[Cinara]

LillyBilly, I have the same problem with jade drop! As for the sad girl drop, I went to a workshop with Jenyne Butterfly, and she said the secret is to make your legs more parallel with the pole to drop, and tilt the, back to the usual angle to stop. I still can't do it, but I'm closer with that tip. 🙂

[Cinara]

Hmm… I honestly must not use my feet very much for climbing, because those shoes look fine to me. Now granted I mainly use 38mm brass, but I have also worn shoes with satin ribbons on 50mm chrome. I guess I use a different technique?

I started learning barefoot, but then I transferred to a new studio, where heels aren't compulsory, but everyone wears them, so I felt all short and dumpy as the only one barefoot. I found I needed to wear heels all the time to get used to them, and I slowly adapted. Even now I wear them at all time at pole unless I'm learning a new move where I might fall feet first. Here's some of the stuff I figured out:

With climbing I grip mainly with my shin and calf, which means depending on the weather I might need a bit of tite grip or shaving gel to help grip.

Things like star and cupid take a bit of practice to get the pole into the right spot. You have the inside of your calf and outside of your ankle on the pole. It feels really insecure at first and like your foot will just slip forward into genie, but it gets better. Maybe wearing heels builds your calves until they get big enough to get a good grip on the pole?

Balance is hard! I found a lot of it comes from the core. But your ankles also need to build strength of course

Standing up from the floor without the pole took me awhile. I found the trick is to stick your butt out. Actually,that helps in general, so again keeping your core engaged will help protect your lower back. But watch for lower back pain!

Everything is different and scary at first, so go easy on yourself, and take your time.

It might be a good idea to get some grippier shoes to start with anyway, because the ones you like won't be the easiest to use. I like to have nice shoes and practice shoes, because my poor shoes really take a beating.  But I think they would be doable eventually, so there is hope!

[Cinara]

It's at the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEnnelQUh54

So cool but looks so painful!

[Cinara]

Lol, no idea where I got "kamikaze spin" from – I actually meant suicide back hook 🙂

[Cinara]

I like cradle to extended butterfly.Do you need a move for static or spinning? These are the others I can think of – all crazy strength moves, I can sorta do or not do at all…

Back hook spin to figure head to shoulder mount

Oona spin (reverse grab, spin around to back hook, invert to butterfly)

Phoenix

Chair spin into handspring

On spinning you could probably do quite a few spins, release your leg position, swing your hips in front of the pole and switch hands as you invert (this was in a Bobbi's routine and nearly killed me!)

Not sure if these three count, because you end up pretty low on the pole

Kamikaze spin which can go into hip holds, scorpio or jade

I've also done this spin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wpzZc4Tq4&list=UUZ9VIvGCCjvLBxw8ELw1PAQ&index=6&feature=plcphttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wpzZc4Tq4&list=UUZ9VIvGCCjvLBxw8ELw1PAQ&index=6&feature=plcp and then gone into a double brass monkey

Cradle to scorpio like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zRub5WDmIo&feature=youtu.be

Good luck on the comp!

[Cinara]

Congrats! I'm too much of a pain wuss to even try a yogini.

All the leg grabbing stuff seems to be about hip flexor and back flexibility, and also strength, I guess. As someone who really lacks back flexibility despite my best efforts, it find the easiest thing to do is to bend my heel right to my butt like a quad stretch, grab it there and then extend out. Other people might have some more "correct" advice to give, but that's what works for me 🙂

[Cinara]

Hi Angel,

Funnily enough, I'm actually asking my Dr about Ehler-Danlos type III today! It's kind of hard to say.

On the one hand, I have hypermobility in my ankles, knees, hips, elbows, and also my back and shoulders as a child, along with jount pain, injuries, very easy bruising and soft skin. Plus, these traits seem to run in my family in a way consistent with an autosomal dominant pattern. (My brother, my Mum, her Mum – who could perform contortion tricks as a kid without training!)

But, on the other hand (quite literally!) my wrists and fingers have average to below average mobility, and while I've read you don't need hypermobility in every joint to meet diagnostic criteria, there seems to be a lot of focus on fingers and wrists in the beighton scale. Also, I don't have a lot of dysautonomic issues like orthostatic hypotension, but when I looked at it, I wondered if I had some milder dysautonomic symptoms, and maybe I don't notice like with pain? Also  I do tend to get tired easily, and especially my muscles tend to fatigue quickly (I mostly notice in warm-ups), so who knows?

