Pole Dance Challenge Week 4 (plus corde lisse and gymnastics)

Last week I chose a different style of music for my freestyle dance as suggested by one of my students. I danced to Nero – Guilt. I enjoyed it as it was nice for a bit of a change. I’ll probably go back to rock tonight though! I feel that my freestyles are slowly becoming less repetitive and I am actually starting to enjoy doing them now so that’s good. I might even start posting the videos soon!

Last night was the last Corde Lisse class for a few weeks. It was a good class working on back balance (which I still can’t do), budda and catchers into key of stomach neatly. Since there is no gymnastics for a few weeks I took the opportunity to use the space and crash mats to do a bit of handstand and cartwheel practice. We had a little gymnastics club going on in the corner of the space at the end of the corde lisse class which caused some amusement. I was quite pleased with my handstands and cartwheels, they do seem to be improving steadily so that’s good.

Pole Dance Challenge Week 3 (plus other updates)

Last week I danced to Garbage – Only Happy When It Rains. I really enjoyed dancing to that song, it was a bit faster than the previous two weeks’ songs which made for a bit of a change. I still struggled with repetitiveness though but think I am improving a bit. I have no idea what I want to dance to tonight will have to see what takes my fancy at the time!

I have carried on with the gymnastics classes on Saturdays and I’m really enjoying it. It’s quite challenging but already I can see some improvements in my handstands, cartwheels and flexibility. They are away at competitions for the next three weeks though so no classes. I have exercises to do so must try and keep them up.

There is a South West Pole Showcase coming up in April and several of my students are interested in taking part so from tonight we will be looking at coming up with a routine and putting a little show together which is exciting.

Pole Dance Challenge – Week 2

Bit late with this post again! Last week was week two of my pole dance challenge and I think there was a small improvement on the first week so things are moving in the right direction!

I danced to Staind – Outside which comes in at just under 5 minutes so I was quite pleased with myself for dancing to the whole thing. It did get a bit repetitive but not as much as last week, although I did cheat slightly and put a shoulder mount in there! I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to make this weeks dance less repetitive. I haven’t watched any pole videos this week to get ideas from as I’ve had lots of other stuff going on. Oh well, we’ll see how things go later.

Pole Challenge Week 1 (plus other updates)

This week has gone by fast!
Well I started my pole challenge after class last Tuesday. I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to do it as I had forgotten to charge my mp3 player and camera and both were flashing low but luckily they both held on! I danced to Avenged Sevenfold – Gunslinger. Watching the video back I wasn’t as horrified with it as I thought I would be! I started off ok although I did start running out of ideas pretty quickly. I have been watching videos this week for ideas so hopefully tonight it will be a little less repetitive (although I’m bound to have a mind blank as soon as I start). I’m not posting the video. I’m thinking I’ll make a montage in a few weeks time when there will hopefully be some improvement to show!

I will post a video of the opening dance at Miss Pole Dance Australia though. This video is my new inspiration. If I can get to be even half as good as these ladies then I’ll be super happy!



In other news corde lisse has been going quite well. We have been working on pickups and meathooks which I really like and they have been improving nicely. Last night I had a little play on the aerial hoop as well which I enjoyed (much to my surprise – I hated trapeze). Tempted to go to a one off hoop class at some point.

On Saturday I did a gymnastics class. The gym where I teach pole has a competitive gymnastics squad and I was allowed to join their training session. It was great fun and I think it will really help my pole as I plan on going every week. I was working on handstands, cartwheels and straddle levers. My legs ached loads on Sunday! Looking forward to next week.