Rachel Osborne
Forum Replies Created
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Latin poler that is very good advice, and true about home poling giving you the power to control how you work out so you can choose to work Lower or upper body or just have an easier day as your body needs it. Thank you and I hope you totally enjoy your vacation !
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Gray eyes so sorry to hear about your injury. That is scary. You hit the nail on the head I think, when you said we don’t like being suddenly limited either by injury or buy a body that is not the same as it was in terms of recovery time than it was in our 20s. It’s very hard not to push and push and pull back gracefully from overdoing it ! I hope that your injury is resolved soon and you can find a way to practice what do you enjoy without pain
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Thanks again everybody so much for your kind words and thoughtful posts. I agree that social media challenges, whilst exciting, can’ be a lot of pressure and yes, even keeping up with my feed is exhausting. I will be visiting family in England for three weeks in July and August so there will be an enforced break from pole and probably from social media as well and I am actually really looking forward to it.
I think Instagram challenges have pushed me very far with both pole and yoga-I have learned so much and I am proud of the fact that I taught myself these things, as I am not able to attend classes at my level at the studio because they happen when I have no childcare. But I’ve burned out several times.
I am trying to take more breaks now and doing shorter challenges and giving myself permission to not do moves or to do an easy option. If the challenge of the day is not right for me, or not right for me on that day that’s ok.
I notice if I take 48 hours complete break from pole the next time I pole I’m much stronger and it is so much more enjoyable. The second day I’m not quite as strong – the third day it’s uncomfortable – and on day 4 almost nothing works – and that is the day I usually get injured.
So I am learning to limit what I do and to supplement what I do with cross training and yoga which is more balancing as it works both sides.
Maybe I will just never ever be able to do certain moves because I am not willing to put the time in – the fear is too strong and the risks are too high and I’m actually not sufficiently motivated to push and push and push myself. I have never really wanted to do an Iron X or Fonji for example. There’s no hunger for it. I like flexy flow on spin. I can continue to explore it without doing terrifying moves with a high risk of injury. I still need to stop beating myself up. Literally. There are days I am so badly bruised that I can’t shave my legs or wear a bra.
I wonder why I drive myself so hard, but pole is my way of dealing with stress. When pole itself becomes stressful it gets messy.
Anyway thank you all again.
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That should read I no longer feel immortal!
Anyway thank you all again so very much. Certainly food for thought. I think I need to slow down a bit and not put so much pressure on myself. I wish I wasn’t on my own all the time training.
Yesterday I did manage to get to an evening yoga arm balance and inversion workshop and it was so cool to be able to try out all these things that I have been doing alone and self-taught with a proper teacher and a group of fellow students. It felt much safer and more gentle.
I envy all the other pole dance students here who don’t have a heavy Instagram presence and don’t need one because they have a happy pole family support system and see each other regularly every week.
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Thank you all so very much everybody for your incredibly kind and wise words. I’m so sorry I am slow in responding to this discussion. I have been thinking a great deal about all that you have said so generously and thoughtfully. There is very much truth in what you say – I am certain of it. Certainly the feeling of invincibility fell away after the first serious fall.
That was well over a year ago, but it shocked me and the reverberations from it still go on. I crash out often but I know how to fall and I’m very rarely hurt. But as the spins for faster, the tricks harder, the sequences longer and the ascent higher – plus I added in habitually wearing high heels – none of it got any easier. And the floor is concrete – the pole is 9.5 feet – the carpet is very thin. It hurts to fall.
I think a lot of it comes down to doing all these pole/yoga challenges on social media and they becoming my main source of training and motivation . I can’t get to a studio much, and the advancedclassrs are at an impossible time for me and have been so for three years so instagram community challenges became my online pole family support system.
Another stressor was that I was always feeling pushed for time. So I was not resting in between attempts to film everything I needed to get done to keep up.
Training when tired because there wasn’t going to be another chance for days and days . Rushing through multiple trick combos because there wasn’t really time to warm up – warm down -,stretch – flow – concentrate – research what I needed to do – and fit it all into an hour. Because I didn’t want to let myself or anyone else down.
When I attend pole classes now – infrequently because I can’t get to them often – I am amazed at how easy it is. I am used to training so much harder . For so much longer . Trying things over and over again .
And finally reminders of mortality. My early menopause, friends getting cancer, I no longer feel him immortal.
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((Hugs)) sorry to hear of stress ðŸ™I might start a new thread on this because it’s bothering me and I guess it could be helpful for to talk about it – glad it’s not just me
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I always go in from a tumble.
