Content is like an engine. Not just any engine, I mean the jet propelling, rocket-fuelled type. Not only does content drive prospective customers to your website, it’s also an opportunity to establish your voice as a knowledgeable professional in your industry. But, as more and more content is produced (there are 42.6 million new... Read more »
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By now, you probably know that Facebook is the biggest social media platform around. Its 1.49 billion monthly active users make it the perfect space for small businesses in need of valuable exposure. Once your business is present on Facebook, you have to think of ways to maximize your views or let people know that... Read more »
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We all know about the roller coaster of emotions that precede a PSO competition, but that doesn’t mean the second you step off the stage those crazy emotions end. Check the 6 Emotional Post Competition Stages We All Go Through:
Colleen Jolly – CPC 2014
1. Exhilaration
There is nothing better than the moment you get off stage after finishing your competition piece. Even if you didn’t have a perfect run, you completed something awesome! It is nothing short of exhilarating! You can ride that high through the rest of the competition and maybe even into the next day. It will get you though the immediate fatigue and onto the next phase…
SPC 2014
2. Relief
After the adrenaline of competition dies down you are just thankful for being done with it! You survived – WOOHOO!! The marathon training sessions and late night dress rehearsals are over. At this point you just want to get away from the crowds and exhale. Treat yourself and your friends or significant other (who had to put up with your non-stop poling) to a relaxing dinner to celebrate you are finished!
SydneyPollard – APC 2014
3. Exhaustion
What comes after relief? Your body suddenly realizing how tired it is. Ugh, all those aches and pains you powered through to get to competition day come back with a vengeance! You’ve been poling almost everyday for the months leading up to the competition and now you just need to veg out on the couch and catch up on your Netflix. While watching your fellow competitors might inspire your future pole journey, it is totally normal for you to take a break before embarking on a new path.
Brittin Wagner – CPC 2014
4. Depression
The not-so-fun, but completely normal after effect of competing: depression. You’ve just spent several months of your life focused on a singular goal. Every action you took – from the food you ate to the music you listened to – was done for the specific purpose of creating your dream competition piece. Now that it is over all that focused energy has no where to go and it can put you in a funk that takes some time to get out of.
Elisa Duangputra – PAAC 2014
5. Recovery
Hopefully, you don’t get stuck in the low point of the post-competition emotions for too long. It can take some to get motivated to return to your normal training schedule and that’s okay. Try taking different types of aerial classes or pole classes that focus on the fun or sexy movement and not tricks. Take yourself out of your comfort zone and get pumped about new elements in your aerial journey.
Victoria Griffin – CPC 2014
6. Inspired
Depending on your training regimen and the type of poler or aerialist you are it may be weeks or months before you are really excited about your apparatus again. It might even feel like the divine inspiration you received the first time around will never come back. I promise you it will. Whether it’s a new trick or the perfect song, something will get you inspired to compete again!
The post 6 Emotional Post Competition Stages We All Go Through appeared first on Pole Sport Organization.
[Ellen Robinson | The Beach Reporter]
The last time Danielle Gray was in the news she was a Girl Scout in the 90s. The 22-year-old Manhattan Beach native has since put her sash away and has moved up from being an amateur pole sports competitor to the professional level after this year’s U.S. National Pole Championships held last weekend at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center.
Gray won second place in the Level Four Championship Junior division earning her a spot competing with her coaches at next year’s event. More than 150 professional and amateur pole dancers from other regional competitions competed during the weekend-long event in the categories: women’s professional, men’s professional and amateurs, artistic professional and amateurs and lyra, which consists of movement inside an aerial hoop. Prior to the national competition, Gray qualified to compete after placing third in February at the Pacific Pole Championship.
While she hit her routine perfectly during practice on Thursday before the event, she was sure she wasn’t going to place because she had messed up doing an inside leg hang and transitioning to a move called a scorpion. She said the pole was spinning too fast.
“I would have flown off, so I had to modify my routine.”
Gray was the first competitor in her division on Sunday to take to the pole, so she had the opportunity to watch her teammates and competitors’ routines with her mom in the crowd of nearly 800 people.