I'm happy you finally had a diagnosis, and even if there's not a whole lot that can be done about EDS, at least you can know what's going on and get help to manage it. It's also cool to see your pic with a strong-looking jacknife – it gives me hope that maybe I'll still be doing that at 40, 🙂

Thank you everyone else as well for your responses. It brought a tear to my eye last night. It's great to go to Veeners for help https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_cheers.gif

[Cinara]

Thank you so much for respondng everyone! As it turns out, the results of the survey so far agree with my husband, so he's quite smug now 🙂 Now the responses have slowed down, I'll let you know why I was asking, and how I'll use the information, because I know people are worried, and I'm touched that you are!

Without going into too much detail, these are the experiences and beliefs I always had growing up:

1. Everyone has aches and pains = everyone's joints always hurt, and to bring it up is weak, or attention seeking (Well, if I mention aches and pains it's for attention. If someone else complains about pain, it's because it's worse than mine).

2. I did not realise that children's pain could or should be treated. I always thought children's Tylenol (Panadol here in Aus) was for fever only. In fact, as a child I thought the reason adults could take Tylenol/ibuprofen etc (struggling with cross-cultural names here) and I couldn't was because children don't feel bad pain in the same way adults do. And adult headaches are way, way more hurtful than even broken bones are for children.

3. I never, ever saw an adult cry until the age of 15, and even then it was a music teacher who was a bit of a loose cannon anyway. So it only occurred to me the other day that maybe I'm not somehow defective for having had other people see me cry. At the moment, yes there are reasons I'm crying more than is healthy, and I'm working on that. I do tend to excuse myself quietly, or try to wait until I can get home to cry, but it doesn't always work out that way.

4. Hmm, this was a bit of a silly question, firstly because pole dancers are more likely to ache than the average person, and secondly there's no consideration to severity, and it's kind of like if you think about itching you'll be itchy. Still, I just wanted to get an idea of what exactly the oft repeated "everyone has aches and pains from time to time" (and my self-added addendum: "so shut up and stop being so weak about your pain") actually translates to.

So what I take from your responses is:

I have had some uncommon beliefs growing up,

They may have caused me to ignore pain and push myself too hard.

I'm probably way too hard on myself in general

I have the right to seek treatment for injuries, even if they aren't severe enough to show up on xray.

Just to add a bit more about my experience of injuries:

From the age of 8, I have had at least one joint injury per year, including sprains, subluxations and stress fractures. I have probably spent more of my life injured than not injured. Almost all of these are from overuse. To be fair, I've done a lot of sport, but I still seem to get injured more than everyone else doing the same activity. My childhood PT, coaches, and actually everyone started to become skeptical that I was really hurt AGAIN after awhile. I figure the knowledge that the amount of aches and pains I have is above average helps me justify the expense of continuing clinical pilates (it's working woo!) and makes me feel less like a hypochondriac or an attention seeker.

I will tend to avoid getting treatment for injuries because I'm afraid the doctor, PT, etc will tell me there's nothing wrong with me, and if there's nothing wrong with me I'm a hypochondriac and an attention seeker and a waster of medical resources. I have even avoided getting neck injuries or suspected broken toes checked out in the past, because I'm afraid I'm somehow imagining them or overreacting.

I think the reason I'm prone to overuse injuries is partly some hypermobile joints and strange muscle inbalances, but I'm beginning to realise that maybe some of it is also not listening to my body. I've been under the impression that any pain I feel is actually not a big deal, and it would be weak to stop because of it, so I would push through to the point of doing damage. I don't know if my pain tolerance is too high, or if my expectation of how much pain I should put up with is the problem. Or maybe neither and I'm just injury prone?

As for accidents: I almost never have them, and if I do, I almost never get injured. For me it's because 1) I've done enough acrobatic type sports to have gained a good sense of my abilities, 2) I'm naturally quite cautious, and 3) years of ju-jitsu as a kid taught me how to fall safely like without even thinking about it.  But not everyone has the same background and for someone else it might not be as easy to not get injured. 

I would also say that in my opinion listening to your body is not a natural or automatic skill for everybody (hence my survey), but it's a skill everyone really should learn 🙂 And that's what I'm trying to do now.

