Advice on posture and shoulder pain please!

Syren started this discussion · 10/20/2014

Hello ladies, I'm hoping for some advice! I'm a beginner at pole dance, I have had a couple of lessons where we learnt some basic spins and I own a pole which I have been practising them on. Due to work commitments I'm not able to have another pole dance lesson for 2 weeks so I've been practising the spins I've been taught already at home. However, yesterday I felt a twinge in my shoulder and today it's been hurting so I've kept off the pole. I'm positive it's because my posture is all wrong when I'm holding the pole. I read on google something about how your shoulders are meant to be back? And down? Is that correct? Any advice/ pictures/ videos on form and posture regarding the upper body would be much appreciated because I know the shoulder joint can be delicate and I don't want to cause myself any long term injury because of bad practise. Thank you so much!

5 replies

I polekat I · 10/21/2014
do you have the online lessons here? Veena goes into a lot of detail explaining different stretches and exercises for shoulders (and everywhere else!!) Pole dancing is especially tough on the arms and shoulders, it seems lots of pole dancers have pain here (me included!) – what I have learnt from this site is that it is very important to do all the correct conditioning to make sure you are building strength and engaging your muscles correctly…. for example what you said : the scapula (shoulder blade) should be ‘down and back' in a neutral position – my first pole dance teacher never ever mentioned anything about this at all, or in fact showed us any kind of safe muscle engagement at all!! This is part of the reason Veena and this site are so great =) Congratulations on starting your pole journey !!! =)
I polekat I · 10/21/2014
https://www.studioveena.com/videos/view/52462459-db10-473f-ab4a-646d0ac37250 this is a good one!!! i think it might be on youtube as well =)
Syren · 10/21/2014
Thank you! I will have a look! My pole teacher never mentioned anything about muscle engagement either... I appreciate the advice :)
Veena · 10/23/2014
Hi! It's very important to be aware of the shoulders and how they move. The video posted above is an excellent one I made, in addition to that video, you may want to look into the lessons here! I have many conditioning lessons just for shoulders along with stretches as well, and each video lesson is broken down explaining proper body positioning for every Pole move. :)
michaelaarghh · 10/24/2014
My shoulders roll forward from having really bad posture for most of my life. When I started pole and my instructors would tell me "down and back" it was really hard for me to remember that when doing moves...but it is SO IMPORTANT. I think with beginners (especially if you have bad posture) it becomes even more important because you have a complete lack of body awareness. ('you' generally, not you specifically!) Practice rolling your shoulders back, so you get the feeling of that, and then work on rolling them back and "pinching" the shoulder blades... that is "down and back" and is super important for engaging all the correct back muscles. I now instinctively engage the shoulders (down and back) before even touching the pole, and this has helped so much wtih my posture and my rounded shoulders. If you lift yourself or perform any weight bearing exercise without the proper form you're much more likely to injure yourself! (as you've found out!) Plus it's a lot easier if you're using the bigger back muscles to lift, rather than stressing out the small shoulder ones and potentially putting stress on the skeleton.