Pole Dancing

I was going to make this a bulletin, but I want to immortalize it lmao. Sorry for no HTML yet, just wanted to get my thoughts down...

So, I am officially 11 classes (and roughly ~2.5 months) into my aerial-arts journey. I can rock-and-rolls, a squat split, and different standing and sitting poses on the trapeze. I can ALMOST mount the top of the lyra, but I can also do many seated and below-the-hoop poses (bird's nest is probably my favorite), I finally managed to climb halfway to the top of the silks with both a russian and french climb, and I... honestly remember nothing from sling. I can do a crooked box?

So anyways, a girl in my classes recommended a place that also does aerials, just for some variety. This place also does pole dancing, and is closer to my college I'm moving to NEXT! WEEK! So I figured I'd give it a try. Couldn't find an opening for lyra, but they had a mandatory "glance" class for all new students, so I went.

Guys.

This was stripper training 101

Nothing wrong with that! But oh my god. I wanted a workout, not a discount code for pleasers and a burlesque floor routine?! We spent all of 30 seconds (not exaggerating) learning how to "climb," but the teacher didn't want us actually climbing. Turns out it is literally the exact same as a russian climb, but she only wanted us to mount and stand up, no real climbing. 

What we did instead was talk about the studio for 10 minutes as she explained the classes they offered and basically tried to sell them to us. Then she just assumed we are all familiar with pole (???) and the different types there are (I still don't know what they are) but then jumped into a warmup. 

This woman was like. Older middle-aged. And we got to listen to my dad's teenage playlist as we did basically 80s aerobics. Ballet has us doing intense tendus and pliés as a warmup, and in aerials we do squats, pushups, pull ups, climbs, mounts/descents in succession... But this class? 80s aerobics. We did maybe 5 baby calf-raises and people were complaining about their calves burning. ??????

We then spent 15 minutes learning how to WALK. AROUND THE POLE. Now if you work in a club, great skill to have. BUT DOES IT REALLY TAKE 15 MINUTES? The trick, btw, is to just point your fucking foot. It's just tendu, degagé, step, drag, tendu, degagé.... FIFTEEN MINUTES

Then the instructor taught us "spins" which are just... Standing on one leg, leaning until you fall onto the other. 180 degrees and then finally 360 degrees about 10 minutes later (360 just has you bending one knee. crazy, i know) and then she let us put glue on our hands and clean our poles if we needed. In aerials we also have adhesive we spray on our hands, because as you sweat it makes you slippery, and when you're holding up your entire body weight, that's dangerous.

BUT WE WERE JUST WALKING!!! there was no hanging or inverting or climbing or anything :( So after a few more minutes of cleaning... We did a REAL hang. Using both hands and the back of one knee. Then the other side, then the "mount" for a russian climb. And that was the end of class.

That was all the real progress we made. It was an overwhelming amount of chatting, advertising, and being crass for the sake of it. Like I have no problem with sex positivity - I am extremely sex positive myself which is why I signed up lmfao - but telling someone they HAVE to shake their ass to WALK? AROUND? A? POLE??? let people feel themselves! If they're more interested in their feet let them have their moment :( and then the outdated music, the outdated male-gaze-y moves... it was so yuck. Like we spent so much of our little floor routine bent over on all fours. I H A T E D it. But it was required..... :(

So, now I know: I fucking hate pole, and I am NEVER taking advice from that girliepop again!!!!!!