“I knew I had messed up and I kept seeing these people do their routines and I was saying to myself, ‘she hit hers perfectly, I don’t have a chance of even getting on the board,’” Gray said. “I knew I could have done better, had I not hit it perfectly on that Thursday before, I probably would have been more satisfied with the fact that I messed up.”
She said being able to compete at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center was an honor. She grew up just a few blocks from the center.
“It was really cool to perform on the stage where my mom went to high school; she attended Aviation High!”
Pole dancing isn’t something Gray always knew that she wanted to do. Gray was a competitive gymnast in her youth and then transitioned to musical theater while attending Mira Costa High School. She graduated in 2010 and went on to study public relations and consumer behavior at USC.
During her sophomore year, a friend convinced her to sign up for a pole dancing fitness class on campus. Her friend didn’t like it, but Gray had found a new outlet for both self-expression and fitness. She continued taking classes during college and then joined a pole dancing fitness studio after college graduation.
While pole dancing often has a stigma, Gray, like many other amateur and professional pole dancers, is not a stripper.
“I had a pole in my college apartment and when the maintenance people would come in, they would always look at me like, ‘okay,’” she said. “I think the stigma is starting to change. I think when it first started becoming popular, people associated it with strippers and night life, but I don’t really know how to do those types of routines. I’m also into going up to Muscle Beach and practicing acro yoga, calisthenics and parkquor, basically the aerial arts. I think now that pole dancing has a national fitness competition, the stigma is even less,” Gray said. “They are even trying to get it into the Olympics as a sport. Pole dancing was first done by men in India.”
Gray, an account manager for online marketer Wpromote, said she practiced her artistic routine for months. With her background in gymnastics and musical theater, artistic pole dancing appeals to her.
“It’s a different kind of pole dancing. We train for months, then have to pick out a song and develop a character with a storyline. This routine’s character was personal to me. It was about a young woman who fell for a guy and her frustration of not ever being enough for him. My character tried over and over to get him to commit, but he kept pulling away, and then, in the end, I reach out one last time, then stop myself because I’m grown. I’m a better person now and I’m done with him,” she said. “So my coach choreographed my routine to express my reaching out and being pushed away. I had to portray this through my dance instead of just relying on facial expressions—Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center is a huge venue.”
Her song was “Unconditionally” by Katy Perry.
Gray said she is excited to have earned the opportunity to compete next year against her coaches in the professional division. She has a pole in her apartment that she uses for practice and she drives out to The Vertitude Studio in Canoga Park three times each week. She has her eye on the gold medal in next year’s national competition.
To learn more about pole dancing fitness, check out Gray on Instagram
The post Danielle Gray moves from amateur to pro at the U.S. National Pole Championships appeared first on Pole World News.
“It is just a kind of dance, it isn’t a vulgar dance. And my family members all support me. I want to prove that age does not mean anything as long as you persist.”
While many elderly women in China spend their free time joining in public square-dancing sessions or accompanying their husbands on backwards walks through the park, this 70-year-old woman in Chengdu, Sichuan province practices pole dancing in very own bedroom.
The woman, called Dai Dali, first learned to pole dance at a gym four years ago and is now able to pull of moves that most people half her age couldn’t accomplish.
Dai had participated in a number of competitions and was even named winner of the Fifth China Pole Dance Championship. She loves the sport so much, she’s had a pole installed in her bedroom.
Images of her twirling around on the ol’ pole have made the rounds online, inspiring Chinese web users who can only stare on in awe from their desk-bound jobs.
Actually, Dai is not the first woman of her age to make headlines for attempting the activity. An elderly woman from Jilin has also appeared to have mastered the sport, which she says has brought her health and happiness.
Not all have expressed equal enthusiasm for her hobby, however, as one top-voted commenter wrote: “Old people can do what they like, amuse themselves how they see fit, but don’t go on television or appear in the media, ok? It’s just too disgusting.”
Dai says she hopes people can realize that pole dancing just like any other form of exercise.
