Pole Dance Conditioning Without a Pole

This episode discusses how to prepare your body for pole dancing without having access to a pole. Rosy, a certified pole strength and conditioning specialist and online pole dance teacher, shares insights into pole conditioning, differentiates it from cross training, and highlights common mistakes people make. Key points include the importance of periodization, avoiding overtraining, and specifics on various conditioning methods such as resistance training, isometrics, body weight exercises, flexibility training, balance training, and cardio conditioning. 

Citation:  

Hynes, J., & Turner, Z. (2020). Positive Visualization and Its Effects on Strength Training. Impulse (19343361).

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Overview

00:58 Understanding Conditioning vs. Cross Training

02:41 Common Mistakes in Pole Conditioning

05:52 Effective Conditioning Techniques

11:30 Additional Conditioning Tips and Conclusion

Transcript:

How do you get stronger and better and prepare your body for pole when you don't have a pole? That's what we're gonna be talking about today. Pole conditioning, no pole what to do. Some recommendations from me as an online pole dance teacher and also a personal trainer, and also a certified pole strength and conditioning specialist.

But before we hop into it, as always wanna say big shout out. Thank you. Love y'all. To my members. Podcast genuinely could not happen without y'all. Uh, and that of course is my Science of Slink folks. Ride or die, get all my classes, all my workshops, uh, all my self-paced online courses.

Y'all are fantastic. Uh, and of course my essentials to sling folks who, who join me for one hour a week, uh, working within their capacity, uh, and making time for their movement. Appreciate all y'all, and if you wanna join us, I got links down below.

I don't do closed doors anymore. Uh, you're an adult, you know when you have capacity and free time and wanna join for a month or not.

So with that, let's get into it real quick. Conditioning. Uh, I'm gonna talk about some common mistakes and misconceptions, and then I'm gonna talk about some things that you can do to help condition off the pole.

First off, I think a big thing that people get confused by is the difference between conditioning and cross training? So when we are conditioning for movements, we are training our body specifically to get better at sports specific, dance specific, specific movements that are gonna help us in the activity of our choice.

This is different from cross training. Cross training is when we are doing movements outside of our specific sport to help build us as more rounded movers and individuals. So I think a really good example here of what would be in my judgment cross training rather than conditioning for pole, would be something like steady state cardio for a long time.

So is cardiovascular endurance helpful for pole? Yeah, absolutely. But we tend to be more in the high moderate intensity range for a couple minutes. Unless you're doing like go-go dancing or you've got really long stage sets or something, you're probably only gonna need like five to 10 minutes of intense pole activity.

And if you're working on study, study cardio for, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, doing long distance running. Not necessarily saying it's going to be bad for your body, but it's not going to specifically help you with pole as much as a more targeted conditioning exercise would. So that's the difference between cross training and conditioning.

Also in general, uh, I recommend doing cross training sort of during your off season, whenever that is. So when you don't have a performance coming up, uh, and then when you begin to prepare for that performance, adding in specific conditioning to support your goals, uh, and then petering down the intensity of the cat conditioning as you get real close to performance time.

And then you take a break and then you do your cross training, and then you get back into conditioning. So Periodizing. Another super common mistake I see, especially with folks who are newer to POLE or are newer to exercise, is going. Way too hard. So when we are conditioning, we are trying to slowly increase our envelope of capacity.

If we try to dramatically increase our envelope of capacity really quickly, that's when you start to see injuries. And even if your muscles are adapting, even if you're noticing that you're getting stronger, uh, your tendons and ligaments take a much longer time. So we're looking at the order of three to six months to see adaptation in those structures just because they have so much less blood flow to them.

So really take your time, push yourself less hard than you think you need to, especially if you know you're a real gunner. Go-getter. A student type of person. Mm-hmm. I see y'all 'cause I see myself. Um. Some good guidelines here. If you are super sore the day after you do a conditioning workout you went too hard.

Ideally, you don't get super sore. You might notice a little bit of like stiffness, but it should get better by the end of a warmup and it shouldn't stick around, especially if you're getting sore from multiple days. That tells me the intensity of what you're doing or the duration that you're working at is just too high for you.

Step it on back down, right? We're, we're nudging. We're nudging the envelope. We're not checking it. Another good indicator of going too hard is the first rep of something that you do. The first repetition of a movement should be easy, right? So if you are working on your climbs and you're working on body weight squats and that's not a position that you've worked on and you do one body weight squat and it feels really, really hard, you're probably gonna wanna regress that in some way.

You're probably gonna want to reduce the load so you can work on building the mechanics and understanding the mechanics and be working in a. Strength building range. Uh, now there's absolutely a place for training, you know, more at the extreme end, focus on your one rep maximum . If that's the sort of training that you're really interested in. Uh, I would work with someone who really specializes in that and specializes in working with folks who are really, really working to push the.

