poledanceromance
Forum Replies Created
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Use two Phillips head screwdrivers. You just stick them through the holes, then take something sturdy like a heavy duty wrench or even a hammer and give it two SHARP taps counter clockwise. Then you should be able to get it apart. It’s not about hitting it as hard as you can although you do have to be firm, it’s how fast you whack it that “shocks” it loose. If you just stick the tools through and pull on them, you’ll bend the metal around the holes (this cuts your skin when you go over it poling)
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Law student here. You definitely would need to check your local laws on “live/work” spaces. In many places it’s not legal to live in a space that operates as your principal place of business, sometimes it’s legal but only if the two spaces are on seperate levels of the building, etc. I also second everyone else’s concerns about teaching from home. Most people find owning a studio to be more work than they realized. It takes a lot of money resources on the owner’s part for the first year, I’m talking tens of thousands at minimum.
On another point no one has mentioned. Opening a studio will probably not help you feeling stuck in your pole progress. I can tell you right now that good studio owners really struggle to find time to work on their own progress. I’m just an instructor and I have a hard time finding time to do my own thing.
If what you really want is personal growth and more activity in the community, you might be better off using your resources to move someplace where you can pursue those goals for YOU, and then when that itch is satisfied you will be in a much better place to decide where you want to go.
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For whatever it’s worth, while all the strength moves stuff is true and it’s always important to gauge a student’s physical abilities so they are challenged to the level they want to be challenged to physically, I realized recently that I’ve been underestimating men as pole students and holding some antiquated views that I hadn’t really thought about.
I’m dating a guy who likes pole and has had a few informal “lessons” from me on the home pole. I asked him recently if he would be interested in coming to the studio to learn. When he said yes, I just immediately launched into how I could show him lots of fun strength moves and how I could have him come get some individual beginner attention to get him going and jump into classes so he could skip some beginner stuff. And he got kind of quiet, and asked why he had to skip beginner. I kind of bristled at that and said “well I figured you’d want to just get into the jungle gym stuff since beginner involves a lot of like…body rolls and stuff…” And, not missing a beat, he said very confidently “Fuck yeah, I’ll do body rolls!”We got into a more serious talk about being a pole student, and it turns out, he doesn’t WANT to be excluded from the sexy movement club. He doesn’t feel the need to fit into a mold that says the purely gymnastic/physical exercise is the only outlet he needs as a man…he was open and enthusiastic to exploring pole and movement as a spiritually holistic activity and not just an hour on the vertical jungle gym that beats you up and builds muscles.
I know a lot of guys out there are totally just interested in the gymnastic and strength aspect of pole, and I’m fine with that like I’m fine with women who enjoy that too. But the experience taught me there was an aspect of pole that I was reserving in my mind as naturally for women only. I don’t want to do any student a disservice by making assumptions about them based on their gender that would deny them an experience with pole that could be potentially as impactful for them as it has been for me. Lately I’m making an effort to think about ways to let every student in every class I teach know that every interpretation of pole is on the table for them and that, as far as I’m concerned, they have my unphased support.
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^^^what chem said! Keep the outside leg straight and let it lead your body by sweeping it straight up and overhead, not a kick but a sweep, then you bend that inside leg as you lift. About halfway to a straight leg invert. You can also try keeping the inside leg straight and bending outside leg (Aussie/Bobbi’s style) but I find it’s a wee bit harder to sweep the inside leg than the outside. If you can deadlift and tuck into a basic invert though, you’re strong enough to try that with it, dead lifting into an invert like normal but with the inside leg straight and outside leg bent.
All this presumes you’re opening to chopper before going into an inverted pose. If you’re not strong enough for that, I suggest just working on controlling your basic invert both going up and coming down, and if you want to make it pretty you can throw in an extra step like hooking your outside ankle on the pole when you invert and doing a little hooked heel split/basic invert split before going into your inverted pose and it puts a little visual interest on the basic invert so it doesn’t just look like you’re rushing through that step to get upside down, then you have to control to get back up from that split and that’s a good conditioning thing too.
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I started about 5-6 years ago with no background or training whatsoever. Now I’m a regular performer and an instructor at one of the best studios in the Midwest and I get to train some incredible pole and aerial athletes. I still see myself as growing, but I can dance in a way that beings me happiness, I can teach in a way that gives others and myself fulfillment, and I have some of the best pole family anyone could ask for. And that’s a dream come true from where I started.
