CAN WE POLE DANCE TO A CENTURY?

People who know me know that I love old people, especially old ladies. They're just people who are almost magical because they have all these secrets and all this knowledge locked away from years and years of experience in life, love and loss, and they always seems to have this awesome ability to just accept everything that life throws at them with a sense of calm and dignity.

I came across this article and I had to share with you. 

It made me think about how these ladies have experienced life in a world we will never ever know. Wars, lack of health care, lack of public support systems or education, and they fought through a time when women were regarded very differently to how they are today. 

These are just three women who have shared their stories, but I couldn't help noticing the common thread in each of their stories. Something they attribute to their living to the ripe age of beyond-a-hundred-years...BEING ACTIVE!

Whether it's yoga, athletics or ping pong, these gorgeous lassies all tout getting off their butts as a contributing factor to their living longer.

Ruth is 102, lives with her daughter in the GC and took up athletics when she was in her 70s. The only thing she doesn't like about herself? Her red hair and freckles! Sister, I feel your pain, but you should totally accept yourself...and always wear your SPF30+

   We already know how amazing pole dancing is for increasing bone density and physical exercise certainly seems to be the secret to a long healthy life, so I'm going to take a leaf out of the book of Bet, Dot and Ruth and keep on swinging for as long as I can.

See you at 100!

POLE DANCE - MY OTHER TRUE LOVE

In a post from earlier this year I said this year I was going to become the best pole dancer I could be in 2012 and that I was going to strive to achieve a multitude of milestones with skills and flexibility.

The best laid plans, huh?!

The best part of three months ago, I sustained a shoulder injury and have been away from pole for most of this time. I also made a promise to my body at the beginning of this year to do right by it and so instead of being stubborn and pushing through potentially making the injury worse, I stopped, started physio and rehab. When the injury happened I thought, great – I have a body that is stronger, leaner and more flexible than ever before and now I'm risking relapsing back to the old Em who loved her lounge, her pyjamas, her Foxtel and her Paddle Pops. I was scared to say the least, but I told myself there was no reason to regress to my former debaucherous lifestyle of snuggledome – I was a new person with the knowledge, skills and willpower of a fit person who loved all exercise…or so I thought.

This is pretty much how I felt after stopping pole. The break was good for my shoulder, not so good for my soul!

So, even though I couldn’t move my right arm and wasn’t permitted to perform any repetitious actions with it, I signed up to my local gym and started going every weeknight to work on my cardio fitness and toning my lower body. The treadmill, cycle and elliptical machines were good, even though I looked like I had a stroke with one arm glued immobile to the side of my body, and lunges, squats and legs presses all became part of my regime. I also used my home pole to keep up my reverse curls, touch downs and other core conditioning exercises a few times a week. As physio progressed and my arm started to heal and regain mobility, I integrated light weights to a targeted upper body routine. I also monitored my diet even more strictly than even while I was still at pole – I was so hyper-aware of becoming like Gilbert Grape’s mother that I was all about vegies, protein and almost zero sugar.

As the weeks went by, I started getting bored with a capital ‘B’. The same walk to the gym in the cold, the same fight for the machines, seeing the same sweaty, desperate faces of the drones clothed head to toe in saggy grey marl workout clothes and the same shitty line up on those annoying little TV screens (5.30pm Millionaire Hot Seat, 6pm News, 6.30pm A Current Affair, 7pm The Project. Seriously. Don’t get me started on the crud people settle for on network TV).

I started to make excuses for not going – ‘I better give myself a recovery day’, ‘I think I have a headache coming on’, ‘I have to clean the house or it will fall down’, ‘I have my period for the fourth time this month’ – and because I wasn’t having any fun, I had to wonder - why I was pushing myself to do it?

Being a true believer in the notion that you only get one life and, therefore, once chance to be happy and content with every choice you make, I have a real problem with wasting time on things that make me bored or unhappy. Not seeing my family to go to pole most nights was not an issue because I just loved pole – I would look forward to it throughout the day and have a ball when I was there, no matter what I was doing – but missing out on family time, relaxing time, errand time and, sleeping time to go and run on a treadmill just so I didn’t get a pot belly was something I just couldn’t seem justify.

And despite my commitment to this new pole-less fitness regime and diet of mine, although I hadn’t gained any weight per se, I had started to feel extremely…heavy. My clothes started fitting differently, bits felt more prominent in the shower and I started becoming aware of an all-too-familiar feeling of discomfort when I was in tight clothes or if my partner touched my thighs or belly. My body was changing. It wasn’t drastic or perhaps even visible to anyone else, but it certainly was to me and, let me tell you, I didn’t like it. Having said that, this wasn’t enough to make me excited about the gym or motivated to undertake conventional workouts. I didn’t want to get ‘fat’ but I really didn’t want to be bored and that part of me kind of won.

I have come to the conclusion from this whole experience that nothing – NOTHING – shapes the body like pole dance does, not in the same way. It’s not about trying to lose weight loss or about being superbly muscle-y, but there is just a general sculpting that pole affords the body in the most complete way. For example, we might think we’re not using our legs that much in class or perhaps that we’re not sweating as much as we would in a pump class, but for that one hour our bodies are firing on all cylinders HTT (that’s Tyra Banks speak for ‘head-to-toe’).

