heels cause bunions.
Nix, S. E., Vicenzino, B. T., Collins, N. J., & Smith, M. D. (2012). Characteristics of foot structure and footwear associated with hallux valgus: a systematic review. Osteoarthritis and cartilage, 20(10), 1059-1074.
Not even if you dance in shoes (including pointe shoes!).
Kennedy, J. G., & Collumbier, J. A. (2008). Bunions in dancers. Clinics in sports medicine, 27(2), 321-328.
Bunions seem to be mostly genetic.
Coughlin, M. J., & Jones, C. P. (2007). Hallux valgus: demographics, etiology, and radiographic assessment. Foot & ankle international, 28(7), 759-777.
Hannan, M. T., Menz, H. B., Jordan, J. M., Cupples, L. A., Cheng, C. H., & Hsu, Y. H. (2013). High heritability of hallux valgus and lesser toe deformities in adult men and women. Arthritis care & research, 65(9), 1515-1521.
Piqué-Vidal, C., Solé, M. T., & Antich, J. (2007). Hallux valgus inheritance: pedigree research in 350 patients with bunion deformity. The Journal of foot and ankle surgery, 46(3), 149-154.
Transcript:
📍 Welcome to Science of Slink, the Evidence-based pole podcast with me, your host, Dr. Rosy Boa today. Very excited. We're talking about shoes. That's our theme of the studio all this month, which is June, 2025. And I wanted to talk about some of the stuff that I really wish everyone knew about shoes, dancing in shoes, what to look for in a shoe , why we are always talking about rocking your weight forward onto the box that's this, this front part underneath the ball of your foot. How to avoid foot cramps, whether or not it causes bunions, all that good stuff.
Before we do that, first off, big shout out to my members. This wouldn't be possible without y'all. If you're, if you're only listening, I'm doing the little, the heart made with the the thumb and the forefinger. That's for y'all.
If you're interested in joining us the membership is called Science of Slink, and actually you can just go to science of slink.com and it should, should redirect you.
And the other thing before we get into it is of course, I think important to remember and call out that dancing in heels is from strip clubs, right?
And pole dances, as we know it comes from the origin of strip clubs. Good to acknowledge that our art form comes from sex workers. They deserve our support. One of the things the studio does is every month, 1% of all receipts goes to three different organizations.
One's Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project, which is my local abortion fund. One is Trans Lifeline. And then the third is Lysistrata, a bipoc sex worker run mutual aid fund. So I think it's important as pole dancers that we support sex workers and that's one of the ways the studio does it.
Also if you are involved in sex work in any capacity, I'm not gonna ask any questions, but you can use the code "iswork" all one word, work with an o, to take 75% off of any drop in class. 'Cause I wanna make sure that if you are interested in my training, it is financially accessible to you.,
Let's talk about heels. Let's talk about the mechanics of dancing in heels. Let's talk about the shoes themselves. Really dig into it. This is gonna be a pretty information packed episode.
But I realized, especially for my members, right, like I don't wanna spend a lot of class time necessarily like going into lecture mode. So hopefully as we we're working in heels this month this information is gonna be helpful for you. You can like, think back to and be like, oh yeah, that makes sense, rosy said this, this other place.
First off, why is dancing in heels harder? So there's a couple of reasons here. One is balance and that's part of the reason why this month we're doing heels, last month we did spin pole. The month before that we did just straight up balance, vestibular training is because all of those things have to do with the vestibular system and your sense of your position and space and controlling that. Heels are hard for balance for a couple of reasons. One, the amount of coverage on the floor, the amount that you're actually touching the floor is less assuming that you have more or less than normal human foot.
The sole and the stiletto is just less surface area. Right. So that would make it a challenge .
Another is that it moves your center of gravity higher. And in general, if you're familiar with oh, what were they called?
Weebles. It's basically like a bowling pin shaped toy with sand in the bottom, and you like push it and it comes back to, to center. It's really hard to push over because the center of gravity is really, really far down. Whereas if you flipped it over so the sand was on top, you, you could push it over instantly.
In fact, wouldn't balance . When you put yourself up an additional six to 10 inches, your center of gravity moves higher, you become less stable. So that's one thing. They're just harder to balance.
