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Oh yes megsmith, that would explain why I hurt myself – whenever we do what my stretch teacher calls the eating feet stretch (which is like the first part of that behind the head stretch, but pulling the foot towards the face rather than behind the head), I feel physically incapable of getting my leg even close to my face, let alone behind my head:/

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Someone was just posting about this on one of the fb pole pages too and I’m interested in some advice, not because I especially want to be able to do it on the pole but because I’m curious about the stretching involved. I have a middle split and a pancake in straddle so I thought I’d give the spatchcock a crack from the ground, just to see. However, when I was getting into it, I didn’t feel it where I expected to (ie. similar muscles to the straddle) but instead ended up tweaking the top of my hammie on my lower leg and I remembered (too late) someone saying to me once that they’d popped their hammie doing the full move. So, is it about straddle at all or more hammie? I’ve been having problems lately with a tight feeling in my upper hammie anyway (I have to work hard to maintain hammie and butt looseness because I’m a runner, particularly on hills) so suspect that may have been a major contributor to the tweak but yeah, anatomy of spatchcock info anyone?

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Holy mackerel, that transition was cray cray!!

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TBH, in my experience, a physio would probably just tell you you have weak glutes if you’re having knee pain – it seems to be quite a standard answer! Maybe I’m being a bit cynical though…

I’ve been running for a while and I know that I will go through times where a particular thing hurts and it mostly seems to mean I have an imbalance and something in my legs needs strengthening. However, it’s probably a good idea to know what kinds of things maybe coming into play there I guess. Doing some general leg strengthening things might be worth it if you have the time and aren’t doing them already though. There’s a lot that can interplay in terms of muscles and maybe something’s compensating for a weakness elsewhere. Trying out some running drills probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either, to try and improve your technique in case it needs a bit of tweaking. There must be some tutorials online for those but hit me up if you want some descriptions of some to get you started.

It’s a shame that you don’t have a few spare $$ laying around because I know at least where I live (which is a small country!), there are running seminars which you can go along to and the coaches will examine your gait and give you advice and drills to do.

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I think the posts in here seem to be talking about two different meathooks – I think of the one with one hand holding on and legs kinda diagonally piked downwards (like the trapeze vieo linked to here) as the meathook and the one where you grip under the arm and turn your legs kinda sideways, like Val does in the Studio 409 video, as the Natasha Wang meathook (‘cos I think I saw her do this first and the person who showed me had been taught it by her). I can’t give tips on the former ‘cos I don’t really do it but with the later, I tuck my arm right across my back to grab my side on the opposite side while I’m in a jade then bring my outstretched leg around to the side with my other leg – once that hip clears around the pole, you should have a really good grip, making it pretty simple to take the hand off (or maybe that’s just me, with my prehensile stomach jub;p)

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I’ve found that dehydration can make your skin more sore and bruise-susceptible, but also, personally speaking, I find my skin is more sensitive at particular times in my cycle as well.

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I find age for me has been a factor – the importance of food versus exercise was much less when I was in my twenties but the balance has changed as I got closer to 30 and went past it (am 34 now), so how I eat has a bigger impact on my weight/size than it did previously. And I’m a runner as well as a poler and I have seen plenty of runners who are larger than me run better and faster!

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Different pple have different preferences on the grip-there’s no one right way. Personally I prefer forearm because I get better leverage and I think it looks a bit nicer (it’s too easy to have flaccid hand with elbow). I also think forearm’s a bit easier but I know there are people who find elbow easier. I would recommend playing round with both to see which works better for you but also make sure you have a spotter because arsing off the pole is a possibility when you first try this climb and aren’t used to the feeling of loosening your legs ( although that may be less of an issue for you if you already Ayesha)

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Hey guys, just letting you know that he got through on the votes, no doubt in part thanks to your support so thank you very much:) I should be able to get a clip of his routine when he competes in the final next week and will try and get a link up here so you can appreciate what your support means to one of our rare (ish) boy polers:)

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Thanks folks! He's currently in the lead in his category and quite chuffed by your comments and votes:) He's so hoping to get through so he can show he has more to give!! Voting ends tomorrow night at 10pm, New Zealand time:)

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Oops sorry, link is actually http://bit.ly/13SQSQh

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I really need to find someone who can help me with stretching! I'm reasonably flexy but I feel like I need that added push (sometimes literally!) to get me down further (carefully) when my strength is not enough to get into things by myself

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I've always found ayeshas from inverts harder than the ones from handsprings! I think it's something about the moving the body away from the pole and engaging vs engaging from the get-go (as happens in a handspring). In my case, it also doesn't help that I handspring on my "wrong" side and invert on my "right" side so the positions are opposite. Anyway, the only way I've been doing a TG from an invert lately is to first do a shoulder mount from a respect grip and then once my legs are up, it's just a case of moving body and one hand round the pole and caterpillaring up a bit,  'cos the top hand's already in position – I don't know if trying that might help a bit? Just as a different way to try it to try and get the neural pathways firing:)

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I think it's probably a dance background thing – I've learnt various forms of dance over the years and have quite a mathematical brain so putting together a routine is quite a methodical thing about figuring out what I want to do an when and figuring out how long I want to hold something so that everything fits in just right to the music. That doesn't mean there's no passion in it – it's about having it go perfectly with how I want it to to the music. I have a friend though who has no dance background other than pole and she works in the opposite way and I find it pretty hard to learn routines from her because I like to know where things will be and at what time, especially if it's a routine being done by a group. But you know what – both of us can put together great routines and there's no right or wrong way to do it! It may be a bit frustrating for people to try and learn it your way when they're used to another way but if you changed it, there would be yet other people again who might not like the other way! Basically, you're in charge and they have to suck it up and do what you've put together! Maybe if you had some time where people can put together their own choreo, they could have a crack at it their way but otherwise, it's your hard work that's gone into it and you're the boss!

