[Cinara]

Cool! I'm trying to visualise, and I think that's exactly the same as a closed rainbow like in my avatar. But I think I'll have to actually do it to know for sure.

[Cinara]

Oh yeah, I do straigten my bottom leg as well, forgot to mention. But now I want to try a CKR with two bent legs. Does that work?

[Cinara]

I totally second akkis! The way I do it is to get into a regular cross-legged pole sit, hold onto the pole with my hands as well and then just kind of tilt my pelvis until my "knee clevage" is against the pole. Then it's snug and secure and I can lean back.

[Cinara]

Thanks for the input! E is what I really want to put, and I certainly hope I'm allowed. (You know how deep down you already know what you want to do, but don't want to admit it until you see people agree with you? Just me?)

If I have to pick one, the studio running the comp is probably the most wise, but I just remembered  there's a section where you write a little introductory blurb about yourself to be read out on the night, and I can at least give everyone a shout out in my blurb!

[Cinara]

Okay, this is just a general opinion, and while it was prompted by Polefit's comment, that was just what reminded me, not what I'm really arguing against. Pole twin, you know I think you're awesome.  I'm mainly putting this here to give my perspective and hopefully help sensualscimitar with making judgement calls and student retention.

I'm sure for a lot of people it's true that poor grip strength is just a sign of poor strength over all. But honestly, if someone had insisted on making that kind of judgement call with me, I would have been straight out of their studio. I have not-great grip strength (never have), combined with very sweaty hands (which for some reason people with dry hands seem to think don't exist). Well, actually I have sweaty everything even in winter, butd I don't know how I can improve the grip strength of  the soft section next to my shin bone for a better knee hold.

Here's the thing: I can only do upright split grip and single hand grip work on spin mode when the pole is cold, but as soon as it or I warm up I can't grip any more. But, I have the strength for air shoulder mounts, ayshas in all grips (except Chinese…yet), one handed bow and arrows and I'm only about 15 degrees from an iron x. So does my lack of hand grip really mean I should still be doing scoprios and geminis over and over and over because I'm not "ready?"

Sometimes I feel like there's this little bit of exclusivity where people say "If x happens, you're not ready to progress, if you have x problem, you're not ready to progress." By some people's standards I should not be inverting at all! But, I do invert, maybe a hundred times a week and the sky has not fallen in, and my injury rate is the lowest of any physical activity I've ever done.

And sometimes, the "you're clearly not ready" comes across as condescending (this is other threads and forums, not this here!). It seems like a way of keeping new polers on the outside, by constantly jumping in to tell them they're not good enough to belong. (Polefit, I know you weren't saying anything like that at all, I was just reminded of others doing it).

And for some reason, sweaty hands (if people even concede that they exist) and poor grip strength are the biggest targets. Do people say the same thing about poor upper thigh grip? Getting dizzy on spin mode? Not having basic acrobatics skills like cartwheels, handstands and backward rolls on the floor? Because I have never had any of those problems, and can't even really relate to them, simply due to having the good fortune of having large thighs, vestibular hyposensitivity and over 20 years of gymnastics and similar sports experience. Still, I don't think that people who get dizzy or queasy on spinning poles really should work on their aerial awareness before they even think of learning advanced tricks on static. I think they should just learn what's right for them on each pole. 

I do grip strength exercises every night, I ignore the people who tell me that using antiperspirant grip aids is "cheating" (using grip aids is the only way I can get enough grip to actually build my strength until my fingers and forearms ache) and I force myself to work on poles that I have so much trouble gripping it causes physical pain (50mm spinning chrome in humidity!) . But if someone were to look at me and say that I'm not allowed to try skills I know I'm perfectly capable of doing, I would leave that studio and never come back (after crying for an hour, but that's just me).

But by the same token, I know others would be fine, or even prefer that approach and they are certainly welcome to keep attending this hypothetical studio!

