Keeping to the theme of ‘New Year, New You’, Her Campus Aberdeen is trying out a new feature about trying everything once. First up on our long list of new hobbies was pole dancing! I know, I know – we started with something REALLY out of our comfort zone! After a bit of research and a few emails back and forth we decided to try out Sole Pole Fitness in the city centre as it looked like the friendliest of classes and they kindly offered us an introductory offer! Sole Pole was set up by the amazing Sian Young who has gone from ‘sleeping rough on the streets of Scotland to dancing on the ceiling’. Sian founded Soul Pole with the aim of ‘promoting freedom of expression and using fitness and fun to help develop a woman’s’ self-confidence’. This was exactly the type of sport, class, mindset and movement that us girls at Her Campus Aberdeen want to promote and be a part of.
Without beating around the bush, pole dancing obviously comes with negative stereotypes. However, after speaking with the girls at Soul Pole and reading up about it I was keen to banish the stereotypes and see what pole dancing was all about in the name of research! The seven of us HC girls arrived nervously at the fitness studio and were met by the lovely Elaine who immediately told us, ‘there’s nothing to be scared of!’ She could clearly tell from our faces that we were all a little bit terrified that 1) we wouldn’t be able to do it and 2) we’d look stupid trying to do it, but Elaine immediately put us at ease and we were keen to get started!
The fitness studio itself was warm and all decked in pink and white with subtly dimmed lights to set the mood. Our class was full so it was great to be surrounded by other women who were just as nervous and as much novices as us! None of us at HC had ever tried pole dancing before so we had no idea what to expect. We were told to grab our mats first and do a quick warm up but what I wasn’t expecting was to be told to get down and do 10 press-ups! This was a lot harder and more strenuous than I ever thought something like pole dancing would be! After a pretty tough but necessary warm up for those of us who don’t work out often we were all raring to go and try some pole dancing.
I was shocked at how quickly we were let loose on the poles. I was expecting to not be allowed to do very much as it was our first ever lesson but within the first quarter we were swinging around the poles and my gosh, you could feel it in your arms! Firstly we were taught how to pull our body weight up on the pole which is a whole lot harder than it looks. Once we had mastered the basic body positions and how to support our body weight we then moved onto the ‘Chair Swing’. I’m not going to pretend that we all got the hang of it straight away, nor did we look strong, sexy or seductive! There were quite a few laughs as we made some hilarious mistakes but it was all in the name of good fun. We then developed onto a few other spinning moves and I was amazed at how quickly most of us picked it up. We also learnt some ‘filler’ moves as they call them like snake or the booty shake which were very good fun to try, even if you felt a bit silly trying to be sexy! My favourite move was what I would call the ‘V Lift’. It’s all about your core and upper body strength and you felt a huge sense of achievement whenever you even slightly managed to get it right.
Once we’d got the hang of some of the moves we got to try some more complex and scary swings which included pretty much swinging your head past the floor. None of us have quite mastered that one yet but it was amazing to actually try it and see with a little bit of work how far you could come! We then had a warm down and relaxation session and that was the hour over. I couldn’t believe how quickly the class had gone and we all left wanting more.
The whole experience was fantastic and we all can’t wait to go back! The instructor made the whole class seem so friendly and put us all at ease and made us very jealous of her skills! The class definitely banished my original stereotype of the exercise and I came out amazed at how much fun I’d had and how much of a work-out I’d gained! I was still hurting 3 days later. I’d always thought I had absolutely zero upper body weight but with Elaine’s encouragement we were all definitely improving quickly by the end. It definitely helps if you have a little dance experience and you have a little bit of core and body weight strength to begin with but I honestly believe that it would be fun for anyone to try. I’d encourage you to ignore the stereotype and try it for yourself as it was definitely a bonding experience for us all. Pole dancing definitely is about being sexy, but I’d say it was even more so about improving your strength and confidence – which in itself will shine out of you and make you feel sexy anyway.
Thanks for having us Sole Pole – we can’t wait to come back and get dancing and swinging again!
If any of you would like to try out a pole dancing class just head to www.soul-pole.com and say we sent you!