Another thing is that they have weight, right? So heels are basically ankle weights and some heels weigh more than others. So in my experience, hella heels tend to be a little bit heavier than pleasers. When I first got starting, hella didn't exist, right? It was, it was pleasers or nothing.
And also you couldn't buy directly from pleasers. You had to like, get together and do a group order and like, ah. The old days let, let me know the comments, if y'all remember that. If you, you were around for that. So they're are weights boots are heavier than sandals, and they're at the end of a long lever, right?
Because your legs are for most people your your longest limb, right? And you are putting something heavy that not only makes them longer, but is at the very end of a long lever. So you thinking just. Simple, simple physics, right? If we're moving the same amount of weight farther away from the fulcrum, it requires more power to move, right? And when we add heels, we are adding weight. And so it requires more power. So something like even just lifting your leg in front of you is gonna be harder in heels than without heels because of that additional weight, that additional resistance also it changes stickiness. Especially if you really rely on the front of your ankle as a contact point. Particularly in something like a pole climb. Boots in particular are generally less sticky than skin on the front of the shin. So you've got the laces and you got the eyes, and those eyes could be like hooks or they could be like.
Like grommets set into the boot. Usually on my boots I'll actually remove the hooks. I like pleasers. I'll remove the hooks and replace them with with just grommets. You can just, you can get like a little kit at a craft store for, for not very expensive. Then you can replace them as they, as they wear out.
The point is that laces themselves not particularly sticky. So if you want to stick good and you are climbing and you want that contact point with the back foot a lot of times people will flex the back foot to take this part, you know, the outside which.
Both on sandals and on boots are going to be a little bit more sticky than just the, the laces onto the pole. So a lot of times, particularly people who like have a background working in clubs will flex the back foot in a climb. 'Cause they gotta wear shoes as part of, as part of their work at tire. And that's why. So if you are climbing primarily in boots, flexing, the back foot may be more secure and may help you get better stick.
You don't have to, particularly if you've got a pretty good, pretty good quad strength, right? You, you can extend that leg into the pole and get a little bit more pressure. But especially if you're a little bit larger in the body, you're just lifting more weight. Or if you are, are still working on developing that strength flexing the back foot might be a little bit more helpful there.
So that's why heels are harder, right? I think. No surprise there. I think especially if you dance in heels, you're like, yeah, that makes intuitive sense.
But I also wanna talk about a little bit about what to look for in a pole heel. You'll hear people say that you should never pole dance in anything except specifically designed heels for a pole dance. I don't necessarily think that's true, right?
I think that if you can find something that works for you, you should use it. I personally prefer pleasers. That's what I'm most used to. And I also tend to prefer this, this stiletto that is round on the bottom over this stiletto that is half moon on the bottom.
I should probably clean those. I, I use all my heels obviously.
But if you were looking at a pair of shoes and just being like, okay, could I pole dance in these, this is what I would look for. So first of all, platform. Right. You want most of the height to come from the whole foot being lifted rather than just the heel, because the greater the distance between the heel and the ball of the foot the more pressure it's putting on the forefoot, generally the less stable you're gonna be and also the worst it's gonna hurt.
So, I would absolutely not recommend any shoe that really puts your your foot at a, at a very sharp angle is not gonna feel great to dance in. And also you're going to need a lot more mobility to rock forward over the box in the ankle, right? Because if you're starting here, you don't have a lot of space left. Whereas if you're starting here, you know, you got much more space. If you're, if you're just listening, I was doing something with my hand, but it was maybe illustrative.
You also wanna make sure whatever you're looking at, that the stiletto is nice and thick, right? This is not a pencil, right? So here's my, my thumb for, for reference.
It's a very sturdy stiletto and it's also incorporated into the shank. So a lot of times with heels you'll see that the shank here and the stiletto here are actually two separate pieces, and there's this. Seam here between them. Do not dance in those. That creates a weak point in the shoe. And you absolutely can break a stiletto off. It absolutely is possible and it's much more likely if you've got a separation between the two here. So like one big thing and one way to check whether or not they're securely attached or not.