Thanks again if you read my novel and/or took my survey 🙂

[Cinara]

Count me in for the hip popping and sternum popping! No idea about the sternum, but the hip popping/grinding/or feeling stuck is usually caused by tendons in the hip sliding past various pointy bits of the pelvis and getting caught on them. If it's painless it's not a problem, but contant rubbing can cause irritation and inflamation, so it can progress. I've had tendonitis in my left hip for over a year now, and it's just killing my flexibility, so maybe have a look at some PT proactively before it gets bad.

My glutes turned out to be really weak too – most of the reason was that I was not aware that my pelvis was so unstable so I never "turned them on" with walking/dancing/standing, etc. (Poor proprioception is a common issue with my joint hypermoility). A few weeks of clinical pilates made a big difference!

[Cinara]

Here's a reverse aysha

http://www.triagedesign.co.uk/wikipole/index.php5?title=Split_V

[Cinara]

Ooh, this took me ages!  I think I had the same problem: my shoulder would get caught on the pole and my top hand would start peeling off. I'm not sure exactly what I changed but here's what I think helped me:

1. Practice going from a reverse aysha into tg aysha. I found once I was comfortable with this, going from scorpio to tg aysha was really just a shortcut version of scorpio-reverse aysha-tg aysha.

2. You need to be comfortable releasing your legs and taking all your weight on your arms before any of the turning into aysha. 

3. When you see other people do it, it looks like they "push" their shoulder forward right past the pole. When you actually do it, it's more of an "unwinding" feeling – at least for me.

4. Play around with how high or low you grip with your top hand. I usually regrasp a little lower down the pole from where my hand originally is in the invert.

5. Grabbing the pole with the bottom hand I used to kind of sit up and twist a bit and it didn;t work. You need more of a reach back behind you. Maybe work on nice form in a "dragon" (the scorpio with hands on the pole that you do before the tg aysha) and check in a mirror/film to make sure you're doing it nicely. That's another thing I was doing just before it clicked.

Hope that helps!

[Cinara]

I've not had the chance to try a titanium pole yet, but I've found that rubbing some shaving gel/foam onto your legs and other gripping bits works nicely on brass, chrome and stainless steel. I also like to warm up wearing a sweater to help build up a bit more of a sweat. It works for the, like, 2 weeks per year that are actually cold and dry here. 🙂

[Cinara]

I think it's better to treat bad behaviour as bad behaviour – keep it lonely and unresponded to regardless of intent  than start worrying about who's a troll, what a troll is, or whether it's trolling to call a troll a troll…

I once got called a troll on another pole dance forum. A group of posters and moderators were talking about a well known studio, claiming dancers took steroids, they looked like men, they had to shave their facial hair, and generally being quite nasty. As someone who'd been to that studio I posted firstly correcting the incorrect belief they had, then pointing out that their comments were mean spirited and that questioning a woman's feminity based on physical traits (especially in a way that implied less feminine = bad person) was not cool.

I had a moderator blast me for being "too politically correct" and tell me I was clearly a troll. I left that forum, and as far as I know they're still all sitting around being catty instead of practicing and wondering why the dancers they criticise are better than them.

I guess my point is, I've seen it happen on a couple on non-pole forums too that when you start thinking about trolls you start seeing them everywhere, and eventually troll comes to mean "everyone who disagrees with the cool group". That hasn't come close to happening here, but I don't want it to ever even get close to that.

I'm talking in general because in the other post things got a bit ridiculous. But, as someone who had the exact same fault with my x-pole as many other people, I'm worried about a slippery slope from "people who make wild and nasty accusations related to x-pole are trolling" which is reasonable to "anyone who says anything negative about x-pole is a troll" which is what I've seen happen elsewhere on the net.

[Cinara]

Yay! Some snapping hip friends! (Strange thing to get excited about I know).I've had the same problem as you, Kyrelle with the pain at the front of my hip and it getting "stuck" at the front of my hip. So I'll pass on what I learnt from online research and my physiotherapist, but obviously I have no authority to give you advice, I'm just a random internet person 🙂

Pain and snapping/clicking/getting stuck on both the inside and outside of the hip are often caused by an overly tight or inflamed muscle or tendon getting caught on the bone when it slides over it. At the front of the hip  it's usually the illiopsoas over one of the pointy bits of the pelvis, on the outside it's usually the illiotibial band getting caught on the greater trochanter. (I love anatomy).

