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Trick Addiction
Hi veeners!! I am recently coming out of a trick and progress addiction. I don’t know that I ever meant for that to happen but I found myself in a panic before I went to have surgery. The idea of stunting my progress was so painful but I think getting some distance from my pole has helped me to realize it was such a trap. Now that I am building my chest strength back, I have been forced to slow down and either savor the pole process, or end up extremely frustrated. Emotionally I can not afford to feel so frustrated with pole so I have decided to get back to basics and work on my creativity and control. Has anyone else felt this way? How did you come out of it? Now that I have new eyes, I almost feel creatively stuck… Hmmm. (;
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25 Replies
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It benefits all of us to just flow and move and feel the dance. Find a song you love that makes you want to move, turn the lights down low if it makes you feel good and just dance!
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I went through the same thing for a very long time myself. I think time away is a good way to reset your thinking and set goals. Ask yourself, WHY do I need all of these tricks? What am I working towards? Who/What do I want to be as a pole dancer? I'm really glad you posted this because it's something I think a lot of pole dancers go through esepcially in the beginning. In the beginning for some, the basics are so easy and you see so many fabulous dancers flipping around the pole – that becomes your mental image of dancing and thus pushes into a frenzy of nailing everything that you can.
I blogged about my experience with this last year – it's lengthy but I hope it helps.
http://poledancerdiaries.blogspot.com/2011/03/bad-romance.html
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I am quite the opposite here. I can see why you would want to do tricks. What is the first thing EVERY poler wants to do when they get their pole??? GO UPSIDE DOWN. Not transitions till they are blue in the face. It may be just me, but I love tricks more than anything else. WHy do we have pole idols? All those tricks they put together so beautifully and transition so smoothly one after the other never touching the floor. That is what I want. Tht is why I am a trick natzi and always will be. For putting together a perfprmance for competition or showcase you need a little of both, but I see more tricks and that is what I want to watch. I get bored and go to the next video if there are no tricks. Just me. I will always feel this way though. Tricks are why I started pole and I dream to one day be able to string them all together like some of the best. I just watched Becca Buck's performance video from a showcase and I am inspired to get some of that. ANY of that!!! It is frustrating, sometimes you need to move on and come back, but it is worth it in the end when you nail that trick. End of my soap box. ( tucks tail and hides)
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JelliCrew, I’m the same way. I’ll be a trick monkey until the bitter end- I just love flying. That being said, however, we do all have to rest now and then, for whatever reason.
When I started recording my practices, I was horrified that what I thought were great transitions and sexy floor moves were *ahem* neither great nor sexy. It gave me a new goal- to achieve the fluidity I see in the my idols. I discovered then that I was addicted to the next goal, the next milestone, and the next achievement, rather than the tricks themselves. It’s crazy, but (for me, anyway), achieving a “perfect” pirouette with pointed toes, a smile, and fluid dynamics is harder than a lot of tricks. It might be worth a shot to think about it in those terms, especially if you’re having trouble just enjoying the dance and if you have a webcam to track your progress.
Charley, your blog post was wonderfully eloquent. It struck a chord with me as I look into beginning to teach. Thank you!
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JelliCrew, I’m the same way. I’ll be a trick monkey until the bitter end- I just love flying. That being said, however, we do all have to rest now and then, for whatever reason.
When I started recording my practices, I was horrified that what I thought were great transitions and sexy floor moves were *ahem* neither great nor sexy. It gave me a new goal- to achieve the fluidity I see in the my idols. I discovered then that I was addicted to the next goal, the next milestone, and the next achievement, rather than the tricks themselves. It’s crazy, but (for me, anyway), achieving a “perfect” pirouette with pointed toes, a smile, and fluid dynamics is harder than a lot of tricks. It might be worth a shot to think about it in those terms, especially if you’re having trouble just enjoying the dance and if you have a webcam to track your progress.
Charley, your blog post was wonderfully eloquent. It struck a chord with me as I look into beginning to teach. Thank you!
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Thank you WickedVixen!
I know that tricks were my first motivation. Unfortunately for me, I'm a slow learner. I just can't self teach as well as I can teach and I just have too big a fear factor to try some of the more insane things like the fonji.
One of my favortie current examples of pole dancing is Michelle Stanek's routine at USPDF this year. Why did she win? My personal feeling is because her transitions were off the hook amazing – watch the first minute – you are never left board – she is going crazy around that pole but there's no *tricks* yet…then when she does get up there – her tricks are clean, powerful and she made them HERS, she did them in a way no one else could even though som are fairly common advanced tricks. she had a great mix of differing levels of movement. She strung it all together so fluidily – you just watch with your jaw dropped.
