I love going for pole prac because it gives my brain and body the time to process whatever I’d learned in class. Class moments are always slightly panicky, where you barely hear your teacher’s instructions and you’re just instinctively grabbing on with a random limb in order not to fall and die. Or even just to do a pirouette - ugly as it was, at least you turned on cue, right? But you do want to do it the right way eventually. And that’s why I enjoy the space that pole prac gives me.
How it started
The strength and mind-body connection of pole was a struggle for me. I was (still am) overweight and I’d never done weight training stuff consistently. I was dying to nail the moves and I knew that relying on just class time wasn’t gonna cut it. I’m also a compulsive planner. So I made a list of moves I would practise, along with the time I would spend on each:
I started with the exact same warmup the teacher went through in class, then I slowly and nervously started practising the tricks. I then realised the tricks+time to spend wasn’t the best plan, so I made myself do each trick three times on each side. For tricks I couldn’t do yet, like cradle spin or spin climb, I had to do three good attempts per side. After I was done with tricks, I’d run through the class choreo at least twice. I just felt like three times a side was sufficient to prevent half-assing the trick due to penat (tiredness), leading to possible injury. Cradle was especially hard because I couldn’t find the right positioning to avoid overloading my bottom wrist.
Of course, during beginner days, there weren’t that many moves to train, plus I didn’t know how to connect the moves into combos, so I had plenty of time to kill during the standard 90-minute pole prac. It was a lot of do this trick – fail – look nervously around – sit and watch the video playback – try again. These days, I don’t even have time to watch my videos properly until I’m in the bus home.
Intermediate Ain
Finally got the hang of spin climb, so I moved on to the next level, yay! My pole vocabulary expanded with the ankle grabs and choppers in tricks class and floor moves in chair and exo classes. Suddenly I needed to not be shy and ask random people to spot me during my invert and handstand attempts. (The nicer random people offered to spot me when they saw me struggling <3) Or use the mats, which I found useless for handstands since there’s no wrist support. Unless your mat is extra firm? Idk. Also, inverts are hard so there’s a lot of conditioning required. As my pole vocab grew, I became more interested in creating choreos and freestyling to my favourite songs, instead of the instructor’s chosen songs. So now the second half of my pp time was spent doing dancey stuff – practising class choreos, freestyling, and making up my own choreos.
Home pole
The silver lining in the dark cloud of Covid-19 was the arrival of my home pole in May 2020! Again, a billion thanks to my parents for allowing me to have one in their space, and for helping me put it up! What a game changer. I could listen to my own music all day and practise dumb things without fear of judgement. (Yes, I fear judgement.) I was able to do lunchtime pole prac every single workday! The pole room has no aircon, though, so I would do tricks for 10-15 mins before getting too sweaty and moving on to dance stuff for the rest of the session. Still! I came up with some fun routines during that period.
I continued to book studio pole prac, maybe once a fortnight, so I could get the floor space, heels slideablity, and aircon that my home pole didn’t allow.
I break down my home pole stuff in this PompanJoget post.
Advent of private practice studios
My life changed even more dramatically when the first private pole practice studio, Sirene, opened in late 2020! A safe space with proper floors and a proper mirror to climb and dance however I wanted? Sign me up! With careless abandon, I just started doing whole-studio bookings for just myself and.. I’ve never looked back. I did try booking a single pole a couple of times, but I found it mildly stressful to keep the other person(s) in mind spatially and musically and.. Nope. Whole studio it is. Sometimes I invite my friends, if they’re free to join me! But I really enjoy this time to explore by myself and do silly shit like my M Nasir tarian thing and afrobeats warmups and random ballet turns across the floor.
I promise that I’m using the time productively and that I’m not just taking a nap or browsing IG for half the session. Now my general goals had shifted from just “attain the level tricks, clean up class choreos, create your own stuff” to “attain the level tricks, clean up class choreos, film a nice run of class choreos, create your own stuff”. It takes me about three takes to get an okay run of class choreo, so that’s almost a third of the session. Overall, that looks like:
- 15 mins – warmup
- 20 mins – tricks (still doing the three good attempts approach)
- 20-30 mins – run through and film the class choreo
- 20-30 mins – do fun stuff (take cute pics, freestyle, choreograph something)
- 10 mins – pack up and go!
How it's going
As I get more comfortable with pole, my general goals are now in the “do what makes you happy” region. So there’s still a lot more dancing than tricks practice. When booking choreo classes, 70% of the ones I choose are somewhat in my comfort zone so that I don’t really need to spend pole prac time on them. (“Comfort zone” = old school/slinky stuff with no inverts; “Anxiety zone” = anything with inverts, dancing in heels without holding a pole, contemporary stuff.) For home pp, I spend half an hour foam rolling (SO GOOD) then practise mainly tricks and some floor inversions (shoulder stand, elbow stand, handstand), and skip the heels dancing entirely so that I don’t have to remove the foam mats from around the pole.
I still book at least one studio session every two weeks to do the fun stuff. It’s the best form of me-time. Every pp session has a mental to-do list. Last Friday it was:
- 2 chair-pole contemp combos (right side)
- 2 aerial invert attempts (left side)
- Other chair-pole trippy tricks/moves (spiral, soutenu or whatever that turn is called)
- 2 runs of chair-pole, including 1 with the invert combo at the end
- 1-2 runs of Este Old Skool choreo
- 1x PJ bottoms dancing
And I’m happy to report that I managed all of it! Although all the aerial inverts didn’t reach the V-stage. I refuse to dwell on them for the entire session though, because tricks are boring and dance is fun!
Here's how a typical fortnight looks like for me:
Week | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
1 | Rest | Class | Studio PP | Class | Class | PP@home | Rest |
2 | Rest | -Class -Studio PP | Rest | Studio PP | Class | PP@home | Rest |
See? It’s not that many pole pracs, right?
