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AND …..ps Empy, I’d love to hear what you ultimately went with so I can help her on the decision making since shell be busy with the whole birthing a child thing LOL

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Yes, if we had our druthers we’d already have new floors. However we are limited in what kinds of laminates and woods we can choose…it’s an industrial location and you can’t put real wood down on top of concrete floors unless you build up a whole new subfloor on top of it because of the moisture transfer and temperature swings through the slab. So for some studios with cncrete floors, short pile can be the best option and of course heels there can be a safety issue. Especially with the volume of wear which is huge.

Bottom line, I still say I would need to investigate why a studio doesn’t allow shoes. There could be lots of perfectly rational reasons and a studio could still be a fun place to go and a fantastic place to learn even with some shoe limitations. I think if my options were two studios and the one with the better environment, better instruction, and better students also happened to have a no shoe rule–and they had a reasonable explanation as to why–I would choose the better studio and keep the shoes to my home.

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I’d just like to put a different perspective here. The studio I teach at is owned by one awesome young woman, currently 8 months pregnant, and she’s only owned it since March…so you do the math on the sudden collision of finances. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif We have a long wish-list, but we can only accomplish it by chipping away at it a little bit at a time. Next up is hardwood floors and a few more poles. After that, we’re going to do mirrors. None of my students wear shoes for two reasons:

1) they’re still a little too new at this to be able to wear them safely
2) we are genuinely concerned about the floors.

Bear with me. It’s short pile carpet. If someone’s heel digs in it can not only trip them but leave a hole in the carpet with a big tag of pile hanging out that could trip someone else or throw someone off balance during a yoga class. We have played around a little in shoes, but at this point I don’t think I’d want people doing a full hour class in heels on it. It’s just a temporary situation until we do the floors in the next few months-after baby-but in the meantime, it’s not that we’re being cheap about it, or that we’re a bad studio because of it. It’s just that current restrictions on the personal lives of everyone involved in the studio means we really don’t want to deal with the headache of having a big, unsafe, expensive rip in the carpet right now, and our students aren’t advanced enough to warrant that kind of wear, anyway.

Our students love us and come to class religiously. They see that we’re doing big things with what we have. We don’t skimp on dedication and quality of experience, and many a wonderful studio have started out–or still are–in carpeted rooms and/or industrial buildings. Before you render total judgment about them not being totally enthusiastic about heels, find out why. There are lots of reasons, and one could simply be "we need this carpet to last two more months." And it’s as simple as asking why and whether they plan to replace the floors soon. There’s always two sides to every story, and the story of most great studios starts small!

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Thanks all! And Amy go right ahead! We’re proud of our mantras. We have a really serious commitment to the overall well-being of our students and I think that’s really important. It’s a very religious and conservative area and all the women who have come so far have started out with mixed emotions-excited, but nervous, unsure…I even have one student whose alarm for her bc pill goes off at the end of class and she is embarassed about taking it. That’s the kind of embarassment at being a woman I want to obliterate and replace with strength-don’t be ashamed of your choices or your body or who you are!

Funnily enough though, one of my most talented and energetic students is actually a virgin, largely because she is young and focused on her career and unwilling to compromise, which I think is great. Since pole is the main outlet for her sensuality, she’s really discovering herself in the process and it’s lovely to watch. It’s such a drastic transformation as you watch your students get stronger and more confident. So I think it proves that no matter your background or your strength level or your sex life, you can learn something important about yourself through the training.

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Diana has it. Teeny weeny pieces, no more than a chopstick. They make jaw clips that go from smaller to larger which I need because my hair is super long. Start with the top of the head and make a quick little bun with it and clip it with the smallest clip. The take a comb or your fingernail and section a row below that crown, flip it up and clip it onto the edge of the smallest clip. Then section around again and clip onto the previous and cotinue until you have a Mohawk of clips on the top of your head. Then you can pull down each row section of hair and keep track of the tiny pieces you have to take. You can also use a loose hair tie or the biggest clip to keep the hair you’ve straightened out of the way without crimping or flattening it, since you want straight but not totally pancake flat on your head.