[Cinara]

It depends how ruthless you are about your business. If you want to guarantee no one will leave you for another pole studio, go with 38mm brass. No one is going to want to lose 50% of their progress at another studio because they suddenly can't grip.

If you're not quite so mercenary and you want students who have the opportunity to compete, travel and be versatile, 50mm  chrome is probably better. (Having said that, I know people who have trained on 50mm chrome and can't grip narrower poles, but I guess that is only an issue in 2 states of Australia…)

I might avoid getting a different pole from your students though, not for any logical reason it just stirkes me as odd. Still, maybe they will just assume that your pole gets a special colour because you're a special teacher

[Cinara]

Yeah, considering there are only 5 compulsory moves, an iguana mount seems like an odd choice, but maybe that's the challenge.

Good luck with your comp and hopefully you can post a video! You'll be awesome! 

[Cinara]

Ooh, that is pretty. Maybe I can get my hamstrings that flexible and my shoulders that strong. Also, that's a seriously awesome Jenyne video. I just took a page of notes on it. She is so creative!

[Cinara]

Good to know some people can do it without hands, I know I couldn't! And obviously you wouldn't be pushing up with your hands instead of your legs, but I assumed anyone who can do a caterpillar knows that. Still, I would think taking both hands off would be advanced. It's always safer to have more points of contact when you learn. 

[Cinara]

I'm fairly sure you don't ever hold on with just your knees in a caterpillar climb. You always have 1 hand on as well. It's basically caterpillar up, straight edge, caterpillar up, straight edge. Just trying to visualise but I think you slide your bottom hand up, use that to hold on to the pole while you let go with your elbow and bend your knees to pull yourself up the pole, then regrasp with your elbow. Then you release your legs into a straight edge, clamp them around the pole and repeat. (I hope that's right, but if not I'm sure someone will correct.  I'm just trying to remember because I have too many pulled muscles to actually do it right now. But I know you never grip with just your legs.)

You want to have a fairly solid elbow grip straight edge, because you're going to be doing this at increasing heights, where you can't just cartwheel down if you overbalance.

I fall all the time and with one exception haven't been hurt. I fall alot because I don't feel much fear, I know how to fall, I push myself too hard and I have very slippery hands (and possibly because I lack common sense). The one time I hurt myself is the first time I tried a Rainbow, and learned the hard way that you probably shouldn't try to transition to a basic invert from there. I basically lost all contact with the pole and was slipping head first. Luckily I have enough falling experience to do a bit of damage control, and managed to protect my head by landing hands first and then coming onto my knees. It would have been fine, just bruised knees if I hadn't landed with the top of my tibia right on the corner of the base of the pole. And also if I didn't ignore the injury and keep poling. Turned out to be a chipped bone. 

I think the best thing to do is figure out exactly why you fell, and make sure you don't do that same thing again. Then, you have to try the thing you fell on again, but be more careful if need be. So in your case I would practice some invert moves you know you can do, and help build your confidence. Then work on having a good, confident caterpillar and straight edge. Make sure you know you're using the right technique, and when you feel confident you can try it again, with mats and spotters or absolute silence, or whatever will help you feel confident.

As for preventing falls, always figure out your next points of contact and test them tentatively before relying on them. In other words, add additional points of contact before you take some away. Even holly drops and superman drops can be done this way in the early stages. Extra contact points mean that if you get tangled, or confused, or slip you have as much contact with the pole as possible. Worst case scenario is pole burn. If you do feel you're about to slip, just grip everything as tight as you can, and stay still for a second to figure out how you can get down.

Practice sliding down a pole in pose, maybe peeling off one limb and moving it down an inch, then doing the same with the next limb all the way to the floor. It will build strength and aerial awareness too. It also got me out of a sticky situation once when my foot got trapped somehow and I got stuck upside down on a spinning pole going way too fast 2 meters above a hard wood floor. I kind of crawled down the pole inch by inch until my shoulders touched the floor. And people laughed. Which was probably fair.

