Pole Dance, Self-Care and Capacity

In this episode of the Evidence-Based Pole Podcast, the host delves into the concept of capacity, discussing its importance in pole dancing and life in general. The episode covers physical capacity, emotional well-being, and the impact of holistic stress on one's ability to perform and enjoy activities like pole dancing.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Episode Overview

00:32 Shoutout to Members and Community

01:12 Mental Health and Self-Care Strategies

03:09 The Pyramid of Pole: Capacity, Technique, and Artistry

05:52 Building Physical and Emotional Capacity

07:59 Fitness and Movement Requirements

12:08 Rest and Recovery: Beyond Sleep

16:49 Balancing Life and Pole Dance

18:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

18:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Citations

• Nagoski, E., & Amelia Nagoski, D. M. A. (2019). Burnout: The secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Ballantine Books.

• Bukhave, E. B., Creek, J., Linstad, A. K., & Frandsen, T. F. (2025). The effects of crafts‐based interventions on mental health and well‐being: A systematic review. Australian occupational therapy journal, 72(1), e70001.

Related episodes: 

• Kinds of fitness: https://www.slinkthroughstrength.com/science-of-slink-podcast/does-pole-dance-make-you-stronger

• Exercise science basics: https://www.slinkthroughstrength.com/science-of-slink-podcast/5-exercise-science-insights-every-pole-dancer-should-know-100424

Transcript:

 Hello, welcome to a Low energy episode of the Evidence-Based Poll podcast before the evidence-based poll podcast. Science of Slink Colon is the first title. And today I wanna talk about capacity. Uh, both physical capacity and also other things that are going to affect. Poll and what it looks like in your body and how that is normal and something that you should expect.

And a little bit about how to give yourself grace for it, right? Shout out to my members. Y'all are amazing. My Science of Slink members, my Essentials of Slink members. I really appreciate you. You know, I appreciate you all the time, but we just had a great show and I really felt just a wonderful sense of how lucky I am to have a community of weird nerds who also are into freestyle and movement and pole dance and science and, y'all are wonderful and I am very honored to, uh, have, have brought you together.  Soppy, soppy soppy I've dribbled coffee on myself. That's okay. I don't think I could lick that up even if I wanted to. That's what shirts are for. So I like, I am sure many folks am not in like an amazing place mental health wise right now.

Shit's real. And I think that in a time like this, it can. Be really challenging to do our stupid little self-care tasks. So one of the things that, one of the tools that I developed over, over time to help me manage, you know, my stress and capacity, uh, is I've just got like, a bunch of things that if I do them, I know I'm gonna feel better, right?

Like, and it's a bunch of things. It's like I'm upset that they work, right? Like if I'm getting enough water. I feel better, right? If I get, you know, my full eight hours of sleep, I feel better. If I do my stupid daily meditation, I have less brain noise and it works. YY if I do my exercise, my body feels better.

Um, that's like all the stuff that people tell you to do, and then you do it and you're like, God damnit it works. Fuck. Uh, I, I don't know why I'm so salty about it, but I am.

So self-care tasks. Try to get through the list, try to do 'em all. And sometimes when I get through the list, I've done all my self-care tasks for the day I don't feel good. Like I, I started feeling bad and I end up still feeling bad and it feels unfair and frustrating and I'm like I did all my little tasks. Why do I not feel amazing? And the answer is that the point of the things that you do to take care of yourself is to feel better than if you hadn't done them right, not to magically fix all your problems.

And if I knew a way to magically fix a problems, wow, I'd be doing it, but I don't. Right? The only advice I can give you for anything in life is you gotta keep showing up consistently and doing small things often. And that's it, that's the secret. But you can't do that if you don't have capacity.

So if you're familiar with my idea of the pyramid of pole. It's a three tiered pyramid. The bottom tier that everything else rests on, builds on that needs to be there for any of the stuff above it to happen is capacity. And I often talk about it in terms of physical capacity and we will talk about that today, but.

Also, I think it's really important to consider holistically everything that is going on in your life, everything that is affecting your capacity, because we don't have separate stress buckets for like, I've got my work stress and I've got my, wider world stress and I've got like, my family stress and oh, the family stress bucket's kind of a little bit low.

Uh, but thankfully I've got, you know. It is, I guess maybe we're filling the bucket. So the, oh, the family stress is a little bit high, but I don't have that much in the work stress bucket, so I've got plenty of capacity. Nope, it's all one bucket. Uh, if you're, if your stress is high in one bucket, oh, your stress is high.

Period. Right? The compartmentalization does not work. Um, as much as capitalist society would love us to believe that it does. I think it's really important to take all of that into consideration when we are being honest with ourselves about what we can slash should slash will feel good attempting in our bodies.