I’m still weird about brass monkey, I love how it looks but it always scares me. I seem to be getting more and more scared of certain tricks and avoiding themThis vid shows my usual wayhttps://www.studioveena.com/videos/view/5744f445-2cc4-4440-ae26-0011ac110005
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Veena you rock so hard 💜💜💜💜
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It took me forever to get happy inverting. It is labeled here as intermediate not beginners and rightly so: sure, some people can chuck themselves upsidedown aftef 3 lessons and approximate a leg hang – but they are doing it wrong. If I had truly taken the time to enjoy building strength, stability, grace, muscle memory by enjoying the first 2 years I restarted pole and put the time into flowing, spinning, doing floorwork and flexibility, playing with choreography and freestyle…I would not have been repeatedly injured and I would be a better dancer. If you want to leg hang, if you want to flow, fly then DANCE round your pole FIRST. Every static spin, every fireman to step around, every spin mode freestyle, every single dance where you sweat and strut and lose yourself rolling on the floor is where you build your inversion practice. Then, because your shoulders are strong and know how to engage, your hips know how to lift and your core how to engage, your knee pits knows how to lock and your foot how to pivot and your glutes know how to power you up…it will be easy. This is the Veena method and it works. You will get to a point where you know you are ready and you stand next to your pole, hips in front and up you go. The lessons on inverts here are great. But it’s all the stuff and the lessons you do first that open the door
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I mean aerial flares on spin.
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I’d love a lesson on aerial flares/fan kicks 😊
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https://instagram.com/p/_4IxHApclt/
The creators of the Vortex Marlo Fisken and Dr Ken Pole Ninja made a tips video
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Squeal! So excited for you! 💜💜💜💜
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Here you go https://instagram.com/p/BDBYxjfFDO6/
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I sometimes do a sideways brass monkey thing so keep the hooking leg on pole and grab other leg and pull it close to my ear. I will see if I can find a video or a photo at least
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if recorded on an iPhone try using Moonlight app to reformat it – it uploads much faster than straight from phone
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Unfortunately I can’t see video on iPhone and have no Karoo but I hope you have a lovely stretching session âï¸ðŸ’œðŸ˜Ž
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Bailey Day is very good at low flow – but as has been said, it’s really advanced! It’s very hard on the wrists as a lot of it is akin to yoga hand balancing – so definitely not an easier option if you can’t invert/spin without pain
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A pic if it helps
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They are new poles and the studio only opened in November….the teacher says they are brass – and they flex more than chrome. I dont remember a smell of brass though, will check next time.
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It’s brass, ordered from X pole brand new! There are two at the studio and the others are chrome
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I was experimenting recently as the studio has brass and chrome – I found brass grippy at first but it became slick as I warmed up – pole broke a cold sweat as I broke a warm one! The more I freestyled the worse it got. Chrome needs to warm up to be grippy and I still have to wipe it down but nothing like as bad as brass which felt like it was weeping mineral oil after 3 minutes. I asked other dancers on Insta and several others said the same. So just chucking that in as it seems not everyone sticks to brass!
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Congratulations on making an excellent decision. Your body spoke with wisdom and you are honoring her wisdom and listening to her. I think the consequences of you not listening and forcing yourself through a performance could have been dire, on terms of the cost to your health, your mental wellbeing and your peace of mind. I think you would have risked potentially serious injury – either physical or mental – and if you hadn’t listened now, when? What would have happened next?
I think you’ve had a lucky escape. I also have no doubt that not only your beautiful dance practice but also your sense of power and self belief and self reliance will be the stronger and wiser for the decision you made. Instead of saying no, you actually said yes. Yes to your body. Yes to yourself. Yes to having limits and honoring them. Yes to YOU being worth listening to. Yes to your needs and desires being as important as someone else’s. Yes to you being worth fighting to protect from harm. Yes to you being worth cherishing.
The next time you dance publicly will be as a dancer who has felt the power of saying no and choosing yes. It will be fucking spectacular. I look forward to seeing the video.
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Woodwinked the leg position is quite different for inside and outside leg hang. In addition there are really 2 inside leg hang positions: short hooked leg and longer extended leg and it depends on what move you are transitioning into/from which works best. When you try out leg hang positions from the floor you will be able to feel the different contact points: outside leg hang has the pole in the knee pit and inside leg hang has the leg wrapped around the pole pressing the inside thigh and inside top of calf plus the ankle into the pole.
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