The problem with being trick obsessed is once you nail all of those tricks – what do you do next? Let's say you can do every trick ever invented – now what? how do you choose to showcase them? Even if you have the stamina of say…Samantha Star and you can string it all togehter – you still couldn't possible put all of your tricks into one song. So, you would need some kind of transitional base.
Samantha Star – is another great example I am using because while she is mad strong and has AMAZING tricks – her msuicality and theatrics are OFF the hook. When I saw her at midwest I started laughing – laughing with pur joy and amazement as her body movement changed up to this sic dubstep music that kept changing up beat patterns and she rolled with it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even if she's an athletic dancer – she knows how to work with her music and make it into art. That's why I feel like learning and working a few basics – even if you don't intend to use them – helps you experiement with the artistic side of pole whether you're athletic or dancey.
Michelle Stanke's winning routine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrUsrKq4AZI
Samantha Star http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHkB9YKUlNM
These are my current favorite examples of differing styles of pole work but you can tell that both have spent time learning how to be artistic and work with music to produce a great show 🙂
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I love pole because you will never get all the tricks. There are new ones every week at least because you inspiring ladies make new ones up. Once I get tricks, I like to try to tie them together on the pole, but that is hard on a short pole. I feel like I started off being a fast learner, now, I struggle to get one move. I do not care though. I love it.
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Ditto, Charley! I literally laughed and cried when I saw Michelle and Samantha's routines….they were THAT amazing.
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I loved both vodeos. However, I think that we are assuming tricks need to be on the pole. In this case, I still saw mostly tricks and walking from one pole to the other, however, there what I would call tricks on the floor too! I mean, I csn not just whip out all that stuff? Can you guys? Well, Charley probably can, but I can that all floor tricks. LOL!!!! I want to be able to do that stuff too, but it is still hard to learn that stuff.
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I am really glad I decided to post this! I was just reminded of how far back my trick addiction went when I read the post about how long to was before first inverted. I never actually danced until I had been doing pole for about 9 months. I did some combos but that is hardly dancing, really, bc to actually dance is very challenging!! I absolutely LOVED Michelle’s performance mostly bc it was about her expression, movement, and DANCE, more than just tricks. I was nailing tricks left and right but when I wanted to dance, I was walking around the pole in a daze (what to do next?) and always doing the same default tricks and combos. The trick I was learning were not even sticking!!! I could not default to them–they were not in my HEART. That is what moves me when I see a great video, or performance. I love the free flowing movement, like someone is flying, the creative transitions… There has not a lot of hair splashing that has ever made me say, oh now that was great. I know I can do tricks, now I want to put them to use! So, Charley how did you get out of that trick trap? I’m just hitting the year and a half mark and really try not to compare myself to what others can do. I’m trying to just dance and only work on a new trick once a week–maybe not at all, I’d be ok with that. I find myself really frustrated when I freestyle. I see people like Tracee, who amazes me each time I see her stuff, but its mostly the movement and expression that gets my attention. Today, I just did a lot of spins and spin variations (extended leg, chair combos, etc). I’m trying to get the creative juices flowing, haha.
Thank you all so much for your insight!!!
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@Charley, I love this blog entry!! It sounds very much the way I felt before having my pole renaissance. Being that I’m still in the early stages of changing my thought process, maybe I am not really “stuck” after all…just moving more slowly.
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I love watching tricks. I think my favorite moves are pole tricks and floor tricks. I will tell myself, "Practice floor work. You don't do enough of that." And then on the floor, all I want to do is practing rolling over. It's the kid in me. I want to tumble around and flip over. I like everything in pole though. The dancing, pirouettes, pretty climbs, tricks. I am posting a link below to one of my favorite routines. Strictly trick focused.
Many people here on SV have probably already seen this. She is a pole legend. Anyone new to pole will like learning and watching this person, Sarah Cretul.
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I have not seen this video of Sarah Cretul but something about her reminds me of Karol Helms, lol. I like Karol a lot so I think this is also really great! Her tricks are very strung together. When I say trick addiction, I mean I was just learning one move before I had already thought about the next moves I was ready to learn–of course just not really committing anything to memory, never stringing them together than just a couple of combos. I think these kinds of tricks are great and should certainly be showcased (; but doesn’t she also have an element of flair to her? I think this is what makes her tricks stand out. I just love that quick double/triple? pirouette she did.
