Kslice started this discussion ·
i was wondering as im curious to start silks, what the transition is like? Does your pole skills really help with silks or is it a completley different balls game? also... which do you prefer? because pole occupates my brain about 24/7 !
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I tried silks and though pole skills do translate, I find silks more difficult. You have to do A LOT of climbing. It also feels weird to adjust to gripping fabric versus a pole. I was death gripping when I started silks. My joints actually ached the next day from over gripping. My foot was also killing me so badly I couldn't walk on it the next day. That was from doing foot wraps. It's a whole different type of pain.
Kslice ·
sounds like an awesome challenge to me! if anything i feel it probably would help with pole if its loads of upper body ! :) thanks foryour reply !!!
It will. You should try it out and see ify ou like it.
I didmpole for over a year before trying silks and it definitely helped a lot! I progressed much faster than others because of all the things I knew how to do in pole. Some things are very different but some things are similar. It is much more tiring though, but I do feel I've gained so much more strength from doing silks. Plus it is really fun and for me it feels more circus-like and I love that. I wouldn't give it up for pole but it is a nice complement
Wiley ·
I started pole and silks at the same time. Doing pole definitely gives you an advantage because you already possess some body awareness in the air and having the strength from pole helps too. Silks are surprisingly painful too, but from doing pole, you also have a pain tolerance. Personally, drops hurt the most cause the silks really squeeze your waist or your legs. It's more of a pinchy pain. You do rely on your upper body more in silks, even when you do moves closer to the ground. I built up some mad upper body strength from silks, and before I started silks I felt weak. I loooove silks! I was more committed to silks, so it was relatively easy to learn more advanced pole moves. Silks is a great complement to pole, and I think anyone who pole dances should try it if they have the opportunity! And vice versa... when I go to silks class, sometimes I look at the girls and think... "Damn she would be so good at pole"
I started poling first, and then started silks maybe about 6 weeks or so ago... Now I'm actually doing both...I definately had that death grip thing going on, but that could have been the change from 50 to 45 too... I had to crack all my finger joints so many times a day for about 3 weeks... then it just eased up by now... I think silks definately takes a lot more strength...I see girls who love it, but can't lift themselves up (so they can't do air inverts) and they're starting to get frustrated now... They want to do the drops, but can't ever get that high to do them safely.... and then they see me....lol From what I can tell though, probably with the exception of myself, the girls who poled before trying silks, go back to the pole...and the girls who never poled, will barely try it...lol I think it has to do with their pain tolerance... the foot wraps hurt the pole girls and trying to climb hurts the silks girls.. I love doing the silks though because I think I get more of an intense workout than on pole (plus fewer brusises!) If you're comfortable doing air inverts on the pole, then you'll probably have an easier time doing the silks, though the foot wraps will hurt.... I have this crazy idea to do them on the opposite side now just to give my foot a break, lol When you start it though, you just have to keep in mind that silks move and it is NOT a pole...lol Once I got that through my head I had an easier time and I think its helped me control myself a little better on the pole...lol
I'm very interested in taking up lyra & silks in 2013. What about lyra/hoop how is that comparatible to poling? Do lyra/hoop & pole complement each other better than silks & pole?
I do lyra as well and it was easier for me too because I pole. I think silks is more similar although there are some tricks that resemble pole tricks. For me hoop hurts the most and bruises me the most. But I love doing it!
Ohhh, they are all similar and different in respects. They are all painful, but I think lyra is probably the most painful. I love that I can do more on the (lyra and silks, which I've only recently begun a little bit), because I already have strength from pole.
I just did my first lyra class last tuesday.... it was fun actually, but I'm not the graceful type so i'm sure it looked horrible.... I think my strength helps out with it, but it does hurt a bit, then again, I've got pole kisses so thats probably why. :-)
byrdgrrl ·
I only did pole for a little while before I switched to just silks, but I found that I needed more hand grip and more upper body strength with silks. Withi silks you are going a lot of pulling up and holding on. One thing with silks, at least for me, is it doesn't matter how sweaty my hands get I don't lose my grip. Good thing, since I train outside in the desert. I never got the foot pain from footlocks or form pole climbing, though. Maybe I'm just strange.
I trained on silks first, gradually switched to only pole for a while ( due to the number of hours in the day...LOL) and am now trying to get my silks muscle memory back. Silks is the hardest aerial apparatus to learn IMO for all the reasons mentioned by others here...I struggled for a long time with grace strength & flexibility. WHen I was taking an aerial skills boot camp I overheard the instructors & pro performers talking about how they cross-trained ( and even taught) on pole and it gave me permission to try something I had been very curious about. WHen I started pole, definitely everything that had to do with pulling up/crunching/inverting and splits was definitely easier for me, although spins and transitions were new...I still am not comfortable on spin...I took the "spinner" off my silks because I hate the feeling so much! Now that I am trying to work on silks again after several months of focusing exclusively on pole, I am relieved that my strength & form has not disappeared but I have to get used to the pain of footlocks and body wraps all over again. I haven't even tried a basic drop yet :0
As to what I prefer....even though I love the poetry of silks, I have to say that I prefer pole. Your learning curve is so much faster on an apparatus that resists your weight and I feel so much more supported in the pole studio environment than I did with silks.
