Three Things I Wish I'd Known As a Beginner Pole Dancer

In this episode of Science of Slink, Dr. Rosy Boa shares vital lessons she wishes she had learned earlier in her 14-year pole dancing journey. Covering exercise science fundamentals, recognizing when a space isn’t right for you, and the perils of diet culture and disordered eating, Dr. Boa offers practical advice and reflections aimed at helping fellow pole dancers avoid common pitfalls. Additionally, she emphasizes the importance of a healthy relationship with food and the benefits of understanding exercise science principles. Dr. Boa encourages listeners to contribute their own lessons and insights while promoting her online pole studio for further learning and community support.

Citation for perfectionism & orthorexia:  

Oberle CD, Samaghabadi RO, Hughes EM. Orthorexia nervosa: Assessment and correlates with gender, BMI, and personality. Appetite. 2017 Jan 1;108:303-310. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2016.10.021. Epub 2016 Oct 15. PMID: 27756637.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome to Science of Slink

00:57 My Pole Dancing Journey Begins

02:06 Discovering Exercise Science

05:29 Finding the Right Space for You

08:57 Understanding Diet Culture and Disordered Eating

13:31 Final Thoughts and Advice

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Science of Slinks, the Evidence-Based Pole podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rosy Boa. And I run Slink Through Strength, which is an online pole studio for nerds who want to build a better relationship with their body through science and pole dance.

And I thought today it would be helpful to share a little bit about why I'm so passionate about it. In the form of some very hard won lessons. Um, and these are lessons that I would, uh, if I had, a time machine, I could put letters through I'd, I'd write down in the letter to myself when I started pole dancing, you know, lick the envelope, stick it through.

And I really wish that I had learned all of these things much, much earlier in my life, much, much earlier in my whole career. And hopefully I can give you a little bit of a shortcut. Uh, by, by imparting them to you.

It's what, 2026 now? So I've been pole dancing for almost 14 years.

Oh. I'm just gonna crumble into dust right in front of your eyes. But when I started pole dancing, I was, I'll, I'll paint the scene for you. I was in grad school. I was busy burning myself out. I would go to school, I would work all day. I would come home, I'd work a little bit more. I'd sleep. Not enough. I was not sleeping well. And then the next day I'd go back into school and I'd keep working. And I didn't really have a social life, and I certainly was not exercising. I mean, I walked to the bus and I walked from the bus to my office and then back every day. But that was pretty much it. And I was not doing well, but if you'd ask me, I would never have admitted that.

I was like, I'm fine. I'm doing science. I'm gonna change the world. And I am, I'm very grateful to that version of myself. She was very driven. She was very passionate. And, uh, now sitting on the, the far side of a couple rounds of burnout from that young woman, I have a lot that I would tell her.

And these are some of those things.

So the very first thing that I would tell a baby pole dancer Rosy, is that, exercise science exists. There is a whole field of science where people study exercising, right? Because I kind of. I knew vaguely that kinesiology was around. I sort of knew it as the major that football players had in undergrad and I didn't really know anything else, uh, more than that.

And I also thought it was sort of, kind of just for elite athletes, right? And I really didn't understand periodization. I didn't really understand progressive overload. I really didn't understand motor learning. That would come, uh, a little bit later actually, my academic career when I, when I started digging into that research and literature a little bit more and working on that.

What I did know was you'd know I'd taken some like dance classes when I was a kid, but nothing ever very long, nothing very sustained. So I had sort of vague nineties, uh, sort of like filtered through a young child's memory of, "you should probably stretch before you do something or you'll hurt yourself."

Not really a well-rounded understanding of how the body works, how it changes, how it adapts to stress. And I would love to go back and, sit myself down and be like, dog, there's a whole literature out here, uh, that you can really dig into. Um, and not just exercise science, but also sports psychology.

Although I would say sports psychology has become more important to me once I've started teaching, uh, and was a little bit less important for me and would've been less helpful for me as, as a, a learner. And I think it would've been really transformative things like. If you are doing a conditioning exercise, the first couple reps of it should feel easy.

If the first couple reps of something feel too hard to do, they feel impossible. You need to step it back and also like all the ways to step it back. All of the levers to understand how you can make a movement more or less challenging mechanically. And also, you know, permission to just do that and to adjust things and to, uh, notice how my body was feeling. My proprioception and my interoception at that point in my life were.

abyssmal, they were so bad. I walked into a lot of stuff. I'm sure some of y'all can, can relate. And they've gotten a much better sense because I've worked on them. Um, or even just something like that, right? Like perceptual learning applies to, body senses as well, or even things like proprioception exists, interception exists.