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Here ya go. Kind of a partisan website but there are links to the information about how it winds up being cheaper for meat processors to send food overseas to be processed.
On a side note, I realized this morning that I forgot to mention that if you want to skip the gimmick of “buy American” and actually get the substantive effect, you are much better off “buying local” than “buying American.” If you’re really concerned about supporting labor directly, find small manufacturers who make a product you like and support that. But honestly, when it comes to poles, I have tried many brands and quality-wise, there just isn’t a small manufacturer out there right now who delivers on quality in a tension-mounted pole and performance-grade stage pole to the extent that xpole does, and I expect that’s just because there are more barriers to entry in that market than there are barriers to entry for the market of permanent mounted poles. In fact, if you want to support a local business and you can do a permanent mounted pole in your space, there are small business metal workers who would probably be more than capable of cutting and fashioning a bolt-in/permanent pole in whatever metal, height, and diameter floats your boat.
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Essentially, what you can protect is akin to being able to protect someone showing a p90x DVD in a studio for profit versus some of the exercises from p90x being incorporated into a circuit class. It’s my understanding that you can protect anything that details a curriculum, like a check list you have that shows the order of your progressions, especially documents that show how curriculum is structured, like if you have your curriculum laid out in a company handbook. You can basically protect your curriculum but not the moves themselves.
Also remember that you can use the words trademark and copyright freely, you don’t have to actually have a registered trademark to have any legal protection there, though obviously you get a greater degree of protection if you do register. So basically, while you can’t stop an instructor from going elsewhere and teaching a move or moves in ways similar to what you do, you could certainly estop them from going to another studio and implementing your handbook. That also assumes it’s a curriculum you created and they implement when they teach from you. But if that’s the situation, then you definitely have an employee and not an IC. (One of the shorthand legal explanations for IC versus employee is that an IC has expert knowledge and skill that they bring to work, and control over the means by which they accomplish the end goals, whereas an employee is just given procedures to implement) If you want trademark or copyright protection over curriculum your instructors create and bring into the studio, you would have to contract with them that you have intellectual property rights over curriculum they create while working for you, like software engineers who give up IP rights to any programs they create while employed.But yes, while there is a big grey line as far as someone taking components of curriculum, you COULD protect yourself from someone basically taking your handbook to another studio and implementing a copy of it there, which I think is really the biggest concern. So I would theoretically advise any instructors concerned about this to put their curriculum into a handbook and to protect it.Anything less than that, and (if I were the lawyer) I would advise a studio owner to be careful in who they bring onto the staff if that’s their concern, and to consider that ultimately at a certain point as a fitness instructor you have to be confident in what you offer and know that anyone else taking bits and pieces of your curriculum and trying to copy you will inherently not be able to do exactly what you do and will probably only succeed in business if they have an individual business model. The market often ensures that second rate, copycat products of lesser quality don’t have commercial longevity.
DISCLAIMER because I am legally obligated to provide one:
No one here is to take anything I say as legal advice for your particular situation. I speak only as a law student with limited experience in contracts and employment law courses. I am not yet a barred attorney and I am not qualified to give specialized legal advice, only to speculate on how legal theories might hypothetically be interpreted. If you have any legal needs in this area or any specific legal questions as a result of anything I say here, you should contact an attorney who is a member of your state bar association. Laws vary from state to state, and my knowledge as a law student is limited to an understanding of general principles of law and is not developed with regard to each state’s laws. Nothing I have said is intended as legal advice and you should not act on it as such. I
Sorry for that long disclaimer. As a law student I am legally and ethically required to let you all know that I am not giving legal advice and am not qualified by the state bar to do so. -
Where I teach, we do offer competition and performance oriented training for anyone who wants it. But the brass ring is owned by Melissa Schrader, who has placed in national level competitions, and the entire teaching staff is composed of experienced performers, so that’s just naturally a part of the studio identity that we support those who wish to compete (as well as those who don’t!). We also know that not every studio caters to the specific needs of dancers preparing for competition.
There’s no disrespect for any other studios, and no “sales pitch” to try to get a student to quit their current studio and “switch.” In fact there are several regular students in our ranks who regularly train at other studios as well and so far that relationship has been peaceable.
