New Post with Bad Kitty USA! The human body is a marvelous creation. No matter how challenging the workout, eventually the body adapts. Each week, we have a routine: we attend the same pole classes and for the most part work on the same moves or related moves. Of course this depends on the level, but once past the beginner realm it’s easy to get stuck. Perhaps class has gotten more difficult and you aren’t getting new moves as quickly as you once did. You feel like you are st

New Article with Bad Kitty USA. If you visit different pole studios around the world, it’s apparent that different combinations are taught in those studios, diverse teaching methods are employed and there is a distinctive vibe in each studio. From a business perspective, this is all well and good, but the real art behind a pole studio is having a positive classroom environment and fulfilling classes where students not only learn pole but feel like they are a part of somethin

New Post with Bad Kitty USA! Learn three classic burlesque moves that you can incorporate into pole routines and choreo. http://www.badkitty.com/news/classic-burlesque-dance-moves-pole/ Video of Classic Burlesque Moves! Pole’s heritage comes from diverse sports and dance mediums and shares a common history with burlesque dance. The Burlesque dance in the United States began with hurly-burly girls of the 1860s, dancers and performers who provided entertaining social commentary

Strength is obviously a key component in making a break through in pole, however teaching the body the mechanics and how to engage muscles in a proper order also contribute to moving off a plateau. The point of the selected moves in this article are for total body engagement and working on feeling connected to the entire body, or employing complete muscle groups during pole. The goal is to not only connect to the dominant muscles, such as the upper back, but to start uniting

There are now three posts about the Thrower's Ten on this blog, but I promised I would write a post on the actual Thrower's Ten PT moves that I use for injury prevention in aerial arts and pole. The Thrower's Ten is a series of physical therapy rehab moves that strengthen and stretch the shoulder girdle. The moves were developed to rehab athletes coming from throwing sports like baseball or racquet sports like tennis. For pole and aerial arts we can use this series to help st

When I started with pole nine years ago, it was the dark ages, but we still had killer moves. To this day, I still teach beginning moves that I learned when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The foundation moves of pole, the dance, the spins, lifts are often shoved out of the spotlight by bigger flashier moves. Without basics many of us could not have built the strength or learned the movement of pole. Beginning students needs the basics to get strong, train muscle memory and movem

Lately I have been re-obsessed with floor work and there certainly has been resurgence in the pole industry for coming back to floor work. Competition pole even requires some floor work and that's awesome. The trainer in me is always looking for ways to give students a workout. The dancer is me wants the workout to feel flowing and beautiful. I put together a few floor moves that accomplish both ideals. These floor moves are great additions to classes and provide a total body

This post is a follow-up to a post for the PoleCon Blog, which is a short tutorial on the Butterfly. The focus was on the Tuck position and getting the correct arm positions, shoulder engagement and core engagement. Learning the Butterfly with progression is critical, start with the tuck, then the Butterfly and finally the Extended Butterfly. After mastering the tuck position, then and only then is it time to try Butterfly. I put together a short video on how all the componen

At Atmosphere Fitness, we talk a lot of exercise science and fitness in our trainings. We do this from a safety and progression standpoint, but we also include dance. Dance basics can help everyone in aerial arts and pole to find better posture, beautiful lines and that polished finish all performers desire. We wanted to select one dance principle and talk about it. Extension Extension means lengthening through the body to find the full expression of a pose. Basically it is

Let’s explore the most effective and safe ways to stretch: Static, Dynamic and Facilitated. This post is focused on Static Stretching. When developing flexibility the goal is to increase the range of motion in the joints in not just a safe way, but in a way that is effective for the chosen sport. Aerial and pole, like dance and yoga, require higher levels of flexibility especially with progression into difficult moves. At the top levels of our pursuits, there is a demand for