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And again I say HOLLA, with a side of Whoo Hoo and Congratulations. Great piece. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_cheers.gif

(was it me, or did the dude look like he was a little kid playing dress up in his fathers clothes?)

LOL. He was a little boy in man’s clothes. And a total creep. The first thing he says when he walks in is not "hello ladies" or "how is everyone" but "alright ladies, STRIP DOWN!"

We just looked at him. *Crickets* No stripping here, dude. Sorry to get your hopes up, sicko.

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Thanks! Not really a conscious decision on the shoes in the way that you’re thinking. I wear them sometimes, but all my students are complete beginners so I have them dance barefoot. My most advanced students are just up to basic climbs and have only been with me about a month or two. They can add the shoes later on if they so choose, but I believe it’s not a good idea to try to learn things for the first time in heels.

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Okay, here it is! Don’t believe what the guy says about being clean cut. When we got the closing shot of me upside down my students said he had laser beam eyes right up my shirt. Creeper.

Also, kind of want to punch the lady for acting all "ooh la la." But overall, everything went better than expected.
http://www.wandtv.com/global/Category.asp?c=182814&clipId=5303056&topVideoCatNo=99891&autoStart=true

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It just aired and they did a seriously amazing job putting it together! This is a pretty conservative area so I was sitting in front of the tv nervous, shaking, ready for a bunch of stripper jokes…and it was AWESOME! They put the emphasis totally on how different we are from the stigma. Could not have gone better!! They’re going to put it online. As soon as the segment is up, I’ll post the link!

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The ability to hold a basic point has a lot to do with your calves. Instead of trying to point by scrunching the toes, point by pulling the heel up, so you’re only doing a little toe scrunch to get that line nice and flat. As for doing it in moves, I am a stickler with my students about not just scrambling into something but concentrating on the form they want as well. This is about building muscle memory, and maintaining pointed toes from start to finish on a move is definitely part of that. So approach it as a part of your learning, too!

You can do calf raises, just standing feet about shoulder width apart and turned slightly out raising yourself onto your toes and back down slow and controlled. Start with your most basic moves and try to do them with pointed toes, then work your way up incorporating it into your trick repertoire. Of course, all this means that it’s important to get the legs warmed up before dancing and that at the end of a workout your calves can be really tight, so you absolutely have to stretch them out well after working out. I start my stretches with pointed toes, hold for a certain amount of breaths, then flex my foot on the exhale while continuing to relax into the stretch. I also do resistance stretching to get past my point of flexibility, but imo passive stretching on the floor for cool down stretching of the calves after pointing feels really, really good because–like you–I don’t have much in the way of dance training, so my calves get really tight from pointing.

As for straight legs when inverting, that requires hip strength. Veena has some great lessons regarding that topic. That’s something we can all work on because strong hip flexers give us those beautiful sweeping legs we adore!

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Jail house rock!! You could do a really high energy burlesque style routine to it.

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I’m going to try and add all the sets I’ve made to my website this week http://www.sweetvixencouture.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" , there are alot of them lol.

Can I just say that I love how you make your clothes to fit a mannequin that actually has an ass. I don’t have the largest donkadonk in the land, but I’m no twig either. I find that a lot of "workout wear" or "sleepwear" that I pole in is not made for a normal body shape. It’s like they are marketing to flat butts. I find nearly 100% of the time that shorts that are supposed to be regular shorts are booty shorts on me, and what are supposed to be booty shorts are wedged halfway up my crack and look like "cheekies." And THEN if you try to pull the bottoms down so they’re not a wedgie, HALF YOUR CRACK IS HANGING OUT!!! CRACK=NOT CUTE! The worst part is that, especially if you’re buying online, you don’t get to see what that short looks like on a BUTT until you actually try it on. I know that if I buy a pair of your shorts, they’re actually going to fit and look flattering. THANK YOU!

