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.

Pole Dance Challenge

I have decided to set myself a pole dance challenge. I want to improve my flow and make my pole dance more fluid and graceful which is something I feel I lack at the moment. It takes me so long to master new tricks I just seem to spend all my time doing that and the overall art of it all suffers as a result, so I have decided that I need to do something about it.

I am going to do regular freestyle dances and video them and post the videos here (possibly. I might chicken out of that last bit to start with!). Hopefully if I manage to keep it up regularly I should start to see some improvement. I’m going to start simple, with mainly dance and floor work elements and then as I get more comfortable with it I’ll start adding in more tricks, although it’s not about seeing how many tricks I can jam in, it’s about making sure that what I do put in fits and flows and is well executed. Hopefully this will also help improve my stamina as well because at the moment the only time I dance to a full song is when I’m in training for a competition.

Of course I’ll still be learning new tricks as well and I’ll keep up the occasional posts on how that’s getting on (I’m currently working on improving my split grip Ayesha / Straight Edge and the Holly Drop).

I’d be happy to receive song suggestions if anyone wants to send me any. I mostly like rock / metal but open to most music really.

Also if anyone has any comments / suggestions / constructive criticisms on the videos feel free to send me those as well. Oh, and if you think I’m not sticking to the plan feel free to give me a kick up the backside and tell me to get on with it!

I'm planning on doing the first video after class tomorrow so hopefully I'll be posting it sometime on Wednesday.

Looking back at 2011 and goals for 2012

2011 started off badly, I was going through some tough times personally and it affected my pole. I managed to lose pretty much all of the progress I had made at the end of 2010 when training for Pole Divas which was disappointing. Things started picking up though and by the start of the summer I felt I was beginning to progress again. I was tempted to enter the UKPPC but decided I wasn’t ready and so just entered the Bristol Pole Championships (BPC) instead which gave me more time to train and prepare. Leading up to the BPC I was considering pulling out on several occasions but I’m glad I went ahead with it as having the competition to focus on really helped my pole training and I feel I started to make more significant progress. I was not that happy with my performance on the day, I messed it up in a few places and it should have been neater but I’m I did it and I will probably do it again this year! Since the competition I have managed to keep my momentum going and have still been improving. Most notably by getting my Ayesha and straight edge which I have been working on. They are still not 100% but I’m getting them most of the time now so I think it won’t be long until they are reliable. I managed to get in a bit of practice over the Christmas and new year break. Normally I end up doing nothing for two weeks but I only went one week with no activity this time. I’m hoping I can keep up the progress into 2012.

My pole goals for 2012 are –
Get my Ayesha / straight edge completely reliable and neat
Be able to lift my shoulder mount
Get more new moves (I’ve been doing quite well with this lately so hopefully that will continue)
Make everything neater, remember to point toes etc.
Do more routines to help with flow, grace and stamina
Do more work on moves that I tend to avoid (mostly layback related stuff)

I think they are all pretty obtainable!

UKPPC Final

Sunday 11th December was the final of the UK Professional Pole Championships held in Birmingham. We were there to support Robyn of 360 Pole Dancing in Bristol who was competing in the Professional Level having successfully made it through the video heat and the live semi final back in October.

There were so many performances that I was looking forward to seeing over the three categories and I was not disappointed.

First up were the instructors. These are people who teach pole but do not perform. There were lots of great performances but the two stand out ones for me were Emily Smith and Nicole McIntyre. Sadly Emily didn’t place but Nicole was awarded runner up. The category was won by Kristina Walker. You can watch her winning performance here –



Next up was the Professional category. These are people who teach and perform. This was my favourite category which I think on the whole featured the best performances of the event. Robyn put in a good performance but unfortunately didn’t place. Lauren Red was the runner up and Bendy Kate was the winner. Also from this category Sarah Scott was given the Sponsors choice award. You can Bendy Kate’s winning performance here –



Lastly was the Elite category. The competitors in this category are all winners or runners up in a national professional competition and are competing by invitation only with no video heat or semi-final. Again all of the performances were brilliant. Karen Chaundy was the runner up and Annie Norris won. You can watch Annie’s winning performance here –



As well as the competitors we also got guest performances by Tess Taylor and Jess Leanne Norris. Both of which were very entertaining. I had been looking forward to seeing Tess perform as I really like her style.

So it was a very enjoyable event. They are planning on running it annually so I am very much looking forward to next year’s event!

The Bristol Pole Championships 2011

Well, last weekend was the Bristol Pole Championships which I competed in. I have been training hard for the competition and it has been quite a journey to get there. I have suffered from terrible nerves weeks before hand and on several occasions came really close to pulling out but hung on in there thanks to the encouragement of my friends and pole students and in the end I’m really glad that I did go ahead and compete.

As I said I was training hard , making sure I practiced my combos every time I was on a pole and then as the competition got closer running through the full routine a lot. It was the routine run throughs that really kicked off my nerves. The combos that I was managing to do perfectly every time on their own were all going wrong when put into the routine! I think I actually only managed two successful run-throughs the whole time. The three days before the competition I was struck down with a nasty cold type bug. Luckily it was short lived and by the day of the competition I was feeling a lot better and was no longer relying on lemsip capsules!

On the day itself I was really nervous. There was a problem in my category with the pole being slippery and some of the competitors that were on earlier than me had problems and had to go on again and re-do their routines which wasn’t helping the nerves at all. Eventually it was my turn and luckily the pole was pretty grippy. I didn’t make any major mistakes and was reasonably pleased with how it turned out. Watching my video back I have decided that I really need to work on pointing my toes and that I need to hold the positions for longer. I held my hip hold for what seemed like ages at the time but watching it back that’s actually the only one that I held for the right amount of time so I will be working on those things for future routines.

You can see my performance here –


Robyn from 360 Pole Dancing was defending her title in the competition as she was last year’s winner and I’m pleased to say that she was successful. You can watch her winning performance here –


Before the competition I had said that I was never going to enter another one again but now I’m not so sure! I’ll see how I feel next year!