Maybe some of this is just because we are in the Chicago area where there are MANY options for pole and aerial training, so there’s an assumption that any skilled dancers who seek us out for advanced training will have an existing background with another studio and that’s something that deserves respect.
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You. With the coffee. I fucking love you.
High five!!!!
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Anyway, my literal only point with this is to be extreme skeptical when you hear the “buy American” quote used by a company that manufactures. Be aware that there is more advertising gimmick to that than there is truth.
For example, American car makers say “buy American!” But their parts are all coming from overseas. In fact, if you want to buy the “most American car you possibly can,” you would have to buy a Toyota Corolla, because even though they are a Japanese country, their cars are made and assembled here.
Be skeptical and discerning. Most companies that say “buy American!” Are doing it to make more money, not because they actually care about American jobs as much as you do.
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It’s really not that simple. One of the reasons the outsourcing happened is that people were no longer willing to buy American made products because the quality was so low relative to the price being so high. You also have to consider that the reason for this is that business owners are constantly trying to serve their own shareholders above any other interest.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with “the government.” That’s just incorrect. Frankly, the CEOs are not willing to make a few thousand dollars per year less in profit to spend the extra money it costs to manufacture things here. That’s not really the government’s fault, that’s the fault of BIG businesses who CHOSE to outsource to other countries.
Thirdly, you did not address my actual point. My point is that “buying American” is a completely pointless idea when all you are doing is ensuring that some pieces were put together in the United States, but all of those pieces come from other countries in some way. Even steel that we mine here, we ship overseas to process, and then ship it back here to sell. They even do this with American meat and fish; it gets raised here, shipped to China for processing, and then shipped back here to sell, and it’s actually cheaper. There is no way to really “buy American” and AVOID supporting “outsourced” jobs. My point is that, the way modern goods come to be, pretty much everything that is a manufactured good is basically an international product. Moreover, the businesses who make thee products know this. They aren’t assembling their products in the US and telling you “buy American!” for any altruistic reason. If a company is telling you to “buy American,” they have done this purely as an advertising strategy to get you to buy their product for a reason other than the merit of the value of the product itself. They’re saying “don’t compare the pros and cons of our actual product to another product, just buy ours because it’s ‘made in America’ and the other guy’s is not!” What I’m saying is that, because of the nature of manufactured goods and the fact that essentially all manufactured goods have parts and labor from all over the world, usually when you see an “American made” label on something like a pole, that’s more of a sales gimmick than it is truth, because it deceives you into thinking all the components and everything are American when they are not. Lastly, I would ask you to really consider that the problem is NOT with our government, but with governments of other less developed countries who don’t have any labor laws, who allow a factory to hire five year olds to work 15 hour days sewing your jeans together for $0.50 per day. And right now, there’s few ways we can avoid products coming from that. And there is no practical way that any country who stands up for fair labor laws will be able to compete with that. If we altogether as a people stand up for each other and demand fair labor laws for every person in the world, this difference will be completely eliminated. Again, this is not the fault of our government, but of the owners of American businesses deciding they would rather use a sweat shop of 5 year olds in Cambodia than hire American workers to make their products because the business owner gets another $10k per year in his wallet if he does. The fault lies squarely with the owner of a business who would rather take advantage of people who work without labor protections than pay workers here fairly. That is not your government’s fault, it’s strictly a profit-driven choice by American business owners. Ultimately, I think the best way we have to end the problem of people taking advantage of poor labor laws is to continue to support the international goods market, because once a country is actively engaging in global markets, the international community can leverage that part of a country’s economy to push them into passing fair labor laws that level the playing field on both human rights and jobs.Of course, none of that is really relevant to x-pole because I’m pretty sure they aren’t purposefully seeking out sweatshops in rural Cambodia (nike does though lol), just using Chinese-processed steel components which basically everyone does.
Moreover, all of this is irrelevant when we are talking about xpole, because a company that is not an American company is under no kind of moral imperative to have their manufacturing in the US. A UK company does not deserve to be boycotted for not having their manufacturing in the US.
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Also just to be clear, the above rant wasn’t an attack on anyone here, just me going on tangent because I’ve seen this “buy American made” crap going around a lot lately and frankly, it doesn’t hold water.