Your hands are in the wrong place for pushups, right? Your, your hand positioning for pushups should be based on your resting carrying angle. What's a carrying angle? So much of this knowledge that I just wish that I could, could bundle up and pass off to my younger self and, give her not even a running start, but like a start with understanding to build that mental framework, that mental scaffolding and be like, okay, I'm doing this exercise for this reason. Oh, this is way too hard. Oh, I am, I'm coming to my next workout and I'm still really sore from the one before. I should step back.

I should take longer breaks, I should move less intensely. Um, all those things that I really. Would've made my life so much easier. And also I think I would've had a really fun time digging into it, and maybe I wouldn't have burned out so quickly. But who knows? So that's a big thing. Exercise science exists. There's this whole body of literature you can dig into and you should.

The second thing is a little bit more conceptual, I think. And that is that not every space is for every person.

And this does not just go for pole, right? This goes for life as a whole. I think if I had really internalized this earlier in my life and acted on earlier in my life, I would've had just a much nicer time overall in general. But I didn't. But I've come to it now and I wish I could. Impart this wisdom to my younger self.

Not every place is for every person. And if you feel uncomfortable, if being in a space not just your first couple times in it as you're sort of figuring it out, but continues to make you feel fearful, shrinking, afraid, nervous. Anxious far more than your usual baseline. That is not evidence that you need to get better to fit in more. Maybe that's evidence that that's not a place for you.

And I hesitate to label, places or things as toxic. Right? I think there are a lot of different ways of being a person. I think it's important at a societal level that we create space for people who have a lot of different ways of being and being in the world. As long as they're not hurting other people, they should do their thing, but. That does mean that there are gonna be some spaces that people are creating that work for them, that work for some people and are not going to work for you.

And I really wish that I had earlier in my life gotten better at noticing that a space wasn't for me and just stepping back and leaving early.

Yeah, and I, I hesitate to use the word toxic because if a space is truly dysfunctional, if it is truly serving no one, pretty quickly it stops existing. If something is existing continuously is a social contract, someone's needs are getting met by someone is benefiting from it enough to make it continue existing but that doesn't mean it has to be your place.

Some examples of things like just are not great for me in Pole Studios. I don't love choreography. I'll do it occasionally, right? Like I'll, I'll dabble in it, but if a pole studio is really focused on learning choreography, I'm just not gonna really fit in their long term because I want a place where I can really explore my freestyle, and that's what's important to me. And that doesn't mean that choreography is toxic. It just means that it's not for me. Uh, and if a space isn't fulfilling my needs, I should find a different space.

Or I also really like consistency in my movement. So if a space has, you know, one class every two weeks and it's a different time and, uh, a different day of the week, it's gonna be really hard for me to fit in my schedule. So it's probably just not gonna work for me, right? It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that, it's just not for me.

Or warmups, right? I need a really well-rounded physiological warmup. I need, the mobility work. I need the cardio. I'm, I am not a person who does well from a cold start. And also, again, going back to the exercise science, most people are, but some people can just sort of handle it.

Uh, I'm not one of those people. So if I'm going into a space and I'm just not being warmed up consistently to the degree that I need, it's not gonna be a space for me. Doesn't mean it's wrong, doesn't mean it's bad, it means it's not for me. And I wish that I had learned, " ah, not for Rosy" is a perfectly fine thing for a space to be and that I can leave places, uh, much, much earlier in my life. I think I would've been a lot more happy.

The final thing that I wish that I could impart into my younger self. Uh, and I'm gonna say right now, this is gonna get kind of heavy. I'm gonna talk about food, I'm gonna talk about disordered eating, I'm gonna talk about diet culture. So, those are not things that you are gonna be able to handle hearing about today.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. I'll see you in the next one. Otherwise, we'll stick around. I really wish I had understood diet culture and orthorexia and what disordered eating can look like. Earlier in my life.

So I, I think I've mentioned this before. When I went into pole, I was pretty consistently and honestly, even today, I'm often the largest person in the class.

Sidebar, I am the average height and average body composition for a woman in the United States. I am the middle. I should not be the biggest person in a class. I should be right in the middle. Uh, and there should be, you know, equal number of people in smaller bodies and bigger bodies than me because again, I am the societal average.

And if there's a significant deviation consistently, hmm, perhaps there's some sort of underlying effect going on there. Anyway, sorry, that's just an aside. But I, especially earlier in my whole life, um, was in a lot of spaces where there was an assumption that I did want to lose weight.

And I, you know, at, at some point I was asking a teacher about something, she's like, oh, well when you lose the weight, this will happen. This will look different. And this was not the only factor, but it was one of the factors that led me to have a period of. Really disordered eating.