The results are a flat stomach from our core engaging, smooth hips from recruiting the obliques, minimal back-fat from working through our lats, lifted butt from squeezing in every move, toned thighs and calves from pulling up and extending in everything. Even when out feet are on the floor we’re switched on and THAT is why most pole dancers have that certain look that we all want to achieve.



I Can.

Today, my shoulder is recovering, and I have been back at Studio Verve in pole classes for a few weeks now and it is a sensation of coming home. It’s certainly not easy and I'm not taking anything for granted, but each time I get back on a pole, my body remembers what it was 12 weeks ago and that it’s simply a journey to get back there. I feel that getting my pole-self back is like slipping into a well-worn pair of jeans after wearing a restrictive party dress or sliding on our fave pair of Havaianas for the first time after wearing leather boots all winter. In other words, it’s easier for me to be at pole than it is for me to be away from it.

It’s so good to be back. I have missed the team, the dear students and the energy of Studio Verve. I am so encouraged and inspired by everyone, especially how strong my former students are, and all the amazing things that are happening.

This has been my longest hiatus from pole since I started at Verve five and a half years ago and during this time I’ve gained a lot of perspective and I’ve remembered why I love it so much and how much it feeds me personally. Pole has truly become part of who I am, almost like I was always meant to do it J My body feels abnormal when it’s been off a pole for any length of time and nothing equates.

I’ve heard a lot of people use the term ‘pole addict’, but I prefer ‘pole lover’. And I guess it is kind of like true love – it has taught me so much about myself and even though I've dabbled in other forms of fitness, nothing can ever compare to the real thing.

POLE GOLD - OUR OLYMPIC DREAM

With the London Games well underway, the topic of pole dance as an Olympic sport is hotter than the GB men’s diving team (*swoon*)

Everyone, from pole schools to clothing manufacturers, is weighing in and the attitude is unanimous – it’s only a matter of time before we’re there. And in some cases, it’s a travesty that pole gold isn’t already being awarded in Queen Lizzie's hood.

But has pole dance evolved enough in the eyes of those outside the industry, or is this a case of running before we can air walk?

Any of us who has ever touched a pole are aware of the physical strength it takes to be a successful pole dancer and those of us who have performed professionally, competed or simply pushed our skills for whatever reason, are aware of the mental strength and focus that’s required to truly be the best. Injury, sacrifice and coping with failure are also a part of pushing our bodies to its very limits and standing out as champions of what we do.  

But the question at the forefront of my mind whenever this debate kicks off is who judges the best from the worst in the world of pole dancing? Without a universal system in place for judging skills and performance, and with a competition in existence for every ‘style’, it seems a premature move to debut pole to the world when it feels as if we’re only just now beginning to crack the code of unifying competitive pole, even at a national level.

The tired argument of what style of pole dance is more valid is just that. Every pole dancer knows it’s not about what you wear on your feet, but how you execute skills combined with the je ne sais quoi you bring that separates the good from the amazing. As an industry, it’s time for us to come together and fight the stereotyped perceptions of the uninitiated and push forward. There’s no question that pole pushes the human body as much as, and sometimes more than, many Olympic sports. We don’t need to bother entering into artistic gymnastics comparisons or the argument that there’s already one style of pole in the Olympics (in vault form, granted)…



Is it just me, or does Tatiana's bod look as fit as a pole dancer?!



Perceptions of pole from outside the pole industry need to be informed. As I’m sure Aussies Kerri Pottharst and Natalie Cook fought to define beach volleyball beyond rolling around in the sand in bikinis, potential Olympic competitors need to decide what image we want to project to the world – I mean, what is a pole dancer?



Showing skin clearly doesn't bother the IOC and is integral to many sports. In beach vollyball, it's written in the rules...



Perhaps that’s not even the name we want. Do we become defined by masters of our apparatus, the Vertical Bar? What are the skills that would be judgeable at a competitive level and will these be different for male and female competitors? Will it be an artistic discipline with judgeable dance elements or be strictly skills based? And now for the question that will launch pole dance civil war – STATIC or SPINNING? BRASS or CHROME? 38, 45 OR 50mm?????

Man, I would love to be a fly on the wall at that round table discussion (and for the record – spinning, brass, 38 J)

The bottom line is obviously that there are still so many questions to be answered and parameters to be defined with taking pole competition to the world and the average Jolene watching the Olympics with her kiddies. With every pole comp we have the opportunity to inch closer to our Olympic goal, but with a new comp popping up more regularly that McDonald’s restaurants and each with it’s own set of rules, I can’t help but feel that we drifting further away…

That being said, we should all be proud to be a part of an industry that has successfully survived infancy, childhood and that is now entering adolescence. It’s a period of mood swings, defiance, striving to fit in and lots of attitude, but I’ve no doubt that on the other side of this phase the pole dance industry will emerge as clearly-defined and with it’s own identity, filled with a generation’s worth of young champions.

The parallels between pole and gym are obvious.

And if it does end up at the Olympics, I’ll be there with the Aussie flags painted on my cheeks screaming, “Oi, Oi, Oi!!”with the rest of us.

And who knows? With the eldest 2012 gymnastics competitor representing at 39 years – I might even find myself on the winner’s podium one day…okay, please stop laughing.



Dream It, Breathe It, BE IT!!