If it's just a click it's harmless, but if it's also painful there's some injury and inflamation there so it'll need a bit of rest. (Not stopping pole altogether, just avoiding the painful bits for awhile). Gently stretching your hip flexors will help. I've found that doing a kneeling lunge and then lifting my back foot off the floor towards my butt (knee still on the floor so you might want a cushion) is really good. Stretching glutes also helps, though I'm not quite clear on why.

Foam roller can help relax the illiotibial band, and I think Veena covers that in lessons, but I found the inflamation in my illiopsoas was too deep to be foam rolled or massaged.

The other thing to do is find some ways to reduce the load on your hip flexors when you are in a V. I agree with strengthening your core so that your abs can take some of the load off your hip flexors. Also, I wonder if some hamstring stretching would help too, because if your hamstrings are tight they will drag your legs back down again.

Again, if you want qualified advice, you've come to the wrong person, but this is what I've learnt through painful experience. 🙂

Oh, and one more thing: if it doesn't go away make sure you go to a doctor/PT/whatever because in rare cases the cause can be torn cartilege and the symptoms are very similar. I had to have an MRI, complete with injection of dye into my hip socket because my hip pain lasted for months – luckily it was tendonitis, not torn cartilege!

[Cinara]

Honestly, I'm not sure how a thin tumbling mat or yoga mat is going to do anything to protect you from major injuries – a crash mat maybe in some circumstances, but the only thing I can see a thin mat preventing is a few bruises. Still, if it's an insurance requirement, there's no choice.

To those who insist on mats and spotters, it's not really relevant because I don't live near you, but, I would certainly respect the rules of your studio and not try to invert without a spotter or try things without a crash mat. I also wouldn't come back, because it wouldn't work for me. But I still support your decision, and I would still recommend your studio to other people. 🙂

[Cinara]

It feels so weird and impossible and insecure when you first learn a shoulder mount with cup grip! One day it just suddenly stopped feeling weird. I found the Veena grip felt a lot more natural at first, but cup is my favourite.

I wrapped my thumb around the pole in a princess grip shoulder mount once. As my feet reached the pole, my thumb got crushed against the pole and it hurt soooo much and left a nasty bruise. That might not happen in cup grip, but I suspect something painful would happen.

 

[Cinara]

I find the best way to avoid rib pain is to make sure the pole is running perfectly along my waist where it's nice and squishy. I like to get into it from a flatline scorpio so I can shift around and get the pole exactly into the groove between my ribs and pelvis before gripping the pole and dropping back.

You can hold onto the pole either with your thumb up, or down depending on which feels more comfortable (or what your instructor says).

Grabbing my foot required a lot more back flexibility than I expected! After months of practice I can still only do it in heels and I have to flail around a bit to grab my foot/stiletto heel. A "straight" allegra, where you have both legs straight and don't grab your foot is much easier. 

[Cinara]

There are four pole studios in my area. I've been to three and none use or even own crash mats. As far as I know the fourth studio doesn't either. Even at home I've never used a crash mat.

I have also done gymnastics and trampolining and there were plenty of crash mats and soft landing places there. They didn't stop me getting a broken arm, cracked sternum, soft tissue neck injuries that still bother me, spinal stress fractures, a broken toe, a chronically messed-up ankle, or my friend from getting a nasty concussion. 

I think the difference with pole is that you are never really letting go – even in drops you're still sort-of in contact, so you always have that safety outlet. In my other sports you can be completely airbourne so there's no always such a fast escape (well, there is – landing on your back – but that requires a mat).

One of the disadvantages of mats is that I think they could cause people to take more risks because they have that extra safety there. (At least, I would). Also, I prefer pole dance that integrates dancing with tricks – I get bored very quickly if I'm only learning tricks. A mat kind of stops you practicing your basic dance and floorwork – even just the little incidental things like standing up gracefully. That has made a huge difference to my dance skills.

Of course, that's my personal preference. If it was my insurance premiums I might feel differently, and I wouldn't begrudge anyone else using a mat. But for myself? I'd never ever use one. I know myself well enough that if I'm scared to do a move without one, it means I'm not ready to do it, or I haven't figured out how it could go wrong and how to land safely. And yes, accidents can still happen, but they can happen with a mat too.

I would hate being forced to use a crash mat – almost as much as I'd hate being forced to be spotted.

