Pole progress

It’s been a whole month since I last posted! Oops! I’ve been quite busy with my poling and feel that I am making progress (albeit a little slowly). My aysha is coming along. It still needs a lot of work but I’m getting it more regularly now and I know where I’m getting it wrong when it doesn’t work out right so that’s good. My genie is there now, I just need to remember to point my toes! The shoulder mount lift is coming along slowly. Sometimes I can manage to lift it all the way up from sitting but mostly I’m getting part of the way up. I had a practice session on my own at the studio on Friday night and was pleased with that. I videoed it all which was helpful as I can look at the footage and see how the moves are looking and spot what I’m doing wrong.

I went to a mini pole jam / practive at 360 pole dancing in Bristol on bank holiday Monday which was fun. There was a Chinese pole up as well as the normal poles which was good, especially as it was a 3 meter one. I haven’t had a chance to go on a decent height Chinese pole for ages.

Corde lisse is going well. I couldn’t go on Monday night as I was ill which was annoying but hopefully will be back to normal by Monday. I hate missing classes.

I have finished bootcamp for a while now as I am going into full pole competition training mode. As my Friday night practice worked out so well last week I plan on making it a regular fixture for a while so Wednesday has become my rest day.

My pole classes are hopefully picking up a bit now that August is over. I’ve had quite a lot of new enquiries over the past week or so, so with any luck the classes will get a bit busier.

Lots of activity!

Well last week was a busy one. I was back at Corde Lisse on Monday after 5 weeks off and so found it quite tough going. It’s good to be back though and it was nice to see everyone. Looking forward to tonight’s class although I don’t have much energy at the moment!

My pole classes on Tuesday were quite, August has officially kicked in! As I only had one person in the later class I managed to get a little bit of practice in which was good. Also now that I am using semi-permanent poles I don’t mind so much when I have less people than expected as I haven’t lugged heavy x-poles up the stairs and put them up for no reason!

Bootcamp as usual on Wednesday. It’s going pretty well, I can definitely feel that my overall fitness has improved.

Went to pole class on Thursday as normal. I was quite worn out by this point so was quite glad that it was heels week and we spent a lot of the lesson working on a spinning sequence. I did have a go at shoulder mount from sitting and nearly managed to get all the way up, I will have this soon, it’s so close. I also managed a few ok-ish ayshas. The longest I held one was about four seconds so not too bad.

On Sunday I had a “garden” pole party for my birthday (which isn’t quite yet but this weekend was a good date to hold it). In typical British summer fashion it was pouring down with rain all day so the planned pole stage in the garden and the BBQ didn’t happen but I did manage to fit two poles up in my lounge by pushing all of the furniture out of the way. One of the pole was an x-pole and the other was a Chinese pole made by putting rubber tubing onto an x-pole and it worked nicely and went down really well with everyone.

General update

Well as you can see the blogging more often has been a failure so far! In fact July has pretty much been a failure and I’m glad to see the back of it! A lot has been going on in the past month which has left me lacking in motivation and energy but now I hope I’m back to some kind of normality and ready to go again.

My pole classes remain busy. They are no longer full but still have a healthy attendance so that’s good. It always goes quiet over the summer anyway so I expect it to get busier again in September. I’ve been working on re-designing my website and hope to have the new version up and running sometime this month. One of my students is due to do her PDC level 3 grading this month, she works really hard and has achieved a lot.

I covered a pole party for Robyn at 360 pole dancing in Bristol on Saturday. I haven’t taught a party for ages so it was quite good to get back into that.

My personal pole practice has been ticking along slowly. My no handed genie has improved (although is still in need of a lot of polishing and practice!) and I feel that I am slowly making progress with my aysha again, I think I will have it back before too long.

It’s my birthday this month so next weekend I am holding a garden mini pole jam at my house. The idea started as some of my students said they wanted to have a go on a stage pole and a Chinese pole so I said I would do something in the summer so that they could. I am planning on building an outdoor Chinese pole but haven’t had time as yet but hopefully I’ll be able to buy the rubber this week and get an x-pole up to use as a Chinese pole.

I am considering entering the UK Professional Pole Championships. This is a new national competition for instructors with three different levels of which I would be entering the lowest level – Instructor (the other two being Professional and Elite). The first round is by video submission for which the closing date is 31st August. I’m not sure if I’m going to be ready by then. I have picked a song and have part of the routine worked out but all of my moves require polishing and I need to be able to pull off that aysha convincingly. I’ll see how things go!