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Aw well I definitely was! You can see me slide in my spinning climb and use my knee to grip because my ankle hurt too much to squeeze. You also notice me sliding in caterpillar and that I switch my feet right before I go into it. It seemed like everything I did smashed on it.

TBH half the stuff in that vid is stolen from fleur, amyxshi, or veena. /slaps self on wrist

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I have an issue of cosmo where they said not to get piercings down there because they’re "dirty" and collect germs. Which is bs. Yeah, your crotch is gonna collect germs if you don’t wash it. Wash your freakin crotch and your piercing won’t rot off. Duh.

https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif sorry, that’s just what I thought of when you mentioned cosmo. Interesting that they seem to change their opinion on everything depending on whether or not it’s on trend.

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Thank you so much, everyone!

Unfortunately, just the next day, I was helping a friend of mine move and I fell downhill off the sidewalk while holding her mattress and rolled my ankle really badly. It was another few days before I could actually put any weight on it. In this vid, you can actually see my bandages right behind the pole I’m working on; I warmed up with my brace on and then took it off for this. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif

As a result, this freestyle is not as smooth as I would like. There’s some switching around of feet and generally me trying not to stress it to much, so any trick where I can’t avoid putting weight on the ankle was pretty much out the door.

Nonetheless, here’s my special surprise: my first video of freestyle in the studio, and my first totally uncut vid to a whole song!! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_sunny.gif I hope you all like it. Almost all my videos up to this point have been to showcase a specific trick. I’m proud of how much my style has evolved in the past year, and I’m happy to share that progress with you all.

Link: http://ver3.studioveena.com/lessons/view/5260

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WOOHOO!!! Finally! I don’t know what you did, but thank you!

PS My video right next to test is making me LOL because we’re both in scorpio from the exact same angle! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif

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It won’t let me. I clicked on "upload video" and it took me to the page with the video title and information typed in and the "processing" bar going. I’ve logged out and shut down since I last tried, so I don’t know why it’s still showing this page for me and not the upload video page?

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Are you ladies wearing a ring or barbell? I have a curved barbell. I also downsized to a 16g that has cute little sparklies on the barbell ends. (Yeah, my hoo hoo sparkles. Wanna fight about it?) https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif But the balls on the ends are really tiny compared to the "normal" size barbell ends.

Long story short, I found rings and "Standard" size barbell ends to be too intrusive for pole. Switching to something thinner and with smaller ends definitely made it better. If you were pierced at a 14g and don’t want to downsize to 16g, you can at least put smaller balls on the ends. But I would flat-out reccomend against ANY kind of ring. Tried that. Didn’t work out well.

It really does make all the difference in the world to just downgrade the size of the balls.

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Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you. I was away from my comp. Okay, here goes:

1. I’m uploading the .wmv as saved directly from flipshare. It’s 307.44MB. That shouldn’t be a problem.
2. I have the only LAN out from the router in the house. My 4 housemates all use the wireless.
3. Connection is not exactly lightning fast. Testing it right off the router produces less than stellar results. But it doesn’t typically become an issue unless more than one of us is MMO or large downloading at once.
4. We’ve had a few disconnects, but nothing beyond the range of normal for any comcast user. >_< My desktop is also a fresh home build, so new network card and nothing hardware on my end should be interrupting connection. Router and modem are also new.

I’ve tried three times to upload now. On Chrome I get IO error. On IE I stop at the "processing" progress bar, which just keeps going and going for hours until I freeze it (left it on while I left the house overnight just to be sure, and the processing bar was still scrolling along when I came back in the morning.)

I haven’t tried with firefox, but something tells me if it didn’t work with chrome, it’s not worth downloading firefox just to have it not work there, either. Plus, since I do have the new desktop and it’s nice and uncluttered, I’m really hoping to not download every browser under the sun to test the waters. IMO, it should work in Chrome (and I’d assume you tend to agree) since Chrome just…works.