[Cinara]

My hips are more or less 40" as well, and I just grabbed a pair of similar shaped booty shorts I have at home and measured the top of them, and it's exactly 12.6 inches, so I'd say you're probably fine with the large.

I just deleted an angry rant about how 40" hips are so not that freakishly large, but according to pole fashion my average healthy weight is too fat for cute pole clothes. 🙁

[Cinara]

Oh yeah that would put me in a split grip, not a proper pencil/iguana grip. Back to the drawing board!

[Cinara]

Finally free to take a break from my drama-filled life to reply. Thanks everyone for the ideas! It's good to know that the regular bending-over-and-grabbing-the-pole-thing can actually look nice in a routine. I guess it will just take me lots of practice to build some flexibility and learn where the pole is so I can get it smooth.

Coming down and then back up is also a pretty good idea. I wonder if I could be strong enough to do that without touching the ground by October. Hmm, maybe not unless I turn into Jenyne… I was planning to go with a CAR, lunchbox, bow and arrow, twisted grip aysha combo, but there's no reason I couldn't then go back into a split grip lunchbox and reverse iguana then back up, is there? (Well, except I can't do that yet, but still…)

DedeJoy, that explains why my studio calls an iguana mount a Darryl Hannah! It's clear to me now!

[Cinara]

Another thing that could help is not to think of it as holding your feet up, but as pulling them back behind you. On the other hand, I found I couldn't hold a chopper for ages and then one day I just could, so perhaps it's just a strength thing.

I'm not sure if back pain is always the result of not being strong enough to invert. I've been inverting for over a year and I have no trouble with air inverts on either side, can lower down slowly with control, and I'm almost parallel with the floor in an iron x, but I still find that I can only come out of an invert the way I went in if I do it very very slowly – and only about twice a session at that – without absolutely ripping apart my muscles (figuratively anyway). 

I think the pain could also be a technique thing. I know I have some technique issues with my basic invert thanks to learning it too soon (after six whole hours of pole experience!) and therefore having to rely on gymnastics horizontal bar technique instead of proper pole technique. The things I know are wrong with my invert are:

1. I round my back instead of keeping it straight. (I half remember reading somewhere on the internet that this can injure your muscles, but I can't remember where).

2. I don't get my hips in front of the pole before inverting. (I tried to invert from a bees knees once and just rocketed up into a chopper so fast I nearly bruised my pubic bone because it was so much easier from that position than my usual standing behind the pole) 

3. I try to go straight up and over like a backwards somersault, but I've recently noticed that other people kind of go up on a diagonal. When I tried it I realised just how hard I'd been making air inverts for myself all this time.

Polingaround, maybe check whether your back is too rounded, because that can prevent your hips from getting close enough to the pole, it may be associated with back pain in inverts, and I can tell you right now from experience that it makes transitioning from a chopper to a gemini far less smooth and attractive than it should be. 

[Cinara]

Aww that sucks, sorry to get your hopes up. Chances are it will just "click" one day soon and you'll be like "What the hell???" 

[Cinara]

@LopsiJulie

I first got into the split grip from and inverted crucifix and then slid down into a jacknife. I first got the twisted grip from an inverted D.

On the weekend we were told to start in an inverted crucifix, get into split grip, and then slide our legs down the pole (so they'd be bent rather than going into inverted D). But then we quickly had to move onto entering from a scorpio.(Right leg is inside leg and hooks the pole. Bring hands into split grip with right hand down, bring left leg over in front of your body, release into aysha.) Apparently some people find that easier, but I know I certainly dont :p

[Cinara]

I haven't really come across much about what works best. I use a fancy scented one, but I've seen people use cheap generic brands as well. As far as I know, anything that comes out as a gel and starts turning into foam is okay. I have found it doesn't work so well on hot sweaty days though.

[Cinara]

I've just discovered rubbing some shaving gel/foam into my legs (and therefore also my hands) before I start seems to help a lot on cold and dry days. 