I haven’t been to corde lisse all month as I was late trying to book onto the last block and it sold out before I could book my place. The new block starts tonight though and I am signed up to it so looking forward to getting back to that. Hopefully I won’t have lost too much strength.

I’ve still been going to bootcamp every week. That’s going well, I can see improvement.

Activities Update

I must start updating this blog more regularly! I have decided to enter another pole competition this year so the training starts now and I will use the blog as a way to keep track of my progress.

My pole classes are going well. The second class is now full and has a waiting list for the first time ever and the first class is on its way to filling up as well. I have been considering putting on another class on a different day but not sure if I will be able to fit one in so still thinking about that.

My personal pole practice has been going ok. Been going to class every Thursday as usual. I have just about managed to get my no handed genie. I just have to tidy it up now. Still working on lifting my shouldermount and starting to go back and look at the aysha again. I have decided that I need to do a lot more conditioning as this will help with everything and I want my nice strong, tidy air invert back as it’s currently looking somewhat lacklustre!

Corde lisse is going ok. I have only been able to attend about once a fortnight for the past few weeks but I think I should now be back to being able to go every week. We have been looking at a sequence of moves, last night we were focusing on the figurehead which I think is one of my favourite moves to do on the rope.

I have still been going to bootcamp every week. Have been getting on well with that and can see improvement in my overall fitness so that’s good.

I haven’t been to parkour for a while which is a shame as I really enjoyed it but I can’t do everything and that was the thing that had to give for now. I’m planning on going back at some point though as it is great fun and hard work.

Pole, Bootcamp and Parkour!

Well it’s been a while since I posted. Most of the month has been pretty quiet. I’ve been teaching my pole class on Tuesdays as normal but apart from that I wasn’t really doing much (resting my shoulder) until last week when I jumped straight back into action!

Monday was my night off as I am not doing the current Corde Lisse block (again due to wanting to rest my injured shoulder) but the rest of the week was all go.

Tuesday I taught my pole classes. The 7:15pm was quite quiet but my ladies are progressing nicely. The 8:15pm class in currently full so that was a busy one. My three new people seemed to enjoy it so hopefully they will be back again this week. All of my regulars are doing well and mostly manage to get a new trick each week.

Wednesday I did a bootcamp session with Bootcamp Somerset. I’ve know Matt for a long time as our Mum’s were best friends. He set up his own personal training business last year and it seems to be going well for him. The bootcamp was hard work but quite fun. There was quite a lot of cardio exercise which was the main reason I wanted try is as although I do quite a lot of strength work I do nothing in the way of cardio so that’s an area that I need to work on. Hopefully I’ll be able to make the bootcamp sessions a regular thing.

Thursday I went to pole class. I was aching from bootcamp the day before so was a little feeble in my attempts! I was mostly working on shoulder mount lifts, which has gone downhill a lot due to lack of practice but as long as I keep up the practice it should start to improve again. I was also attempting back hook to invert which was always really hit and miss but is now very much miss! I think the last time I tried it was back in September so no surprise there. It’s something I would like to be able to do well so have to remember to practice it regularly. I haven’t made any attempt at an Aysha for at least six weeks. This is entirely down to my shoulder injury as attempting it was causing me pain so I thought it best not to push it. My shoulder is feeling a lot better now though so I am hopeful that I will be able to start working on this again soon.

Friday I went a long to a Parkour class that has just started up at the Gym where I teach my pole class. The class was for ages 15 – 35 and I was worried that I would be the only adult in a class of 15 and 16 year olds but went along anyway as it’s something that I have wanted to try for ages. My worries turned out to be well founded, there were only four other people in the class all of whom were teenage boys. I did really enjoy the class though but found it quite hard. I’m a bit of a wimp so some of the stuff we were doing was a bit scary such as somersaults off a spring board (mine were more like forward rolls but I did improve a bit as the session went on). I had a couple of issues about the way things were run but as it was only their second week teaching I am hoping that they will sort that out once they are more settled in to teaching. It was a great workout, I ached like mad all weekend and can still feel it in my quads now. I’m hoping I’ll ache a little less next time!