Um, so pyramid pole capacity, bottom level, uh, middle level is technique, right? Learning how to do stuff. This is where the motor learning, the skill learning lives. This is where the technical pole specific stuff lives. But I'm not gonna have you do. A specific pole movement if you don't already have the capacity to do that.

So great example here. If you don't have the grip strength to hold your body weight in your hands, I'm not gonna ask you to do a one-handed spin. You're not gonna be able to do it. You're just gonna feel frustrated. I'm gonna feel frustrated with myself for asking you to do something impossible because that's just not fair for you.

And it'll just be a bad time. And also I teach online, right? So I want you to be working well within your capacity when you're doing learning, because that's when you're gonna have, uh, more variability in your movement, uh, more likelihood that like, oh, maybe you need to like, readjust quickly. Uh, and I want you to have a lot of envelope of ability around envelope of capacity, around the ability that you're working on learning just so that you are, are having a better time and able to sort of like self spot and stuff like that.

And then the tip of the pyramid blank right at the top, uh, is artistry. And this is where we take all of the technical things that we have built together. And you make use of your capacity to express in, in the way that feels good to you. Uh, and if you come into my studio, that'll be through freestyle.

And if you were at my show or performing in my show y'all know what? It's up. And to me that's the point, right? That's the point of pole dance is to express yourself artistically through the medium of dance and, and especially freestyle. All that said, the capacity needs to be there. And I think there can absolutely be a little bit of a virtuous cycle where doing pole helps to build your capacity for life in general, ideally, right?

We know that physical movement, good for your heart health helps you, you know, have more energy, uh, helps to, you know, improve metabolic health overall. MO is good for you, right? We know that. I don't, I don't think I need to tell you all that. And you know, if you have. If pole is something that helps you have more physical, emotional, mental capacity for the rest of your life, right?

And then, you know, it helps build capacities. You can do more pole if you want to. Uh, I think you can get a little bit of a flywheel going there if pole is something that is genuinely refreshing for you and it's not for everybody. If it's not for you, perfectly fine. Uh, maybe think about pole being something that you take off your plate when things are really stressful.

For me, it is really, really, um. Refreshing, right. So like this morning I had, um, some movement in community with, uh, with Crimson, shout to Crimson at, at her studio online as well. And, uh, had just like a lovely time, little chit chats, got some boogieing down. Uh, and I still don't feel good, but I feel better.

It's not the point. Let's talk about different types of capacity, what to think about. Also sidebar for my students and members the studio curriculum is organized in three month chunks. It's organized in a lot of ways, but one of the ways it's organized is in three months chunks. So month one.

Capacity, month two technique. Week three, month three, artistry. Uh, and it's by quarter, so it's October now, and we're gonna be working on building our capacity specifically with our deep core. So, so things about respiration, things like stabilization. And that's in preparation for next month when we're gonna be talking about inver stuff and going upside down stuff.

And that doesn't just mean we're only gonna be working on the basic inversion, we're gonna be doing a bunch of crutches. It's not, that's not how I roll. But playing with that. And then, uh, month four is going, no, month three December, uh, it's gonna be all member requests. So, uh, let me know what you wanna work on and we'll, we'll get it in there.

What are, what are you exploring artistically? What is interesting to you? And I don't mind, you don't have to remember. But that's the way that this, um, concept shows up in my curriculum. Let's think about capacity. So fitness-wise, there are several things that go into this. And the specific capacity requirements for a movement are going to vary movement to movement, right?

So a good example here is, uh, the difference between something like a handstand and something like a pulse say. So they both have physical requirements, prerequisites. If you wanna do a handstand, you absolutely need to be able to, uh, you know, support your weight on your hands, right? And this, you know, is strength.

This is mobility. You need to be able to reach your hands up overhead. Uh, but it's also general ability, right? If you've got really bad wrist arthritis and putting pressure on your wrists is, is uncomfortable. You probably don't have like a bass seat to train handstands. You're probably gonna wanna work on something else, right?

Maybe elbow stands, uh, maybe you get like a feet up trainer, right? If you wanna work on inversions but not have any weight on your hands maybe you, you get really into like Ariel Sling or something. Uh, but you, you should make some accommodation based on, on your level of, of ability or disability, uh, and what those accommodations look like, uh, is going to vary tremendously on the movement.

For a pole sit you don't need to hold your weight in your hands, right? You need to hold your weight in your thighs, right? You have to have adductor strength to bring your legs together.

Uh, you have to have the strength to lift your legs in front of you to get into the position. You have to have the, uh, skin broken endingness, that you're willing to stay in it for a little bit, however long that is. And that, that's something that you, you break in over time through peripheral nerve desensitization, uh, and each of these things, right?