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I challenge myself as hard as I can with…
spins!
While inverting and different mounts are really impressive, I love the feeling of….hm…I don’t even know the word–fluidity I feel when I string together a nice combo of pirouette variations and spins. The first pole move I ever wanted to learn was the pretzel spin, and while I can’t currently preform any one handed spins, when I can put that stress on my arm again it will definitely be a move I will force myself to learn 🙂 spin fluidity is something so overlooked by the community sometimes when a majority of the competitive scene has turned into almost strictly vertical gymnastics with one or two floorwork transitions. Honestly, I think I personally shy away from floorwork because it has the word “work” in it :p
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I think that's the main difference between pole fitness and pole dance. Pole dance really does have that added artistic element to it. What would look good together, or with the music? What feels good to you? There's a flow involved.
I was in a trick frenzy for a while. I think it's a normal part of pole… you want to do things that "normal" people can't. Once I had a few tricks on tape though, I decided there was some fine-tuning I had to do on what I had learned before continuing. Like… my invert? Man I though I had it but it turns out it's kinda crappy. So I'm focusing now on being AWESOME at the few things I know rather than being okay at many things.
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Yes, Sassypants! I know exactly what you mean. I am in the "fine tuning" stage that you write about. I have certain tricks that I can do that I thought, "Wow! I would love to learn that. Well, I have, but like you stated, instead of thinking, "What's the next awesome move I can learn?" I am going back and fine tuning. I too am working on nicely executed inverts, as well as a pretty climb. Makes sense. I don't think there is right or wrong way. If someone wants to keep learning tricks….so what? There really is nothing wrong with that. For me, it really is about having fun. And now, I am having fun "fine tunig" : )
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I'm currently halfway between! I'm "fine tuning" my transitions and such, getting in touch with a more sensual, flowing side of my dance… and on the other hand, am totally getting like, four new moves down! Ones that, obviously, I have no idea how to transition into 😛 lol
I find transitions quite difficult, and am often trying to find combos so that I can learn how to flow from one to the next… but, sometimes I'm only strong enough, or have stamina enough for one of those moves. So, I continue to practice them more for strength and stamina, and so that when I do learn to transition into them, I don't have to worry about whether I'm going to get the move right, or if I'm going to slip!
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I wished I took fine tuning more seriously sooner. If I had started fine tuning each time I learned a trick, maybe I would not have as much trouble with the creativity of stringing them together. Instead I’ve just started to back track and fine tune my earlier moves before I try throwing in the latter, and piling on new stuff. I think this add-on mode was the bigger issue for me, and the high I got from learning new tricks–I was doing nothing with them. There isn’t anything wrong with that for someone who is content with it, but for me something was missing. As for now, I think my creativity is manning up and taking charge. (;
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When I first started poling, I hadn't learned very many tricks. I had been taught very many spins and TOOOOOONS of transitions so I was literally forced to dance with just that. My pole studio made us all do a free style dance at the end of every class, and it was great! It was fun and it made you think on your toes and made you learn how to perfectly knit spins and transitions together.
As soon as I got my pole 7 months after I started pole dancing, I was obsessed with learning tricks. I felt like I had been held back from learning tricks due to not having a pole earlier, and my studio not offering me enough variety in tricks. I nailed out trick after trick after trick and started free styling less and less, never having the chance to work in the new tricks through a free dance. I would force myself to stop learning tricks and just free style it for awhile, and though it worked out fine this way, my expression and creativity still lacked. I was well aware of this, but didn't seem to care as long as I got my next trick lined up and ready to rock it out.
Now that I've been seriously thinking about competing next year, I have to learn to step up my "game". I can not only just learn how to do a bunch of amazing tricks, I need to learn different types and styles of floor work, I need to improve my flexibility, I need to learn to string more combos together, and mostly I need to work on my fluidity and find a style that goes best with my personality. It is a lot of work and I don't have much time for this, but if it's something that I truly want to do, I will find a way!
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Im in the oposite situation.. I've had it fairly easy learning tricks (nemesis moves have accured, though) but my focus has always been on flow. By that I mean the lack of flow in my pole journey.. I am too shy to even try! Shy of what I dont know, because it doesnt matter if I have the camera on or not. I've always wanted to be a dancer, but just never thought I could, therefore I have never tried! 🙁
I do have a flexi problem with my legs, but everything else is very hypermobile, so I quess I could get those splits, have better lines, if I just worked concistently on it. But I dont trust myself to just dance, because Im sure it will look bad.When I started poledance, I imeadietly had and idea of the poler I wanted to be. Tricks like Felix, dance and flow like Alethea and ballerina lines like TaraKarina. I still want that today (a few discovered idols has been added though). But Im to afraid to try and work on the dance, flow, and floorwork, even just for myself. The thought alone of uploading a vid, thats not cut in a million pieces, scares the h.. out of me! Even though Im not in a fysical addiction to it, in my mind, its all I think about…
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I guess you can say I'm on the other side of the that green grass.