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I'm not an expert but in my experience with teachers of various disciplines, it seems to me that being square is a very important thing when it comes to splits. I recently did a contortion class with a career carnie (ie. works in the circus as a job doing hand balancing and contortion and I think maybe some aerials) and she said she wouldn't let her students work on oversplits unless they could show her they had a square split. I also do a stretch class with an ex-professional ballerina and whenever we would work on splits, it was about improving technique with the goal of being as square as possible. 

 

I have seen a video recently with someone advocating that un-square splits were perfect for working the oversplit but I don't really know what they were basing that on other than the fact it's technically easier. In the long run though, I don't know if it then does bad stuff to your hips, but personally, seeing as I'm getting a bit older and my hips are getting a bit clunkier in general, I like to follow the advice of those people I know are qualified to advise me….

 

 

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I've heard the same thing said about running (my other hobby;))and flexibility too – I guess anything where you're doing an activity that shortens/tightens muscles is going to seem the direct opposite of lengthening those muscles (ie. stretching). Like Veena and others say about lifting though, I find my best stretching happens after a good run because my muscles are warm so I can get more deeply into stretches.

A couple of random other things – re lifting, it may depend on what kind of lifting you're doing as well as to the effect it has. Higher weights, lower reps presumably tightens more than lower weights higher reps (I can't give you a biomechanical reason for this but it makes sense to me!). Re gymnastics, you have to remember that gymnasts have been training both strength and flexibility since they were knee high to grasshoppers so really aren't the best templates for us regular folks! 

 

 

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I take small forays into spinning pole – and have a section in my latest routine that certainly was a challenge when I first tried it, being used to static. As I phrased it to someone today though, you have to make physics your b*tch. The basic principle is that the more weight closer to the pole, the faster it will spin, which works against all our basic instincts to grab tighter to something when we freak out over the motion. My advice is to always enter your spins slowly and if it's feeling too fast for you, fling out a leg or poke your butt away from the pole or anything that takes to weight away from that central point. I know some people seem to thrive on the super fast spinning but to me, it just ends up feeling like my brain is rattling round and my body can't do anything against the momentum!

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Where I live, I’m pretty sure there’s an employment court where you can apply for wrongful termination and possibly be awarded damages, depending on the situation, but I’m guessing things are quite different in the US! Sorry it worked out badly for you but at least it doesn’t seem to be hampering future employment prospects, which would have been one of the potential negative side effects

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I have a fair bit of extra skin, especially round my tummy (I call it my cat tummy 'cos when I'm on all fours, it kind hangs down like an old cat's belly does!:)) and tbh, extra skin tends to stick more rather than less! It doesn't always look so nice but it's really about working your angles if you're worried about the look or saying "Who the f*** cares?!" if you don't:) If I stopped pole dancing when I saw how other bodies looked doing pole, I would never have discovered the things that I make look amazing! Or had nearly as much fun trying…

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I have a few exercises I do (calf raises, closed eye balance, leg lifts) as physio for some leg imbalances that I don't do with a warm up (do after I get up in the morning or before I go to bed) and I think that's fine. Things like that are relatively gentle but also dynamic and warming in their own right so I can't see why you'd need a separate warm up. I think warming up before doing actual weights is a bit different, presumably because of the more intense muscle action? I can't give you technical reasons but these things seem logical to me:) The only thing I would say is that, to me, sometimes exercises seem harder without a warm up though but that could just be 'cos the old body's not as young as it used to be;p

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I would think that if it's pulling that easily, you may either not be utilising the right muscles when you're doing some things or the muscles have got shortened for whatever reason (cycling? running? genetics?). I find hammies can be a particularly fussy area but maybe, once you've healed, it might be a good idea to do light stretching and strengthening of the hammies to try and stop it from happening again. Maybe getting a teacher to look at your technique for the moves that are particularly causing you grief could help? Or making sure you're really warm before you do things? Having said this though, I know people with well stretched hammies who just through one random wrong move, tweaked it painfully. Re the foam rollers, I think they're good for working on knotty muscles, which is not really what happens when you strain things. Although maybe, if you're particularly knotty in one area, you may compensate through another area and cause strain? Sorry, this has turned into a bit of a brain storm about the issue but hopefully you can get it sorted 'cos a stretched hammie is annoying!

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I was just about to post that that story is from Plato's Symposium and then I saw you'd linked to the yahoo answer anyway:) So, technically a philosophic story rather than mythological but still a nice idea:)

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Also, the dress is stylised classical-esquen but not the traditional peplos or chiton and she appears to be holding a sun on one side and a moon on the other – the Greek goddess of the moon is Selene but sun deities in Greek mythology are typically male (Helios, Apollo). Unless it’s some interpretation of Leda, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, the latter who is sometimes associated with the moon? She’s much more likely to be shown with a swan though, referring to her affair with Zeus in that form. Sorry to geek out on this but I’m curious now as icononography in ancient art was a particular interest of mine:)

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I have an honours degree in classics and it doesn’t match any iconography I can think of. Re multi-faces, There’s a two faced god, Janus, in Roman mythology but Janus is male; like someone said above, Hecate is known in a triple persona; and There’s also a 3 bodied giant, Geryon, but again male. Are you sure it’s not just someone’s interpretation of something else?

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Even if it does turn out they were just some weirdo going round stalking people  on fb to make themselves feel better, NOONE has the right to say that kind of thing to you!