Uh, another thing is really only doing one thing for conditioning and really focusing in on that. So, I see this pretty often with something like pole crunches, right? So pole crunches are very helpful if what you are working on is specifically the part of a movement where you lift your legs. Um, if you have trouble holding your body weight, right?

If you can't do a bent arm stronghold for, let's say 10 to 15 seconds, and just hang out there and feel comfortable. Pool crunches are not going to be something that I would recommend for you to do in the air because you are working on that component and really separating it out and focusing on the thing that's holding you back is what's gonna get you the greatest impact.

If that's where you are and you're like, oh, but I still do want to work on the leg lifting component, still doing pole crunches, absolutely fine. Just working with your butt on the ground so you're not holding your weight up with your arms and you can really focus on just the legs coming in.

I think conditioning is a really good place for us to pick apart movement patterns so that we can focus on things individually. Um, and also you gotta plan your conditioning based on what it is you're conditioning for, right? We get better at what we train. Specifically there's no, you know, we don't have our fitness bucket that we just put scoops into and suddenly get better at pull.

If you wanna get better at something specific in pull, you have to drain for that specific thing.

So what are some options for training? So big one would be resistance training. This is definitely the best way to build strength, um, and resistance training here. I mean, doing something more than your body weight.

We'll talk about body weight in just a second. And ideally when we're doing things on the pole, when we're learning new tricks, we are working within our envelope of capacity. So if I am, let's say, working on, um, doing a handstand and holding my, my hands up overhead ideally I can actually do that for a little bit more than my body weight, so that that'll give me some ability and capacity to, to move and adjust and do extra things and also have a little bit more endurance and hang out there.

If my body weight is. Exactly as much as I can lift and not an ounce more, that's gonna be a problem if something starts to go wrong and I need a little bit of, of wiggle room to adjust. Right? So if I was, you know, working on really conditioning that maybe I'd start wearing ankle weights and then when it comes time to performance time and I take the ankle weights off, everything gets easier.

Yeah. That old trope. Some ways that you can do resistance training, you can do weightlifting, uh, so you can use free weights or dumbbells, which are the little ones you hold in one hand. Uh, you can do barbells. Which are the big ones you hold in both hands? Both good options. In general, if you're training at home by yourself, I would probably push you towards dumbbells rather than barbells, just 'cause there's some positions where if you don't have someone to help you out, if you've got kind of in a stuck place you might not have such a good time.

So there's just my recommendation.

Uh, and you can also use bands. You can also use a cable machine. If you happen to have a cable machine. Those are also also fantastic. Or it should be a gym that has a cable machine. Uh, but bands can replicate some of that, uh, sort of wigs kind of instability. What they can't replicate is having the same amount of force throughout the entire range. Bands will obviously have more force at the end of the range than in the middle of the range. Uh, but they're really nice because they add, uh, a good stability component into the, uh, into the work. And also much easier to store and transport, especially if you're working at home than you know, a huge weight rack or you know, a bunch of barbells or something.

You can also work on body weight exercises. So some things that I pull in for my training that I do for folks with my online conditioning classes, because those are always equipment optional. I work on isometrics. So isometrics are when you are not moving, you are contracting the muscle, but you are resisting the movements.

You don't actually go anywhere. The really nice thing about isometric is a, uh, equipment free option is that they actually increase with difficulty with your strength, so they scale with you and can be challenging at every level of capacity, which I think is really, really wonderful especially for those of us who are working out at home, we don't necessarily have the budget splash space slash time to be out, going out and getting new, you know, dumbbells whenever we get stronger.

Um, I also draw quite a bit from other you know, calisthenic, movement traditions and more, more body weight training. Gymnastics also has a lot of, of drills that are relevant for some of the things that we do in pole. So that might be a place that you look for more body weight training that is still gonna be relevant for us and what we're doing in pole.

But conditioning is about more than strength. Of course. Strength is really important. We do wanna be strong enough to do what we wanna do, but but remember that when we are training, we get better at the specific thing that we are training. And Pole makes a lot of demands in our body.

So I would also recommend as part of your conditioning to do. Flexibility conditioning, right? Working on your mobility, working on your range of motion. If you're interested in working into an extreme range of motion, working with a contortion coach, someone who is going to be able to help you.

Uh, especially things like deep back bends, over splits, all that sort of stuff that you may want to, uh, may want to begin to eventually working on. You're gonna wanna condition off the pole. You don't want the first time you see if you have got the range of motion to do as spatchcock to be. On the pole as you're trying to do a spatchcock, right?

You gotta make sure that you can do it already on the ground before you start trying to add to that vertical component.

Uh, I also mentioned this a little bit earlier, but another thing that you can condition for off the pole is balance training, especially if you're interested in doing more low flow, more sort of handstand stuff and versions, uh, on the ground.

Uh, adding in handstands can be a really nice way to give yourself a little bit more movement vocabulary, really work on your balance, really work on your strength.