EDIT: Reading this post back to myself made me feel like a huge nerd.

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I’m having the same IO error issue. I use chrome, so I’m not sure what to do. I also tried on I.E. to be sure. It doesn’t work for me on that browser, either. Any suggestions, webmaster?

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Thank you, MommaBear! I’ve definitely experienced being in a relationship with someone who is 180 from where you are. It’s difficult, because sometimes people bring out the worst in each other and go to the point of no return.

It’s always heartbreaking for a marriage to end. But when all is said and done, your kids need you to be at your best and to see a high level of respect between you and dad. Sometimes the only way two people can really treat each other with the level of respect needed to raise kids fairly is to not be married. It seems like you’ve found that with your ex, and I think that’s really admirable. Whatever happens, you clearly have the ability to advocate for yourself and your kids, which is what’s most important.

And thank you, chemmie! I definitely take that as a compliment coming from a badass chick like you! I am woman! Hear me…..shoulder mount?? https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif

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I was taking issue with 2 main things:

1) the "it’s just everyone else he doesn’t trust, not me" idea

and

2) those who used reasons I stated above to justify how hubby feels. At the end of the day, I feel those justifications are irrational and grounded in what I stated in my last post

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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Telling a woman she should just expect to be harassed if she poles at a bar is no different than saying she should expect to be sexually assaulted for going out dressed sexy. To say "that’s just the way it is" echoes the presumption that women are here for men’s enjoyment. As long as you are not playing to the audience stripper-style, soliciting tips, flirting etc., you’re not challenging your relationship. If you are behaving in a way that is respectful of the fact that you have a partner, it’s not your fault if others objectify you. Some people just see all women as sex objects and whores. Why do you think men will say "you’re too fat to wear those shorts?" it’s because they think if you are not their definition of a sexy woman, you have no right to consider yourself sexy, either. And p.s., even if you were up there stripping and flirting, it still wouldn’t give anyone the right to harass you.
Just because it happens does NOT mean that it should. And it doesn’t mean we should hide to avoid it. We are women and we are powerful. Better that the pigs out there should have to deal with it.

That said, every relationship is different. And you have to work it out for yourself. But IMHO, "pole is risqué whether you like it or not" is both an unfair and dangerous response to this issue. It’s allowing other people to label us and what we do as obscene and risqué. And frankly, it’s not. We have the right to define what we do. And we have the strength to challenge those who tell us we’re whores for doing it.

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My doctor suggested Kegels, and if that doesn’t help, inserting a tampon before these activities. I have not tried the tampon trick, but it makes sense. No more vacuum when you invert…jeez what a strange thing to say! https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif

If you’re going to go that route, PLEASE use a divacup/mooncup type device….tampons are, well, quite drying https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_redface.gif

Using them while not on your period for any length of time can really throw of your PH, change the balance of your natural fluids down there, and possibly lead to yeast infections or bacterial infections.

On that note, I’ve never had a pole poot. I’m really glad for it, too. https://www.studioveena.com/img/smilies/icon_lol.gif

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The first question for you is about your studio’s needs. Does your space require you to go for removable poles, or can you install permanently mounted poles?

My studio is used for several purposes, so we opted for removable poles. We ordered multi-piece removable poles from Platinum Stages and have been extremely disappointed with the quality of both the poles and their customer service. If you opt for removable, I would suggest sticking with x-pole; and I think that sentiment will be echoed by others here.

If you are interested in permanently mounted poles, you have several options open to you. I know several options for permanent poles that have worked for others. However, as I have never installed a permanent pole myself, I can’t give a recommendation from experience.

You also need an idea of finishes. Do you want brass, chrome, or stainless? Do you want 45mm, 50mm, or a mix? (my studio uses both)