All of these physical requirements, ideally, you have more or less start to do. Met before you began working on the movement itself. And I've talked about this before in other episodes, and if I remember I'll put the links down there. Uh, but fitness is not just like a big bucket and you put scoops into it and like you're fit or you're not, right?

Like it's the opposite of stress. Uh, stress. It is all one big bucket. Fitness, it's not right. You, if you're training for balance, you're training specifically balance, that's not necessarily going to, uh, improve your flexibility. Uh, if you're training your flexibility, right? Training hip flexor flexibility is not necessarily going to improve your shoulder flexibility.

And there are some things where, especially with neurological training. Uh, there may be some cross effects for some of these things. And also general things like better interception, better proprioception. There will be some cross pollination, uh, but for the most part, you get better at what you train.

And, uh, adaptation to training is specific to the thing that you are training. Um, and in some cases very, very specific. So if you're working on isometrics, which my students have. I'm definitely familiar with, uh, you are actually increasing your strength the most at the specific angle of the isometric hold, right?

So important that you like, pick those exercises carefully if it's something that you're gonna be doing often. Um, also things like endurance, right? Like, having better cardiovascular endurance, having a, you know, stronger heart, greater vo, O2 max, all those things that's not necessarily gonna make your balances better, right?

You gotta, if you gotta get better balance, you gotta train violence, you gotta wanna get better endurance, you gotta train endurance. Uh, so it's a really individual pieces of capacity are, uh, I know I sort of am lumping them together in the bottom of the pyramid, but there's a lot going on there is what I'm trying to get at.

But that's on the fitness side of things.

I think it's also really important when you are measuring your capacity and it fluctuates day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, or your physical needs, right? Really good thing to check in with here. Are you fueling your body enough, right? Are you eating, uh, enough food?

Are you hitting your, your sort of macro and micronutrient goals? Uh, one of my students recently found out that she was really anemic, uh, from her doctor, uh, and, started supplementing and feels better. Fantastic. Right? Uh, and it's not necessarily like, oh, you did a bad job eating food or anything.

It's just, you were missing a micronutrient you needed. And this is a, a really good place to work with your, your doctor. Really good place to work with someone who, who specializes in nutrition. If this is something that you're worried about, uh, I'm never gonna tell you to eat less. Uh, maybe not like.

A huge meal immediately before class if then you feel bad during class, right? Maybe the timing could be different for that. I'm never gonna tell you to reduce your food intake. And then the other thing, uh, to think about is rest, right? Are you getting enough sleep? I think that's a big one, right? We all know you gotta sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But rest is more than just lie down, eyes closed. Right Rest is, have you had a chance for your brain to turn off a little bit? Uh, and for me, this is one of the most powerful things about freestyling is it is genuinely mental rest for me, once I get into my flow state, because I've got. I got monkeys in my brain.

I got little chipmunks on wheels, you know, um, I'm an anxious lady, uh, and being able to do something with my body and just get to the point where my brain can turn off is so powerfully rejuvenating for me, even though I'm physically moving, right? Like, obviously it is not, um, doing the type of rest that, uh, allows me to, uh, sleep and let my muscles recuperate.

But it is still a type of rest. It's a type of mental rest. You can also think about, you know, creative rest, right? Are you, are you making things? Um, there's been quite a bit of work on the, the value of crafts in particular, uh, crafts and arts in, in therapy, in the way that it can help or in a therapeutic context, in the way that it can help increase your focus, uh, reduce feelings of, of stress, reduce feelings of, uh.

In efficacy. Uh, I think helplessness is something that a lot of us are feeling right now, and helplessness is not a good feeling for humans. Pretty bad for you. And I would recommend doing things that help you to reduce that feeling. I try, I think the main thing that really helps me is finding, impactful actions that I can take that positively benefit my community. And what those look like for you is gonna, is gonna depend on you, it's gonna depend on your situation, depends on your communities. But for me, really trying to show up and like do volunteering and be politically active helps a lot with the feelings of doom.

And I, I recommend it, right? And if we all show up, but hey, things will probably get better, right? That's what I told myself. Are you, getting enough brain turnoff time, are you getting a chance to disengage from constantly shoveling bad news in your face? I hope so. I hope you are limiting that.

I hope you're putting little gates around it. Are you connecting with people you care about, right? You have, uh, some, some sort of social connection in your life that's also important. We are, we're not you social, but we are social. As a species you probably need that at least a little bit. Uh, and if you're not getting that rest, right, if you're just constantly like grinding down and down and down and down, uh, eventually your body will make you take rest.

Uh, and that's, that's no fun for anyone, right? Uh, also good piece of advice. Rest before you're tired. Rest before you need to rest. Especially my, my high achieving folks, if you're starting to feel yourself lagging a little bit, that's when you take a break before you need to, uh, and this is, this isn't me, right?