The post 70-year-old pole dancer pulls off intense moves in Chengdu appeared first on Pole World News.
Visual marketing is a necessary element to an overall productive marketing strategy today. In a world where we are competing with non-stop, live updated content, you have little choice but to try and catch the skimmer’s eye and get across a point as quickly as possible. If you are trying to improve your visual marketing... Read more »
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Whether you have just launched your small business or been around for a while, you will probably agree with me: Entrepreneurship is a never-ending learning process. That is the reason why you must keep your mind sharp and read as much as you can about your field and business in general. Books are one of... Read more »
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Whenever I talk to entrepreneurs about Twitter, two questions keep coming back: “Why should I use it?” and “What are the benefits for my business?” My answer always goes like this: “Many of your potential customers are there.” Just do a Twitter Search and you will understand what I mean. Twitter also has some great... Read more »
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Last week, we held our very first Paper.li Webinar where we were able to show how you could get started with your paper and answer many questions live. If you missed it or want to review it, we will be uploading it to our YouTube channel very soon. We learned many things during this first webinar... Read more »
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Last year, I came across an interesting question on Quora: Why should a brand do social media monitoring? For someone like me, who works in social media, the answer is obvious. But it may not be so clear to a small business owner. While keeping an eye on social media mentions can be a lot... Read more »
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What Defines an Athlete Back in 2012, I posted an article of the winners of the 1st Olympic-style IPSF World Pole Sport Championship Winners. This was in conjunction with the 2012 Olympics in London to demonstrate the athletic abilities of Pole Dancers. Video and Image Provided by YouTube http://www.poledancertoday.com/2012-olympic-style-ipsf-world-pole-sport-championship-winners/ This weekend, July 25th and […]
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When it comes to promotional content, a large majority of U.S. consumers continue to prefer newsletters to social media sites. A reason could be that branded emails are traditionally associated with old-fashioned marketing, while Facebook or Twitter are more for news, entertainment, and interacting with others. How effective are newsletters, exactly? According to Convince &... Read more »
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You are probably well aware of the amount of work that goes into creating a competition routine – the long hours rehearsing, pouring over music and costume ideas, trying out new combos, training your flexibility, etc. These are all stresses you expect to deal with when competing. What you may not be prepared for is the mental work that goes into it too.
Here are 8 negative thoughts every competitor has and how to combat them:
1. I’m going to be the worst one.
You might be one of the many competitors that go into a PSO competition without silver and gold medals dancing in your head. Your reason for participating could be anything; gaining performance experience, getting more focused training, awesome pole pics, whatever. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little part of you desperately concerned you will end up last in your category.
So lets break it down: What does it mean to be last in your category?
It means that on the day that you performed, at the time that you performed, 4-5 people decided that 1 or more people fit the requirements of the category better. That’s it.
On a different day, at a different time, even with different judges, the outcome might be different. It does not mean that you are a bad poler or a bad person, in fact quite the opposite, as to even commit to competing takes a level of strength and determination most don’t have. Remember that you are awesome to start with and your placement does not define you!
2. I’m not thin/pretty/perfect looking enough to compete.
Think you are the only one dealing with body image issues while competing? Think again!
You are literally putting yourself out there to be judged. Plus we regularly watch and compare ourselves to our favorite pole stars – often genetically blessed humans whose job it is to train for pole year round. So it is no wonder that training for a competition can bring your insecurities out in full force.
However, you aren’t going to let it stop you from obtaining your goal and here is how:
3. I’m going to make a fool of myself.
As aerialist we are also artists and so our performances, whether silly, joyful, angry, or sad, are very personal. We pour ourselves into every movement. Our routines are actually created with blood, sweat, and tears. SO there is a very real concern that not only will the judges and audience not understand you and your piece, but that they may see your very personal performance as silly.
