About a year or so ago I got into a real pole funk. I wasn’t having any of it.
I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to progress and wasn’t flexible enough to do some of the moves that I was strong enough for.
I had a long time away from training pole, but coming back I decided to train slightly differently – sideways not forwards.
While this could be literal in terms of pole, I mean more in terms of progression 😀
How To Keep Training
There are so many amazing pole moves out there, but when we aim for the big moves, it can be so frustrating not to be able to get them time and time again. It took me years to get moves like the superman, shoulder mount, ayesha and handspring. I’m no stranger to the struggle of not getting moves, yet I still feel frustrated when progress is slow.
I decided to pick one strength move that I would focus on – I think at the time I worked on my cup grip iron x, but I’ve now moved on having got that, and am working on getting my aerial deadlift.
One of the things that helped me the most was focusing on other moves. I had this one big move that I was working on consistently and the rest were achievable moves. Achievable moves for me are moves that add on to ones that you know you can do, and with a few training sessions can probably nail – and this is what I mean by training sideways.
For example, if you know you can do an outside leg hang, you can try a climb over or holding opposite hand to foot. You could try coming out of it in a different way or always aerial inverting into it. Of course this one leads nicely into an inside leg hang too.
By training more achievable moves you will feel much more of a sense of achievement – I know I did!
Of course I’m not saying to abandon hard moves because most pole moves are hard until you can do them, but perhaps try and focus on one power move at a time.
I felt so free when I realised that I didn’t just have to work on all the strength moves at once and that it was okay just to play and see what moves I ended up in. It’s okay to go back to basics and work on spins.
I love finding new ways to climb or invert or add moves I already know together – so why not try to play? 😀
When you feel that pole is just a bit of a struggle, go back to moves you know and try to add on from there. Visit moves you tried ages ago but couldn’t quite do -they’ll feel so much easier now!
How do you like to train?