[Cinara]

Ah yes, I call it The Buttcrack Bow and Arrow. One day I was suddently pantsing myself by catching my thumb on my shorts, and then a few days later it just stopped. I'm not really sure what happened differently. Maybe play around with having your hands higher or lower, or being careful to have all your fingers tucked away? For me I just tried to not to pull my pants down and didn't think about anyting more specific than that. Sorry I'm not of much help 🙂

[Cinara]

Like I said, I'm not just making stuff up. This is what I was taught just a few days ago. Not everyone is going to agree on technique of course.

[Cinara]

Ooh ooh I just learnt this on the weekend! If you have really short shorts, sometimes you can't go off to the side. I was told that you just have to push through the pain because it doesn't last long. As in, it's only the very first part of the slide that hurts, and then the rest is just against your butt, which doesn't hurt. (This is what I was taught at Bobbi's, so I'm not just making it up). But, if you can get away with going to the side without getting stuck on your skin, totally do that.

My problem with this move is that my bad ankles collapse when my feet touch the floor, and I end with the sides of my shoes on the floor, and my feet rolled all the way inward. The good thing about my bad ankles is that the ligaments are so loose othat this is completely painless and harmless for me, even if it would sprain anyone else's.

[Cinara]

Huh. That just adds more evidence for my theory that I have been inverting wrong the whole time. Still, I know I'm not the only one who has trouble coming back down, and I've had instructors say not to, so maybe it depends on the person?

[Cinara]

Congrats! It's a big step.

The sliding to the floor thing is thought to be the safest option. Hold on with your hands and legs and stay upside down and just move really slowly until your shoulders touch the floor. You can use the old rock-climbing advice of making sure you have 3 points of contact (or 3 limbs) on the pole at any time.

The other thing you can do it go into a handstand and then slide your legs down the pole. Just invert fairly low to the ground so you don't have to slide to get your hands on the floor.

Try to avoid coming back down the way you came into it (dropping legs to the floor) if you can. When you're new to inverting you can pull some serious muscles doing that and it hurts like crazy. I found I needed a solid aerial invert before I could safely dismount this way, and even now I still need perfect technique and very few attempts per session.

I would wait for some more expereinced instructors to post in case I've said anything wrong, but that's my experience.

[Cinara]

Being able to do a new move one day but not the next is completely normal, and happens to all of us. I'm going to resist the urge to geek out and write you an essay on motor learning (I'm doing a PhD on it), but I will say that whenever you learn something new, your performance is very variable at first while your brain works out exactly what signals to send to each part of your body. (And how to adapt to changes in humidity, triedness, etc, etc)

 In a pole sit, this doesn't matter so much because you can still grip the pole when your muscles are doing slightly different things (though as you noted it's not as clean). Something like a fireman, though, is far more complex and requires more balance, so a slight change in how your muscles work can throw the whole thing off.

All you need to do is just keep trying, and it will come back. Your brain just needs some time to experiement and figure it out. It's all just a part of the learning process 🙂

[Cinara]

I have sweaty hands and bad grip strength. And for some reason my skin hates chrome. I'm working very hard to improve my grip strength, but in the mean time this is my extreme treatment for very slippery days.

1. Dry pole thouroughly. 
2. Apply Tite Grip: allow to dry.
3. Apply shaving gel: allow to dry.
4. Apply Dry Hands: allow to dry.
5. Apply Tite grip: allow to dry.

That's before I start poling, and during the session I only need to apply a little bit of Tite Grip.

The other thing is to get used to the feeling of gripping a slippery pole. You get afraid of falling long before you will actually fall, so take it easy and be careful, of course, but try to persevere with a few safe skills. It's safer in the long run, because you'll be ready for any accidentally slippery hands incidents.

Finally, just dance through whole routines. I didn't think my grip would last until I had no choice but to keep going for four minutes. I still can't get an extended butterfly, aysha or poisson into a routine on chrome, but I surprised myself by being able to do everything else.