Especially, so like here you can see the plastic on this, this clear heel on this one that's wrapped. You can't actually, so I would check by taking the stiletto and like the ball of the foot and just. Just really like pulling your hands together and apart, and they shouldn't wiggle. It should be one solid piece that has no give and no play between the stiletto and the shank.
Also, another thing to look at is you want a lot of material going over the top of the foot, and you want the amount, like how much of the material is connected to the platform to be a lot, the more, the better. So actually the, this style here that does not have the straps and the style here that does have a strap.
This style has even more connection between the the platform and the vamp. This, this upper. And that's good. You want as much contact there, as much stability there as possible. That is where shoes tend to break for me as they tend to, to come apart right here. Because we are putting a lot of pressure upwards onto the vamp as we're dancing and as we're rocking. So we want that to be a really, really secure connection.
I would definitely not recommend anything strappy. Some of the pleaser styles, this, this vamp is actually elastic. I would strongly recommend against those, even if you're a very experienced dancer because you're going to have a harder time creating a firm connection between the platform and your foot which we'll talk about in just a second.
Also, and this maybe goes without saying, you want the actual platform itself to be made of thick, durable material, right? Like, you want something that you can clack and it will be fine. Do not dance in cork heels, please. You, you are, your feet and your ankles are not gonna thank you. So those are the things I would look at. And if you can find a shoe that's. Not, you know, but pleasers, et cetera that, that works for you, fills those requirements, you know, be my guest by all means.
And also specifically for pleasers for sizing. I would recommend if you're a half size, size down, or for the pumps or sandals and size up for boots. You do not want your boots to be too tight.
And the other thing you do wanna look for is you wanna look for at the bottom of the platform, underneath the platform, you want it to be right underneath the toe, rounded a little bit so that you have a little triangle here that you can come up on and pivot on. Which brings me to my next question. Why are we constantly, we pole teachers constantly talking about pivoting on the front of the box.
Couple reasons here. The main sort of thrust is we don't want to drag the heel on the ground, the stiletto on the ground. As we're turning and as we're dancing, we're turning kind of a lot.
Couple of reasons for this. So one that puts lateral shear motion this way onto the heel itself. And they are weaker in that direction, right? They're designed to deal with force coming down from the top. They're designed to hold your weight. Shearing laterally, side to side could potentially put them at greater risk for braking, particularly if you do it a lot.
And if you're dragging the full sole and the heel, rather than just pivoting on this.
Smaller surface area. You also are going to be putting more torque on specifically, you know, your knee and your ankle. And you can absolutely train so that you are in a place where it is stable to have a lot of torque on the bottom leg. Especially folks who are doing things like soccer or rugby or something else that's very like athletic with a lot of quick direction changes will train for that. If you're training for that.
Fantastic. Most pole dancers aren't, I generally am not. And the, the challenge there is that if you were really twisting so like the knee is not moving, but the bottom of your foot is 'cause it's dragging, right? And you're, you're introducing some, some rotational torque that's when ACL tears happen.
So always important to be up on the ball of foot to reduce friction in general, to make it easier to pivot. Also, to reduce lateral shear on the stiletto. And also just to, you know, put a little bit less stress on your ACL, which I mean, bodies are resilient.
You, your ligaments can take some stress. That's what they're there for. That's what they do. But good to know that we're doing it, to prepare ourselves for it and to, to reduce unnecessarily if, if we don't need to.
Something else that I, I really wish everyone did before they got in their heels is warmed up properly. And the reason it's interesting 'cause usually when people talk about warming up for heels, they really focus on the ankles and ankle stability. To be frank, if you've been doing pole for a while and you've been doing a lot of stuff up on the ball of your feet probably you've already done a lot of work on your ankle stability, what tends to be the issue for folks more often in my experience is foot cramping its strength in the foot itself because.
When I'm wearing heels, I am actually thinking about curling the foot, right? Like I'm dragging to drag the ball of my foot and my heels together, and that creates a connection between the shoe and my foot where there's tension. So the shoe isn't wobbling around my foot. I'm really pressing my arch up into the vamp.