This is a, this is a self message as well. Because again, your body doesn't know the difference between I read a new story and now I feel kind of panicky and, uh, I am being chased by a bear. And you need to, you really need to, uh, give yourself the ability to reset center. You know, it helps with that? Movement.

Uh, specifically a movement that helps get your heart rate up. So if you haven't read, um, a good, uh, reference for this is breaking the burnout cycle, uh, which is by, uh, two researchers who are also sisters, which is fun. Who, who work on rest, uh, in psychology and, uh, or not rest burnout. And being able to, uh, get your heart rate up for like, it doesn't even need to be super long, but like a little bit will actually help your body metabolize the, uh, the neurotransmitters that are telling you everything's wrong. Uh, and we'll help you, you know, come back to a more sort of centered state that you can work from.

All of that to say is rest is multifaceted. Uh, it does not necessarily just mean sleep. And if you are not getting enough of it, your capacity's just gonna be reduced, right? You are just not going to have, uh, I mean just like one sort of fundamental way.

You won't have enough time, right? If you have overbooked your calendar, you're not gonna have enough time for poll, and that's fine. It just means you're not gonna be able to poll as much, right? Or if you are, uh, physically tired all the time, you're doing a lot of physical activity, you probably just aren't gonna have as much energy for the fun physical activity in life.

You're probably gonna have to reduce that. I mean, you're an adult, right? You are allowed to, decide what your priorities are, and if you don't know what your priority are, look at what you're spending the most time on. Look at where you're spending the most energy, and if it's something that actually isn't that important to you, uh, it might be a good time to just sort of like, reflect on it and be like, actually, I think I would feel better and enjoy myself more if I spent more time on X instead of Y. Social media I think is a, uh, a, a powerful tool for distraction and, uh. Very fun, right? Good for the monkey brain. In the short term, but not necessarily in the long term. That's been my experience. So maybe longer form content, like say a podcast.

So all of that is to say your capacity is. Going to dictate what is available to you in your pole life, right? If you are super stressed, you are going to have a hard time learning tricks.

If you are super tired, you're going to have a hard time showing up and doing big, expansive movement. It's not wrong. It's not bad. You shouldn't beat yourself up for it. Uh, you know, don't. You don't, if you are a recreational polar, you don't have to do pole. It's not a thing that you need to do.

And if it is the thing that you, you know, have to remove to make the rest of your life doable, it may be remove it. But if it's load bearing, if it's one of the ways that you create rest and ease for yourself, maybe rental maybe helping to, you know, reduce stress. Uh, maybe helping to find a source of social connection, meet other people, get that need fulfilled, whatever it is for you.

If it is helpful, if it increases your capacity to do pull time, then maybe you prioritize it so that you can have more space to do the other things that you need to do in your life, and only you really know which one it is. Uh, and maybe even you don't for yourself, maybe you gotta experiment, right?

Like, take a couple weeks off, see how you feel, try to get back in it, see if that changes anything. Totally up to you how your hobby shows up in your life.

But I'll say. Going all the way back to the, the beginning of the episode where I was sort of talking about self-care tasks. If it is consistently making you feel better, if you feel better when you do it, then when you don't do it, I would say that that is reason enough to do it right, to help you create the space you need mentally, physically, artistically, uh, socially to do the other things that you need to do, uh, and show up in the world.

And, trying to make it a better place. Right. It's not the point at the end that we, we wanna, improve things for ourselves and, and people around us and our communities and, and the world at large. Certainly it is for me, so I.

A little bit of a chill episode. Uh, I don't know if you can tell my capacity's a little bit lower right now than it is in general.

I overcommitted a little bit in September and I didn't do enough refueling activities for myself. Uh, and in particular, I didn't get enough socialization, which is a, a thing that I have a very high need for him. I'm a very social person. I need a lot of it, and I didn't get a lot of it. And as a result, everything else has just been harder.

But October's shaping up to be good. And. We're gonna be working on building our physical capacity in classes, which I am, I'm looking forward to. I really like this sort of foundational core work. It's about the core, right? Because I think a lot of us, when we, when we start training our core, um, are like, oh, it's all about the rectus.

I wanna get a six pack, or I gotta. Uh, you know, I want a pull crunch and so I'm gonna work on my core. Or an inversion. Usually people don't want pull crunches. That's not a big goal for folks usually. Uh, but I want an inversion, so I'm gonna work on my core. Uh, and there's so much more to it than that.

And it affects everything you do in your life with your body and just a good time. I'm looking forward to it, and I always feel better after this month as well. More and more connected, more stable. So anyway. That's all I got for you today. I hope you are taking care of yourself. Whatever that looks like, I hope you are, connecting with the people in your community, connecting with the people around you.

I hope you are doing the best that you can, given what you got, and I'll see you in the next one. Bye.