I have the years of dance under my belt, which have instilled wonderful lines, pointed toes and a dancers creativity/flow in pole. But when it come down to it, I really dislike or at least have no interest in tricks. If i could just do spins, twirls and dance on the floor all day i would be thrilled. Tell me to do something as simple as an invert I'm almost instantly annoyed. My body hates tricks. I think they look amazing when other people do it. I envy the hell out of those who are bold and just nail trick after trick in my class. I do them and my graceful body just loses its damn mind. Where do i put what? When? Huh? Sure my toes are pointed, but in my mind I'm completely uncomfortable.Its rather funny cause my teacher is a trick junkie. We bust on each other all the time cause of our differences. Yet lately we've been picking up each others quirks. I've gotten more "open" to tricks and she's showing just a touch of dance in her routines. To bad we couldn't be one person. lol.
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LE, tricks are usually uncomfortable. LOL!!!!
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@JelliCrew – tracee is my FAVE! Of course her movement is gorgeous and we all wish we could dance like her. But, I think the reason her style resonates so well with me is that her movement is so honest. She does what she does because that’s who she is and her emotion translates well because it is so honest. Yes, she is a trained dancer, but her training flows because she interprets the music honestly and with her soul.
I think most of us who’ve poled for a while have felt the way you feel now. I know pole overwhelmed me and I struggled and felt very inadequate for quite a few months about a year ago. I wanted all the tricks and dancing ability of a pro. I made the common mistakes of setting high expectations for myself, trying to perfect everything, comparing myself with others, etc….
When I stepped away and really thought about it, I had to laugh at myself and my insecurities.
I’m competitive and that’s good. I try to do my best and work hard at everything I do and that’s good too. For me, pole is a hobby. I had to really think about why I started in the first place. I wanted to gain strength and improve my posture without swallowing a bunch of vitamins or lifting weights in a boring gym. I wanted to have fun with a workout that wouldn’t bore me to death.
For me, pole is a hobby and a workout. I want to love it, not perfect it. I want to improve, of course, but, if it ain’t workin’ it ain’t workin’ and I need to move on to something I can enjoy.
I was reminded of this recently while watching Krissykiki’s videos. That girl is having fun and loving dancing with her pole. Her videos are fun and infectious.
Like luvlee said, there’s a lot to work on in pole, a new trick every day, and we’ll never catch up. I agree with luvlee also that floorwork is tricks ’cause I’ve gotten the rug burn, sore stomach muscles, and bruises to prove it. How much fun is it that whatever we choose to work on, we will always get a great workout, we will never be bored, we will always improve, and there will always be something new to learn? It’s your workout and your dance, do what makes you happy 🙂 -
Reading all of this makes me appreciate the two instructors who have shaped my pole dance even more! I've always learned how to put things together, how to do mini routines, and later how to create my own choreography for showcases. I've also taken a lot of pole routine classes, where we learn part of a pole choreography that focuses a lot on transitions, floor and chair work, and other "dancy" moves. All of this has helped me stay away from the trick addiction, which I had never even though about as a real thing before reading this discussion.. 🙂
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I think this is a great thing to have in order to combat that trick addiction phase! Having a teacher or mentor who helps you to stay well rounded is such a great asset. Unfortunately for me, I have always learned at home and am only with my pole family on occasion. Usually we are just doing tricks and having fun then as well, haha. I have come to realize that having a trick high kept me on my pole in the beginning. My body was changing the whole time and I never knew it because I was always wanting to nail that next trick. But I see that it has been a cycle for me…trick phase, free flow phase, tricks, etc. whatever the case, it has kept me on my pole and it is a process I am learning to trust. I’m glad to see this post is still going! Tricks are a major category in pole competitions but so is flow of movement. One of my free flow idols is Tracee. She is such an inspiration and I know there is a free flowing vixen inside of me somewhere just waiting for me to pull her out. Other polers really spark my creativity and I think that is why it is important for me to surround myself with other pole people–online and in person if possible. 🙂
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