[Cinara]

Split grip isn't dangerous per se – it's more about having your weight supported by muscles that aren't really equipped for it. Any time you are on the pole and have a lot of body weight being supported from underneath by one arm, you are at serious risk for muscle strains – been there, done that myself! 

If at any point you are gripping the pole with your bottom hand thumb-down (whether in a carousel, boomerang, cradle, aysha, butterfly, whatever) the main job for the bottom hand is balance and steering – most of your weight should always be taken by the top hand.

This can get tricky with elbow grip aysha because you need to take all your weight while gripping with an elbow. I find that the further I get my hips from the pole, the less pressure I put on my bottom hand, and the safer it is. This could be a problem for straddling down from an aysha – because I don't know off-hand if it's possible to take most of the weight with your elbow grip for the whole descent.

I think you'd either have to focus on keeping the feeling of "leaning out" and pulling away from the pole the whole time or build up a lot of strength in your forearms (as in, more than is natural and it would take some time and work).

Also, I suspect you'd need to be able to hold an "embrace" pose, or better yet a one-handed "embrace" to know that your elbow grip is secure enough to take most of your weight and protect your bottom hand.

I find my upright split grip is most secure when I have my top forearm parallel to the pole: maybe you could try changing your grip to a forearm grip (descend into flag), or split grip with forearm against pole as you descend?

Elbow grip aysha, straddle down sounds like an awesome move. I'll have to see if I can do it. In the meantime take care of yourself and give your poor forearms a rest (easier said than done in my experience!)

[Cinara]

I agree with everyone! I had the same problem learning superman, and it was letting my legs slide down the pole a bit that helped. I find that superman technique varies a little based on whether you have larger or smaller thighs. Mine are on the generous side and I found that if I tried to grip the pole high up on my thighs my legs would get stuck and I'd feel like I was about to faceplant. Once I started gripping the pole at midthigh instead I instantly got it easier. (When I first tried on a 50mm I had to grip just above my knees but I'm over that now).

Sliding your legs down the pole to get into a superman (and then sliding further to get into figurehead/dove/bees knees/) is painful and unfamiliar. I got used to it by inverting, going into a handstand and then sliding my legs down the pole until my body was parallel to the floor then going into a low superman. (Veena demonstrates in her superman lesson). It got me used to the pain and the amount of grip I needed.

In my limited experience I've found that the crossing/uncrossing legs thing tends to be associated with thigh size too in the early learning stages. People with smaller thighs might need to cross to get grip, people with larger thighs might struggle to cross. Having said that, almost anyone can do either with practice (plus any other legs you like – I've been playing with stag legs lately). So work out what works best for you, and once you have it down you can try other techniques.

Good luck! Superman is always a tricky one to learn so I feel your pain 🙂

[Cinara]

I'm another with hyperextended elbows. My right hyperextends a little bit and never causes me any problems. My left hyperextends much much more and it frequently annoys me.

It can be quite unstable to support me from below – if I hyperextend it it becomes painful but if I keep it neutral or slightly bent it becomes wobbly and unstable. So things like ayshas with my left hand down are much more difficult and scary than right hand down. And upright split grips with my left hand down would either hurt my elbow if it was hyperextended or my forearm if neutralfor over a year. So moves that require your student to support her weight from below may take more time to build up strength and become confident.

I have no problems hanging off my left arm. An arm with an unstable elbow is kind of like a rope. You can't stand a rope on it's end and balance a rock on it. But if you tie the rock to the rope and hang it from the ceiling the rope can take a lot of weight. (In this example the rock is my body and the rope is my arm).

As for aesthetics, when my arms are floating free I prefer to keep them neutral, not hyperextended. (I rarely suceed, but try anyway).I know ballet prefers neutral too. When I did gymnastics/diving/trampolining hyperextension was fine. I think it's all about what aesthetic you like and whether or not you care. Felix hyperextends her knees like crazy and it's just part of her style.

I don't have any strengthening exercises for your student, sorry, because I'm doing a one-person experiment where I try to build strength without any isolated exercises (working well for me so far, but not sure it would work for everyone). What I would say to your student is that people with hyperextended joints can sometimes be more prone to injuries, so listen to your body, watch out for pain, try to rest and change technique before it gets too bad, and just be patient with building strength. And always make sure to engage muscles!

