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A couple of videos for you
Just a quick post with a couple of videos for you.
First up, a performance from Sarah Scott that blows my mind – she’s SO strong. Like, beast strong. It’s AWESOME. I met her briefly at PoleCon 2012, so it’s neat to finally check out her performance style. She’s got a couple of aerial and shoulder mount sequences that are incredible, and I like some of her other moves – she’s got a shoulder stand floor move that I’d like to breakdown, and I actually brought one of her pole sequences into class late last year – it’s a combo from an odd spin into a series of grip poses, then some planks from the floor to pole. (I’m not explaining it well, but I have no idea what any name of any trick in it would be.)
And, then there’s little ol’ me, trying my best to learn a new sequence at my last Lyra class. I’ve been struggling a bit the last few weeks – more tired than usual, and it could either be that I’ve been sick (especially the last two weeks) and run down, or it could be that the difficulty of the tricks has finally caught up to where my strength level is. Not sure yet. This week was tough on me, though – the sick factor really took more out of me than I realized (which is not a fun thing to discover when you’re in a single knee hang). I’m struggling a bit in this video, but Leigh is walking me through each new move patiently, since I didn’t get a chance to string them together before this moment – I’d tried one of the tricks twice successfully, one of them once successfully, and one of them once rather unsuccessfully, so the entire thing was pretty new to me, except for the knee hang portion and the mermaid. The one I’m working with near the end is called The Dislocater (not sure if that’s just Leigh’s name for it), and it lands into two pretty tricks, but getting into it is awkward as hell (as you can see). Hoping to have it down a bit better next week!
I’m back in class tomorrow and Thursday – hoping my body doesn’t put up too much of a fight – and am tentatively scheduled to finally head out with a pole friend to play with my Most-Fit suspension strap. Between being so sick, it being my busy season with my pet sitting business, and the weather acting up every time I made plans to go outside to use it, I haven’t been able to test it properly yet. Excuse, excuses, I know. 🙂
Still no word on whether I’ve got a spot in the PPC 2013 showcase, but I do think I have my song/theme if I get in! Also, we’re working on getting new merchandise ready for Poleitical Clothing – hope to launch it at Pole Show LA, if we end up getting a vendor booth. 🙂
A month?
How has it been a month since I last posted? Oh, I was busy, that’s why. 
I haven’t been to my usual pole class in a couple of weeks, because of travel and work, but I did hit up lyra this week, and I had a drop in class at a studio in Illinois – which I’ll post about separately. I’m currently debating whether or not I want to compete again next year in PPC. If you haven’t read my post on what my experiences were like when I first competing, I do recommend it – not just because I wrote it, but because I really tried hard to present the experience clearly and to be really honest about what it took to do it. It was exhausting and expensive, and while I ultimately had a good time at the competition itself, I don’t know that I’d do it again.
However, I keep thinking of ideas for routines. I get ideas while I’m driving, I hear songs and think of movement, and I generally find myself still mulling it over. It’s such a commitment, though. The money, the time, the wear and tear on your body…registration opens in December. Maybe I’ll figure it out before then…
Lyra was fun this week – smaller class, so more time up in the hoop. We’re working on stringing little mini routines together, which has been a good challenge. It allows us to build on what we’ve learned already while still cementing it. I had three weeks off from class, so I was happy to see that I remembered everything, even if my grip was exhausted pretty quickly. I wish I could go to lyra twice a week. The bruises are terrible, though, soooo…maybe it’s better that I keep it to once a week! 🙂 Anyway, here’s a new video from class – I was working on holding each pose for a 2 count and smoothing transitions. I stopped my own spin, unfortunately – Leigh pops in at the start to spin me, but I accidentally stopped it when I did the pump to get momentum to go up into the hoop (that move is allowable for now – it allows me a smoother transition once I’m up, instead of fighting for it right off the bat). The hoop still spins during the routine, but not as much as it could. I have to work out how to transition into other moves that I know, too. We’re focusing on this sequence a lot right now – but, that’s almost 2 minutes, which is great! It didn’t feel like 2 minutes at all while I was doing it!
working on my fake split hang (I don’t have great splits)
I have other stuff I want to post this week – hoping the holiday gives me some free time to do it!
Tying it together
At today’s Lyra class, we worked on tying our tricks together and smoothing out our transitions – something important for pole, too! I’m still working on making combos mesh well and smoothing out the moments between tricks so that I get rid of the awkward, “okay, now I’m gonna do a trick” pause.
With Lyra, it feels like I know a lot of tricks for someone who started 2 months ago, but I don’t yet know how to full incorporate all of them. If I mount one way, I can get into this trick and that trick, but I haven’t figured out how to get back around to do these other three tricks, and then if I mount this other way…yeah, it goes on. So, in today’s class, Leigh had us working on transitions within a specific series of tricks off of the Mermaid. We had the option of taping ourselves, so we could learn a little more – video below! – and we also had to work in pairs at the end! She had us pair up to choreograph our movements – again, doing the same specific movements, but we could add more if we both knew how to do them – and then having to sync our movements while performing on different hoops. It was an interesting exercise! We also worked on center straddle mounts – Leigh makes it look so easy and stunning, but damn, it’s hard! I’d venture to say that it’s harder than straight leg inverts on the pole, but that’s also not my strong suit (still tweaks my back a bit). I was able to do the straddle mount better on the shorter hoop, so I ended up practicing more on that one. We did a fair amount of conditioning for that mount, so I am hopeful to get to continue and improve!
Anyway, here’s my video from today’s class – I’ve already launched up to mount the hoop when it starts, but you’ll see Leigh spin me – she wanted us to all work while the hoops were spinning, so she gave us each a spin just after we inverted. It’s such a challenge when spinning, and I had a momentary panic attack about getting dizzy, but the moment I focused very intently on what trick I was doing and where my hands needed to be, I was able to work through the spinning and not get dizzy – I’m still working on that with spinning pole!!!
Also, a couple of videos of Leigh, because she’s awesome:
This is her performance from CPDC 2012, which I loved:
Lyra: Hoop Dreams
I took my first Lyra (aerial hoop) class today, at Evolve Dance Studio! It was fun! My pole training comes in handy in terms of the strength and muscle memory, but it is still tough! A lot of upper body strength (at least, it was for me, being new), and you need strong abs for control. I learned how to get up into the hoop (still working on how to do that gracefully!), plus some basic tricks: stag, mermaid, drapey mermaid, and a move whose name I forgot, but it involves using one foot to “stand” on the hoop – you really end up hanging from the top of the hoop (using your hands/arms) and have one foot pushing the hoop away, with your legs sort of extended into a split, so the back leg is hanging down. At any rate, it was a ton of fun, but definitely taxed my hands – need major calluses! My grip was okay – I had to rub my arms out on a nearby pole during my down time, to be able to continue, but it worked. My left hand still isn’t at full strength, but the right felt good being my strong arm for this apparatus! I need better conditioning for some of it, but by the end of the hour, I was able to get up and tie together all of the moves I had learned, and flow through them reasonably well – that was fun!
Poleitical Diaries 