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If I hear one more person say that xpole should move their manufacturing stateside…
A) wild assumption that xpole is a us company just because they have offices here when, as you say webs, they are not
B) blatant sense of superiority that US made goods are better quality when part of the reason US has lost manufacturing jobs to other countries is that American made products for years were notorious for being absolutely horrible quality (1990s GM vehicles, anyone?) and do not get me started about the OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY between xpoles and some other poles that are “proudly made in the USA” that could hurt you if you danced on them. Moreover, just because a company advertises that they assemble in the US…guarantee that the parts they use come from a global market. The steel for the components was probably mined and refined in another country. The nuts and bolts were probably cast in another country. The cardboard boxes the pole ships in were probably made in another country. It’s silly, goods assembled from multiple components are almost guaranteed to be “international” goods in some sense.
C) blatant ethno-centric idea that somehow people in the US deserve to have jobs more than people in other countries, or that it’s morally superior to support workers in the US by avoiding products made elsewhere. Do those people in other countries not deserve to have jobs? Do those millions of people deserve to lose their jobs and be thrown into poverty over a boycott of perfectly acceptable quality goods not made in the same country someone happens to live in and thinks is the best? Got news, patriots…plenty of people in the world wouldn’t live in the US if you paid them to.I know there is the issue that the US often has fairer laws for workers than other countries, and I do believe all workers everywhere deserve to be treated fairly, but we’re not going to make third-world laborers any better off by causing their sources of income to close down.
Sorry, all of this is ranting that is totally irrelevant to the discussion at hand. I just am getting really, really sick of people dissing xpole because they don’t manufacture in the US as though being a US company inherently makes one company better than another. That’s, frankly, a really nationalistic and xenophobic view of what is, in reality, a completely global market for goods.
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From the law student perspective, I actually find it confusing when studio owners ask their instructors to sign non-compete agreements, which will only be upheld if you can prove them to be reasonable in scope and duration, which means in the best of circumstances you may have to argue in court to uphold it, yet they don’t have them sign a non-disclosure agreement, which is easier to uphold and much more directly addresses the concern of protecting your intellectual property. With a non-compete, you are basically crossing your fingers and hoping no one will force you to defend it. With a solid non-disclosure agreement, it’s much more likely to be enforceable, and you can do a liquidated damages clause that basically outlines for the signee exactly what the consequences are for taking your trademarks elsewhere. Shit, you could even put an arbitration clause in there and keep the cost way, way down if you did have to enforce it. It strikes me as a more effective limitation in theory to do all this through a solid NDA than a questionably-enforceable non compete.
And as an aside, attorneys are not allowed to sign non-compete agreements. While it would be arguable that a non-compete for a pole instructor position wouldn’t conflict with my duty, for me, there’s always that possibility that those spheres will collide. (Like an attorney serving as head of HR in a company, you might sometimes wear more than one hat in giving advice.) So I simply am not willing to sign a non-compete in any capacity, because if the legal professional and fitness professional spheres ever collided and I had signed a non-compete that became an issue, it’s only me that has to answer to the bar association for my license and not anyone else. By comparison, a non disclosure agreement is perfectly allowable for me to sign in any capacity. I don’t know if there are any other professions that place restrictions on the ability to sign a non-compete, and it’s not an immediate concern for me right now since I’m still in law school, but it’s a serious enough concern that I think is worth bringing up. -
Oregon! You can go find the PAINT-MELTINGLY HOT AND AWESOME Chalese Hathaway!! One of my sexy style icons!
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I look forward to watching that video, I have trouble with this as well. Hip flexors and quads are painfully tight for me, and my bendy back compensates, but that only works in certain moves. I’ve recently picked up a few awesome stretches and exercises for this, mostly from the contortion coach at my studio (the infamous Sofia Vanezetti) that are really working for me right now (like a ton!!)
One is to go into the frogger stretch, and one at a time try to lift each leg up and point the foot at the ceiling, which rotates that side’s hip down toward the floor and in the process rolls “across” the hip flexor in a way that feels awesome for me and loosens them up better than straight up and down hip flexor exercises (like pulsing up and down in a lunge) which can tend to make them tense up on me because they’re so overly tight right now.
Another is to simply do a regular lunge, but turn the front foot outward (back foot still pointed straight back) and press forward into the lunge with that front foot turned out for a super deep stretch in the hip flexor. That simple rotation changes the way you’re stretching the front hip to focus the stretch more specifically on the back hip flexor. (Got that one from my 14 year old cousin who does competitive gymnastics and who is so bendy she makes me look like a board lol)
Another is to lay flat on your back, tuck one foot under your butt so you’re laying on your shin, you can keep the other up on the foot…the less arch in the back, the deeper the stretch. This one is more intense on the quad than the hip flexor but both are a problem for me. It’s like when you’re doing the basic standing quad stretch and you pull your foot back to your butt, but when you lay it down it gets much more intense.