[Cinara]

Whew! Been moving this weekend and finally have internet access!

@ PaulettePoles: I actually don't have any video of my split grip aysha for some reason but I can see if I can get a chance to film this week. Sadly, my x-pole has done the same thing as everyone elses and the x-joint has twisted, despite careful alternating tightening, so I'll have to see if I can get to a relatively empty practice time somewhere. Unless, everyone else has already helped you enough!

@ Veena: Good point about keeping the scapula engaged! Being an ex-gymnast it didn't even occur to me that how to hang safely isn't something everyone just knows! That plus being an implicit learner is why I probably wouldn't make a good instructor – at least for beginners. Definitely the scapula needs to remain engaged which brings me to…

@ LymeLite: That's exactly how I should have said it! You don't literally hang, but the idea is to have the pole in line with your arm – at least in a side-to-side plane like it would be if hanging. We do get taught to take most of the weight on the top hand, which is a lot safer and less painful for me. But I will admit it took me a good year to get strong enough grip and it's still shaky on 50mm poles.

@ Amy: Yes! Looking at my elbow does help keep it straight. Now, I'm not a Dr or physio, just a human bio nerd, but my understanding is that hyperextended joints tend to have poor proprioception, because one of the cues the brain uses to determine if your arm is straight is signals from stretch receptors in the muscles. In most people a straight arm means a stretched (in the general, not flexibility) sense, so the stretch receptors fire and you know the arm is straight. In a hyperextended arm, the ligaments are looser (or maybe the joint is different for some people? not sure on that one), and so when the arm is straight the muscle is not at full length because the ligaments and I guess tendons still have some give, so you don't get the signal that the arm is straight until it's at hyperextension. So visualising is a way of compensating for reduced proprioception. Just geeking out here, the more knowledgeable can feel free to correct.

These days I'm pretty good at not hyperextending too much when my elbow takes weight (after 25 or so years, this is starting to get painful), but I have to film and refilm my moves constantly to get my arm not to hyperextend in moves like geminis and scorpios.

[Cinara]

Amy, we were on 38mm brass poles, which probably explains why top hand grip wasn't a huge issue! I'm still struggling to get a consistent split grip aysha on 50mm, so that's probably a good thing to think about.

I found that placing weight on my bottom arm was just too much stress on my forearm and I got some nasty strained muscles. Also, since I have to learn left hand down and my left elbow straightens 20 degrees past straight, I don't think it will ever support my weight from below.

When first learning an aysha with this technique it is very close to the pole. We seem to mostly get the distance from the pole by going into a deeper straddle and making our backs closer to parallel with the floor. So it's a matter of tilting away rather than holding ourselves away. Now I've got a bit more confident I think a more accurate description would be that the top hand takes all the weight and the bottom hand is just there to push you away from the pole.  

I've never been able to figure out having a bent upper arm in an aysha – well except for an elbow grip. I tend to twist sideways. I keep my arm bent for cup grip, but that doesn't feel stable until I'm almost in an iron x! Maybe I have weird shoulders?

[Cinara]

I've been on 10ft-ish 38mm poles, and they do have a bit of "give" in them. You only notice it if you "throw" yourself into a spin, or try to invert using momentum instead of strength. So that's kind of useful for building correct technique. The first time people try them after the thicker poles the give feels and sounds alarming, but once you realise it's normal it becomes a good tool for checking technique. They're fine for my holly drops (if harder to grip!) but I wonder about some of the extreme Chinese pole stuff (not that that gets taught at Bobbi's). Maybe the give would be useful – like a vertical trampoline.

Another thing to keep in mind about Bobbi's 38mm poles is that the poles are almost always on spinning mode even in beginners (the flex in the poles actually slows down their spinning rate, which is handy). So with the extra challenge of gripping a spinning pole, narrow is much easier.

Personally, I think 45mm is a good compromise in general, but I have to say I look forward to practicing on the 38s more than other poles because I know I can do the best I can and not fear losing my grip. They're safe and comforting. And because I have sweaty hands and relatively weaker hand grip, it becomes frustrating to know the only thing stopping me is some arbitrary pole thickness. But I guess people with thin or weak thighs feel the same way about the narrow poles!

Having said that, I've always found that the type of metal makes much more difference than the thickness. 

 

[Cinara]

Oh I love when Karol does that! If only I had her bendy back…