And this is what makes shoes look like they're part of your foot, right? This is what gives you a lot of control. This is what gives you a lot of sensation of contact coming up from the ground. It really lets you have control and stability in your heel, but it does require quite a bit of strength in the foot, and specifically strength in the intrinsic muscles of the foot. The muscles that have both their attachment points within the foot itself. So what I would recommend is warming up those intrinsic muscles before you put your shoes on. Not only will it help to reduce cramping, 'cause you're increasing circulation, it'll also prepare you to find that sort of cupping shape with your foot.
And just a very simple exercise. We do a, a more thorough warmup in class, but a very simple exercise. Even if you don't know how to do the short foot or doming, which most people in the world have not, put your foot flat on the ground, even weight heel under the big toe, under the little toe, and then lift all five of your toes up off the ground. And if you look at the side of your foot, you should be able to see the arch curling as you do that. And just, you know, 15 to 20 per foot will help to warm up the arch to the foot and will help reduce cramping.
. Also another big cause of cramping is just lack of circulation, lack of blood flow. So a dehydration. If you're not drinking a lot of water, you're much more likely to get cramps just in general. So make sure you're hydrating.
If you're sweating a lot, make sure you're replenishing those electrolytes, you're salt, you're potassium so that your, your muscles are functioning optimally and that'll be great for your whole body. But you really wanna make sure that you're getting blood down there, right? That's what's gonna help prevent cramping.
If you're familiar with the term claudication, right? So if you've got restricted blood flow to your feet at all, and while you're exercising, you're getting a lot of cramps, your feet and your cals, definitely talk to a doctor if that's something that's coming up for you. But if it's just your feet, just with you in heels, couple things you can do. So one thing is avoid spending too much time on your back doing legwork with your legs in the air, particularly if you tend to have lower blood pressure.
'Cause it's just. It's easier for blood to go down than up. And if you are putting, you know, your feet that you're trying to get a lot of blood and and goodness flowing into up, it's just gonna be a little bit more challenging to get the blood up there. So if you notice you get cramps when you do that, I mean, do less of it, work up to it.
Also make sure that your boots aren't too tight particularly if you like to, like, feel very snug in your boots. One thing I've noticed people do especially when they're new to heels, is they will really tight their boot super, super, super tight.
It just needs to be tight enough that like you can't get a finger in between, you know, the side of your boot and your your leg and you really don't wanna cut off circulation. 'cause again, the muscles of your feet are really, really working and you wanna make sure they're getting all the blood that they need to be able to contract well.
Also, if you notice you get a lot of cramping in boots, you might prefer pumps, right? 'cause there's just less constriction on the legs. Something that you, you can try and, and see how it works for you.
And finally, just, I just wanna put this at the end. Every time I talk about heels, every time I teach heels, I have somebody brings up bunions. And it's an extremely persistent myth that is not backed up by the evidence that wearing heels causes bunions.
It does not. Bunions are genetic. However, if you are predisposed to bunions, wearing heels may be more uncomfortable for you. And in that case, I would recommend trying some of the wide sizes, I believe pleaser now offers wide sizes. That's another change since I started dancing. Just so you're giving yourself a little bit more room.
Another thing that you can do, particularly if you've got a plastic upper, what you can do is you can put on socks.
Take a hair dryer warm up the plastic of the vamp. That's this, this top part here. And then while the plastic is still warm and pliable and it'll get soft, you'll notice stick your foot with socks on so you don't burn yourself into the shoe, and then let it cool around your foot and it'll shrink a little bit as it does, so you'll get a better fit. And if you do have bunions it might make a little bit more room for them and feel a little bit more comfortable.
So definitely a good thing to try can also give your, your heels a little bit more, more life.
So that's all I've got for you today. Very excited this month to do heel stuff with y'all. We got started I'm recording this on Tuesday. We got started on Monday. And it was a great time and I can't wait to dance with you.
And if you'd like to dance with me, I teach classes online. I teach every week, five classes a week. You can attend five. You can join through the recording or of course, if you're like, you know, I do at least one class a week with you, Rosy, you should join the membership 'cause that's. That's cheaper. That'll save you a little bit of money. But that's all I've got for you. I hope you are staying well, taking care of yourself, taking care of people in your life, and happy Pride and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye.