And, uh, I really wish that I had learned more about diet culture and the way that it shows up. And I wish that I had understood more of the research on intentional weight loss. And I mean, the, the big spoiler here is diets don't work long term. Uh, and they can have really delirious effects on your overall health and metabolic health in particular. But you know, I, I'm a child of the nineties. I grew up around people who are doing really extreme dieting, who are constantly talking about how much they hated their bodies, how much they wanted to be smaller.

Huge can of worms. We're kind of getting back into it, a society, which I hate so much. Uh, but I really wish that I'd understood those forces.

I also wish I'd understood what disordered eating looks like, because I think there is a, um. Sort of cultural story that you cannot have an eating disorder unless you are scary thin. Uh, and that's just not the case. It can look like a wide variety of things.

Uh, one thing in particular that, I engaged in, and I'm much more mindful about now, is orthorexia. And some of y'all may have, uh, run into this idea of maybe like clean eating and that some foods are clean and good and healthy and other foods are bad, and perhaps not evil, but unhealthy or dangerous or unsafe in some way. And like, yeah, if you've got celiac, don't eat gluten. It's bad for you. It's bad for you, right? Or if you have a food allergy, don't eat the thing that you're allergic to. But this real preoccupation with only eating the good foods and avoiding the bad foods uh, perhaps even with a little bit like a moral element on there, uh, this is actually really associated with perfectionism, which is another thing that I've talked about.

I, I struggle with, I have in the past. I continue to, it's not great for you. And similarly, really focusing on trying to only eat the healthiest possible foods. It's not great for you. There's a reason that, that this is a disordered way of approaching a relationship with food.

And I, I really wish that I could go back and like, sit down with my, with my past self and be like, Hey. Trying to lose weight and keep yourself very small is not gonna be good for you. It's going to create a really unhealthy relationship with food that is going to take you years of work to undo. If you get there, the years of work are absolutely worth it. It's, you know, you need food to live, it's good to have a good relationship with it, but you're not gonna have a good time. It's gonna be unpleasant all around. Start so much better. Just start with a healthy relationship to food and notice when people are trying to like villainize and put little scary mustaches on some types of food and be like, Hey, actually no, I can't eat that. I'm not allergic to it. Uh, it's fine for me, not an issue.

I know a little bit heavier, but it's, it was something that really impacted my life in a very large way for a very long time. And I wish I could have avoided that chapter in my life. I would've gotten so much more head space. I would've gotten a lot more time back.

I would've gotten a lot more money back. Um, and I really wish that I could have just avoided that entirely. But I didn't.

So those are three things that I would go back and I would tell my younger self when I was starting pole to really get me started on the right foot.

Exercise science exists, right? Just get like a 100 level textbook, do a quick skim through. It is gonna give you such a better understanding of the body and how it works and how to progress and how to get stronger and more flexible. Definitely something to do.

Not all places are for all people. Figure out what you like and if something just really isn't working for you, peace out early and often. Right? Feel free to leave. It is perfectly fine. If you are finding that, uh, every time you interact with something, it ruins your day, maybe that's a signal that you shouldn't be interacting with it as much as possible. Perhaps younger me.

And then finally I wish I'd known about diet culture. Uh, I wish I'd known about orthorexia. I wish I'd known what disordered eating actually looks like and that it's not good for you, right? It's not good for your brain, it's not good for your body. And as much as possible spending time, developing and cultivating and maintaining a healthy relationship with food is. It would've made my life so much easier if I had started there instead of clawing my way to there after I'd already fallen in a bunch of bear traps.

I am not a mental health professional. I'm not a dietician, but I would definitely, if this is something that you're struggling with, I would reach out and I would look for specialized support. We had, uh, Reanna on the podcast a while ago who had a wonderful conversation with, I think it's called like Fat Liberation Nutrition and Pole Dance or something like that. Uh, from My Rebel Nutrition. So good resource there to reach out to, if, if that's something that you are, are looking for more assistance with.

Alright, so this is, these are things that I put in little reverse time capsules onto to myself. And I'd love to hear from you, especially those of you who've been pole dancing for a while. What would you go back and tell your baby pole dancer self to look out for, to do, to not do just general wisdom and advice.

And as always, I wanna say a big shout out to all my members. I love y'all. Uh, so those are my Science of Slink members who are there for everything that I do. Y'all are fantastic. Uh, and also my essentials of Slink members who join me one hour a week. We have a good time, and if you're interested in joining us please do. You can find out more on my website, slinkthroughstrength.com. Find out about memberships, see if there'd be something you'd be interested in to add a little bit more science back structure to your home, pole practice.

So that's all I've got for you today. I hope you are doing as well as possible and taking care of yourself and the people around you and your community as a whole. Uh, and I look forward to talking with you again very, very soon.

Bye.