Piaketz ·
I was doing pole classes for around a year and a half until I shifted to doing silks around almost 3 years ago. And I've been taking lessons in trapeze and lyra for maybe the past year and a half. I still pole by myself at home coz I like it, but I no longer go to formal lessons. I am in the minority who think that silks is easier than pole. But that may have to do with the fact that I have super sweaty hands and hyperextended elbows. I worry about my safety on the pole but my hands and elbows are practically non-issues for me in silks/lyra/trapeze. The transition is pretty easy if you have the right attitude. I've seen a number of girls with pole backgrounds try aerials and quit really fast because they expected to progress faster than non-polers and that's not always the case. On the flip side I've seen girls with aerial backgrounds try pole and dislike it because it was difficult for them to wrap their brains around a whole different kind of movement. A pole background helps in aerials as you already have a better general fitness level, range of flexibility and body awareness. But yogis, dancers, ballerinas, etc. have just the same advantage. For sure, all disciplines are all definitely good complements of each other. In the end, I think it is your personality that leads you to which apparatus you favor. The trick is to realize that the movements of pole and aerial, although they may appear similar, are actually quite different. It's a paradigm shift on how you use your body. There is a lot more "pull" and rarely any "push" involved in aerials as opposed to equal amounts of "push" and "pull" like in pole. Aerial movements are a lot more controlled and precise (ie. you can't learn to invert with little kicks on the silks or you'll swing all over the place), whereas in pole you need to understand how to use your body weight and swing your limbs to generate pretty spins. The brainwork is also different. You need to learn how to wrap things around you in silks and trapeze which was totally confusing for me when I first started. If you're good at spinning pole, I think spinning on the lyra will be cake -- for me, it's more difficult to work on a spinning pole because the axis is not myself. The pain factor IMHO, is the same for pole and silks, a little more for trap and lyra but still not that bad. You'll just get the bruises and burns in different places, and you'll feel new sensations, like squeezing and scraping on your bony bits. But just like in pole, It's all a matter of getting used to it. 😉 Best of luck with aerials and cheers to trying new things! 🌸
Hazi411 ·
I have been poling for about 2.5 years. I did a 6 week silks course about 3 months ago. For me, I am glad I had experience on spinny pole as I think that helped me cope with the silks spinning around ;-) I struggled with getting the silks to behave, but I gained *lots* of upper body strength from silks. I sucked at doing the knots and foot locks but didn't have a problem with inverting ;-) i want to try Lyra too, though I've seen the damage it can di to your hands!
I have been poling for over two years and took a six weeks class of lyra a few months ago. I loved it and found it to be an easy transition from pole. Y'all are right about the hands in lyra...ouch! For some reason, i have freakish strong biceps and this really helped me in lyra. I really wish I could've continued the class, but I had scheduling conflicts. I really want to try silks too but I have to wait for my schedule to open up!
I transitioned from about 2 years of pole into dance Trapeze and Tissu about three years ago. Poling definitely helped that transition for me, because prior to poling, I could barely do pullups. The one thing that pole does give a person, that typical dance training does not, is the upper body strength. Currently, I assist in teaching aerial, and the biggest thing I see in beginners, especially on Tissu, is that the strength isn't there, and its completely normal. Its actually what most of the frustration is with that apparatus; building the strength to be able to execute the moves. Because no matter how well you understand it, the bottom line in aerial is strength and control. The next biggest issue I see, primarily with Trapeze, is that it HURTS. For me, Trapeze has totally eclipsed the pain I remember with Pole. That said, it's my favorite apparatus. I think the transition from pole to aerial is a good one. They complement each other very much so. However, each apparatus has their own idiosyncracies, and while a lot of the moves look very similar, like gummypia says, getting there is rarely the same from apparatus to apparatus. However, the more vertical apparatus (pole, rope, tissu, etc) all have many similarities with eachother, as do trapeze, ring, hammock, etc. For me, learning new styles of movement, be they dance or aerial, will likely complement all the other things that I do, because its just adding another element of complexity to my movement quality and teaching me a new way to use my strength. Because getting my straddle up on Tissu will help make my straddle up on Trapeze and Pole that much better, even though they aren't all the exact same thing, they just look like it.
jleigh ·
I was poling for 3 years before I started taking silks. I found that I was able to progress much quicker than all the other girls because I already had the upper body and ab strength. Some of the the moves are similar and alot of the time I think about how could I take a pole trick and do it on silks. I still find pole much more difficult than silks. Once you have the upper body and core strength on the silks its pretty easy to learn new tricks once you have the fundamentals down. It takes me alot longer to learn a new pole trick than it does on silks. Both are painful in different ways but goes away with time. I still prefer the pole.
I am coming to Pole from Silks. I use a single point aerial sling at home. I am brand new at Pole and not sure what all I can do yet. I am going to take the Lessons. I love love my Silks. The upper body strength is very important. That is what I had to work on when I started Silks. I have killer leg strength and that did help but you really need that upper body or you cannot climb. You will love Silks !!! Let us know how you do.
I pretty much started my teaching career by teaching pole to silks people, and have since transitioned to introducing silks to polers. I have a blog post about this somewhere (away rom computer now), but basically pole and silks are sister apparatuses. The similarities are just thorough enough to make the differences jarring. Much more biceps & hands in silks (but less delts & pecs), more time in the air, and the disorientation of having the apparatus MOVE on you...
Would love to see your Blog. I love Silks and now love Pole. I love both. I hoop too. I am learning Silks from a manual since there are no studios or teachers around here.
Found the blog! It's a lot simpler writing than much of my stuff. I could probably add some stuff now, like what I was saying above about different muscles worked... http://acrobaticpole.blogspot.com/2011/09/pole-and-silks-sister-arts.html
acrobaticpole.blogspot.comPole and silks: sister arts When I first started aerial silks and pole, I didn't know anyone else who did both. I was running around trying to explain to my silks inst...byrdgrrl ·
@Pippi I hear what you are saying about having silks move on you. I usually train outside, and some days I have to give it up because it is too windy. I spend all my time chasing my tails, instead of practicing. 0_o
@byrdgrrl Not even getting to that point, polers tend to be freaked out when they get on the silks and start swinging around like tarzan. ESPECIALLY if their inverts from the ground aren't controlled!!!