First, let me commend you for putting yourself out there! That is not an easy thing to do, but you are not alone. Everyone competing and every aerialist in the audience understands what it is like to be in your position. Yes, there is a possibility that they won’t understand your concept or story, but they will understand and respect your passion. You could trip over your feet walking to the pole or decide perform in a gorilla mask and no one is going to think you are a fool. Taking chances is what moves art forward and you will be respected, if not celebrated for it!
4. My friends and family aren’t going to get it.
A PSO competition is the perfect place to introduce your love of pole or lyra to friends and family. It’s in a professional environment, suited to all ages and structured similarly to gymnastic or ice skating competitions. Even grandma doesn’t have an excuse to be offended…but that doesn’t mean she won’t.
Your performance is about you and while, yes, it would be fantastic if grannie got it, it is not your job to make her understand what you love to do. If your friends or family aren’t going to be their to support you then you don’t need them there to bring you down on an already stressful day. If you want to get them just as passionate about it, then maybe start off with an intro class you can do together or a smaller studio party that won’t force them to be surrounded by aerialists a full 8 hours.
5. I’m going to fall off the pole.
This has to be the #1 secret freak out of every competitor because I hear this concern whispered from poler to poler all the time. Here’s the thing, adrenaline is a powerful grip aid. My informal survey of fellow competitors and performers confirms that our hands become magically and perfectly grippy with a combination of adrenaline, nerves, and sheer will to grip!
Yes, you should be smart, i.e. test out the poles on the day of, train in non-ideal pole conditions, figure out your perfect grip aid combo, etc. However, trust that your body will step up to the challenge – IT WILL! …and if it doesn’t well the next point will work well for you..
6. I going to forget EVERYTHING.
The nightmare: You step on stage looking gorgeous and full of excitement. You walk to your starting position, with each step you are confidently staring down the judges, then the music starts and …..nothing, absolutely nothing. Your mind has gone blank and you can’t remember any of your carefully choreographed routine.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I have had this happen to me about mid-way through a public pole performance… so your concerns aren’t crazy. There is, however, a fun and easy solution to this problem!
How do you face down the nightmare of forgetting your routine? By practicing freestyling to your song. Yup, that simple. If you know your music forwards and backwards a momentary lapse in memory is just an excuse to freestyle to your mind kicks back into gear. And if you never remember know that some of the most beautiful performances that have connected with audiences have been freestyle!
7. My routine is too easy.
Working at a pole studio and training around other competitors this is a big concern I overhear again and again. “My routine is too simple!”, “I don’t even have any difficult tricks”, “Everyone is going to have flexy moves”, “I have too many flexy moves”, “I have a moment where I take a breathe and I should really fill that space with another pole trick”….
First off, what may feel easy and simple to you is likely not easy and simple for your competitors. I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, we all have our strengths and weakness. For example, maybe you’ve been doing cartwheels since you were a kid and feel like it’s too easy to put in the routine, however a large portion of the pole population (myself included) have never been able to do one – so what to you is easy peasy is crazy impressive to the rest of us.
Think about this, don’t you want your moves to feel comfortable? That way you can focus on delivering a compelling performance without stressing out about completing the moves!
8. I’m not good enough.
All of the above negative thoughts can really be boiled down to this single concern: “what if I am not good enough?”. That thought is one that sticks in the brain, doesn’t it? It hides in dark corners ready to pop out at our most vulnerable moments and it is a much more difficult to defeat.
This is one that I can’t write a quick and snappy solution to as it is a different, unique issue to each of us, However, what gets you start on beating back this negative thought is to figure out what it actually it. What does “not good enough” mean to you? Once you answer that question, and that might be a question that requires the help of professionals, you can start to take away it’s power.
You expect competing to stress you out, tire your body, eat away at your free time. You are prepared for those things. However, if you feel these negative thoughts creeping in, well, know you are not alone and your aerial brothers and sisters are here to help!
The post 8 Negative Thoughts Every Pole And Aerial Competitor Has appeared first on Pole Sport Organization.
MG catches up with The Vertitude instructor Jennifer Kim to talk about her “High Heels, Low Flow” class and bringing yoga to the studio.
The post The Vertitude: Jennifer Kim appeared first on Pole World News.
