When I first started pole-ing, everything seemed impossible. There were women in my basic pole class that were climbing to the top of the pole and hanging upside down from one leg… before the warm-up started. I was struggling with a simple fireman spin. But, a little more than a year later, I can now do all the basic spins and many intermediate spins. I can hold myself up on the spinny pole, whereas I couldn’t even attempt it before. I can climb to the top of the pole with confidence and do a plank layback. I can dismount the pole and land with confidence every time in 7″ platform heels. I have to look back and reflect on how far I have come when I’m feeling frustrated with a new move. Right now that move is the basic invert.
I can tuck my legs up and do pole crunches. I can do all the invert prep exercises. I can invert with a spotter. My instructors tell me I am so_close to inverting on my own. Yet… I can’t quite get my head back behind me and my hips up and to the pole. I know some of it is mental. I have always had a fear of being upside down or falling on my head. I think it is a natural fear, but then there are seemingly many people who don’t have this fear. I have even visited a hypnotist to address this obstacle; he said I might have fallen as a child and either frightened myself or a caretaker, and I don’t remember it. By the way, hypnosis didn’t help me with this particular challenge.
I have gained so much strength and confidence from doing pole. One difference really strikes me — now I can see a way forward, or a progression, even into the hardest moves. Tricks that seemed impossible before, I now see broken down into a series of steps, each building on the last. My view of not just pole, but everything, is more positive. I know that that one day my first unassisted invert just going to happen. This was how climbing went. For what seemed like the longest time, I could only climb once. Then one evening, totally unexpected, I climbed to the top of the pole.
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