If you’re having a hard time visualizing any of those I could make a short video. Sorry if you included any of that in your vid veena, I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. Just wanted to kick in a couple things that are really helping me a lot right now.
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I’ve done this and it’s shocking how much it hurts. Neosporin with Lidocaine could help. The lidocaine is a mild numbing agent that can help take the edge off. Otherwise all I can suggest is to keep a bandage on it and a tape wrap. Usually when the nail breaks, there’s some sharp points that can catch on things and tear even worse. If you keep that finger wrapped up as the nail grows out, you can trim it as it comes in, and it will give your finger some protection from any trauma that would prevent the new nail growth from properly adhering to the nail bed.
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I totally don’t get this. I’m VERY happy to teach someplace where we welcome other instructors to come take classes, and where we are never discouraged from visiting other studios to learn as well. We even have a big team going to CPC, yet the studio doors are open the weekend of the competition so that other competitors from other studios can come rehearse in our space because we are just a few blocks away from the competition venue and our poles are spaced the same as the competition poles, so it just made natural sense to us and didn’t strike us as a threat to our competitors or anything remotely like that….if another studio wants to bring their team in and rent the space and rehearse, awesome! Good fellowship from dancer to dancer across studio lines is important at the Brass Ring, and that’s a huge reason why I’m so proud to teach there. I believe that attitude of community shows in everything TBR does….the whole philosophy of the studio is to be an open door for the pole community in the Chicago area to train in a facility with a multi-disciplinary approach to pole.
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Oh and the alley access to the back yard has a secure gate!
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We would love to have you where I teach at The Brass Ring Chicago! Any dates that work for you, aside from CPC weekend may 25th the schedule pretty much open all summer. The setup is 8, 12′ chrome xpoles. 7are 45s and the teacher pole is 40. We have folding chairs, silks, Lyra, fly gym, and professional grade hoops. We also have a full kitchen and full bath with shower, as well as a back yard with alley access which I believe would be big enough for you to park the trailer in. Melissa Schrader is the owner and she’s an absolute peach who totally adores you…she gave me the go-ahead to invite you! If you’re interested, I can give her your email!
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Just checking in as a pole teacher and regular performer to say that I absolutely do not train 100% perfectly 100% of the time either, not even close! This is something I repeat often to anyone I hear talking about some part of their body they’re particularly unhappy with, often the stomach when I hear “I just want a flat stomach/six pack!” There’s been times when I’ve had a visible 6 pack just because of the level I was training at to achieve a certain goal, not because I was training for a six pack. But damn, when I’m in that kind of shape I can see puffiness and loss of definition the next day if I had one bad meal. It’s not possible to sustain that kind of shape permanently, but I think it’s easy for us to forget that when we see videos of pole athletes who are only posting videos when they’re in training form for a competition etc. and we don’t see the in-between.
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It would concern me if an instructor who claims to be running a teacher training program for the purpose of keeping “up to date” is saying that and behaving that way. I think it should be reasonable to expect that instructors who pride themselves on staying up to date on training practices would have an understanding of the mechanical differences in the various bracket grips and how to safely train them all based on what works anatomically for each student. I think there’s something to be said for an instructor who can explain to a student what’s different about the way those grips work, benefits and problems of each, versus an instructor who has beliefs about some grips being bad but doesn’t explain that belief in terms of the specific risks involved based on their understanding of how the grip works mechanically.
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Uhm yeah this comes as no surprise to me….I am 100% convinced my long limbs and tall body type are why it’s taken me like 5 years to get close to my Iron X as compared to some people who have been at it far less time and can’t do some strength moves that I can do, but who can do that Iron X no problem. All in perspective…
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Great tips here already. Another is to work it as a descent. Invert to crucifix, bring the legs down into chopper, then lower (reverse invert) holding the chopper legs straight as slow and controlled as you can. Good luck! Inverting with straight legs takes time and practice and puts a big load on a very small muscle group (hip flexors).
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Too bad that if I comment on it how I would like to, I’d be a criminal in Russia.