Also endurance. So like I said, steady state cardio for like a couple hours is not the most relevant for most of us on poll. Um, I would instead recommend doing high or moderate intensity cardio in sort of smaller chunks.

Um, and also because what we do is pretty upper body intensive. Uh, I think rowing and rowing machines can be a really nice, uh, option for conditioning for pole. 'cause we do a lot of pulling. Uh, it gets the lower body in there a little bit as well, but it's also very upper body. Or if they got them bikes with the handles that you can move back and forth.

That can also be a nice way to add an upper body component as well to your cardio conditioning. Or I mean, listen, I don't like burpees, but if you like burpees, you can do burpees, right?

Definitely a high intensity movement. I high intensity interval training can be a really effective way to increase your cardiovascular endurance. Generally, especially for folks from working at home, I tend to lean more towards moderate intensity rather than high intensity.

Part of it is that I.

Am less likely personally to do something if I know it's gonna be super high intensity. Uh, and I'm much more likely to actually show up if I'm like, this'll be moderate. I can handle this. Uh, and I know some people love the super high intensity cardio and if it's that, you absolutely go for it. Uh, but really working in like the five to 10 minute range, if you can like go pretty hard for solid 10 minutes, I mean, cardio wise that's kinda what we need for pole.

You're probably set.

Also, and this is a fun one, you can work on your visualization as part of your conditioning for pole. Um, and I think that this can be really helpful, especially if you are someone who's working on building your mechanics, your understanding, your proprioception, your interception.

So really sitting down and imagining yourself working through a movement and all of the pieces that are part of that and how they would all work together. Uh, and I know that this sounds like hokey nonsense, but the evidence really does back it up. And especially for moves with a power component for moves where you have to do things quickly.

So if you're a power pole enjoyer, um, a good citation for this by the way, is a Heinz and Turner 2020. That'll be on the down there. Um, so especially if you're a power pole enjoyer, especially if you're working on spins, especially if you're working on anything explosive circus climb a great example of, of a tric that really does work better if you give it a little bit more power.

Uh, having a strong visualization practice can genuinely help you improve that. Off the pole, which is kinda fun.

Finally little bonus tip. Another thing that you can do for conditioning off the pole is you can help break your skin in. Uh so especially for folks for whom sensory is a big thing, being able to do it with a little bit less intensity can sometimes be really helpful. Uh, and the way that you do this is you just use your hands and you pull apart the skin you're trying to condition. So if I was trying to condition my elbow pit, I could use my fingers.

Put it in the skin of my elbow pit and drag my fingers apart, right? So you get that feeling of pull on the skin, you get that feeling of tug or friction like you would on the pole, but you can control the intensity a little bit more. And also you don't need a pole to do it. So nice little bonus tip there at the end for you.

So we talked about conditioning for the poll. We talked about some common mistakes people make going too hard, not being specific with your training. Uh, con confusing conditioning and cross training and when to do each. And ideally, they're all part of a, a more organized, larger training program that you have, that you are including, what tricks am I working on?

What am I working on artistically? How can I have my conditioning support, the tricks that I'm working on to make my artistry feel better? All of those things should ideally work together and also be part of a larger sort of undulating training cycle. And that's part of what I offer in my membership, right, is that I, I do the planning for you so you can just show up and move and have a nice time and not have one more thing to think about.

Uh, but you can absolutely do it for yourself. So just things to keep in mind.

And then we talked about some options for how to actually do the conditioning off the pole. So, uh, resistance training, uh, with weights, with bands. I don't think I mentioned ankle weights. I think I mentioned ankle weights earlier, but that can also be a way to, to add a little bit more resistance. Um, also heels definitely count as ankle weights.

We talked a little bit about body weight exercises, uh, isometrics, gymnastics, calasthetics, that sort of school of things. Uh, we talked about flexibility, mobility, contortion training. We talked about balance training, handstand training. We talked about options for endurance. And then visualization, which I realize. Uh, if you, if you haven't looked into this research, uh, I would definitely recommend it.

It's, it's a really cool area of research that I thought also sounded fake when I first started learning about it. And then I was like, oh, I guess the evidence is pretty strong. Uh, and then breaking in the skin off the pole by applying that friction and doing sort of gradual peripheral nerve desensitization instead of being like, have it all at once.

Also, while I'm trying to think about my position in the air, also, I'm trying to engage these muscles also while I'm doing all this motor learning. So that can help, you know. Break off pieces, nibble at them, and then when you come back to your poll training, you've got less to think about 'cause you've already done some of the prep work.

So those are some of my thoughts on conditioning for poll. If you got any questions, feel free to drop me a comment and I'll get back to you.

Members love you. If you wanna come join us, come join us. And yeah, I hope you're taking care of yourself. I hope you are finding time to connect with community, do things that are valuable and important, and make you feel effectual in this, these tumultuous times, and taking care of yourself, and taking care of the people around you.

And I'll talk to you very soon. Bye.