Pushing the Limits on Pole

By K D Grace

When I learned that pushing the limits was this cycle’s blogging theme, my choice of subject was a no-brainer. I posted last year that I had begun pole dance training. Nineteen months in and pole is still absolutely, in every training session, and in more areas of my life than I’d have thought possible, pushing the limits. As I mentioned, I was fit when I began pole. Going to the gym started out as a way to help me cope with depression, but training quickly became the creative physical counterpart for the imaginative act of writing. That combination of creativity and physicality is what led me to pole. 

Oh yes, I was fit, and I STILL thought I was going to die! But the physical training of pole was just the beginning. At least once a month I thought about quitting. I thought that maybe I had actually tackled something I was too old to do. At least once a class I found myself scratching my head wondering how the hell I was going to manage a move that I couldn’t even get my brain around let alone my body. Don’t overthink it, they said. I didn’t listen.  

And the bruises … well the bruises have been non-stop and in new places as I learn new moves. It’s an ongoing joke among my pole family as we wonder which bit of tender virgin flesh will succumb next, and what move will do the dastardly deed. So far the most unusual is a butt crack bruise due to a superman variation gone horribly wrong. Not mine, I’m very happy to say. But as you can see from the pic, do have a fair few.

For nearly the first six months I came home exhausted, aching and battered. I went through a lot of ibuprofen during that time. There were gallons of Epsom salts baths and water bottles, and there was a lot of Pilates and training at the gym to strengthen and stretch and train balance and coordination. There was a lot of angst over coffee with my friend Viv, as we both doubted ourselves every week, and then went back to class every week and kept on training. 

For six months, twice a week, I hurt like I’d never hurt even in my hardest gym sessions. But there was enough improvement that it was worth the pain, and I knew that a lot of that pain was just because I hadn’t quite mastered the techniques properly yet. Then nearly a year in, I injured a shoulder and had to give up training for six weeks. It would have been an ideal time to call it quits and convince myself that maybe I really was too old, maybe it really was too much for me. But in the end, I couldn’t let go when I’d made so much progress and come so far. I rested, I went to physio. I trained at the gym to strengthen and recondition the shoulder and it healed and got stronger. So, when the six weeks were up, I was back at pole class every Tuesday and Thursday.

As I got stronger and more sure of myself, I added several mini workouts each week on my own pole, which dominates the workout area of our house. I won’t say that there’s no more pain. There’s just a whole lot less than there was, and I’m finally beginning to acquire the skills I need to get me to a higher level. A trainer once told me that our bodies are always fit for what they have to do. That’s why runners find long distance walking hard, that’s why people who train weights regularly find their first Pilates class so painful. That’s why someone who trains hard on kettle bells reaches for the ibuprofen when she starts training pole. My body is finally becoming properly fit for pole … or at least for the intermediate levels -- a goal in itself I wondered if I’d ever reach.

With pole, the battles aren’t always physical. One of the hardest things for me was the fact that as I advanced, it became necessary to take off more and more clothes. There’s a reason people who are good at pole don’t wear much, and it’s not because they look amazing. One of the key ingredients in any pole move beyond the basic spins is skin grip. It’s essential if you want to stay on the pole. The more complex the move, the more skin grip it often required. While my body is fit and healthy, it does not now, nor will it ever look twenty. But I soon discovered that many of the really amazing trainers, and students, have ordinary bodies, some are heavy, some are slim. There are women of all different body types doing pole, and they have one thing in common. They train hard and it shows. I was once again reminded that I train to encourage and nurture my body’s power. That power is inevitably connected to so much more than just my physical strength. And that training is an act of love and respect for myself. That made it easier to dress for the occasion.

I’m the oldest person in the class by a good margin. There’s one woman who’s only six years younger than I am. The rest are in their twenties and thirties. But I’ve realized that we older women have two serious advantages. W’ve had a lot more time to get tough and wily. And we’ve got a lot less time to get good at pole than the younger women do. That means for me it’s always urgent. That means that my friend and I are often stronger than many of the younger women training at our level. The converse, however, is that our brains don’t pick up on new moves and combos quite as quickly. 

As it turns out, the younger women are not only fine training with old farts, but they actually admire us, enjoy working with us, and the feeling is mutual. I love that we really have coalesced into a family. The joking is sometimes raunchy, there are sometimes tears, there are lots of hugs for comfort and encouragement, and there’s a lot of encouragement. And laughter. There’s a lot of laughter. All of those ingredients have kept me coming to pole class every Tuesday and Thursday for the past nineteen months, that and the fact that I fell in love with pole the very first bruising session I went to. That love has only deepened as my skills have. 

Today I’m attending my first ever workshop for pole. This one is actually open to intermediate level students –ish. The ones offered up until now haven’t been. I don’t mind saying I’m nervous. I know I’m throwing myself outside my comfort zone. Though in all honesty, I’ve been outside my comfort zone so many times since I started pole that being comfortable seems slightly strange. 

I just turned sixty last month, and it wasn’t nearly as painful as I feared it might be. Pushing the limits has become less about my age and more about thinking in terms of what I want and what I can achieve. As it turns out, I can achieve a whole lot more than I ever imagined I could.

Standing Up(side Down) for Myself

K D Grace

I took up pole dance last June. Gawd no! It’s not erotic. Hell yes! It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

So today I’m laying aside the self-deprecating part of me, the hyper-critical part of me, the part too shy to blow my own horn because, yes, I am very proud of my accomplishments. Later this month, I’ll be doing my first photo shoot. Mostly it’s a way of gaging my progress, but it’s also a way of overcoming my fears and claiming my right to stand, spin, and invert along side a lot of other strong women who will be doing the same. It’s a position I’ve worked hard to earn. It isn’t just the physical challenge of the sport itself, which is a brutal one, but it’s the way that raw effort exposes the rest of me to myself that has taken that challenge to the next level. 

I had the advantage of going in to beginning pole class stronger than most, in spite of being twice as old as a lot of the women there. I had the disadvantage of my own doubts and fears – the ones that I brought along with me and the ones that I uncovered through the journey from the very first bruising lesson to where I am now. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that every woman in the class had her own share of doubts and fears. I was in good company.

I got fit in the first place because I found being physically active helps me deal with depression – some of which was brought on by the joys of menopause and some of which is just because I am my mother’s daughter. Being active, challenging myself physically, not only helps me keep on top of the mood swings, but it’s a wonderful catalyst for creativity. Some of my best stories have been inspired during hard workouts or very long walks. 

Lots of people are physically active without doing something crazy insane like taking up pole at “a certain age.” And believe me, my hat’s off to anyone who makes an effort to eat well and stay fit. It’s not easy. But for me, it was a natural progression. I started by seeing a personal trainer twice a week at the gym because I knew if I paid for it, I’d go – a sort of forced commitment, if you will. At the time I was a basket case coming off writing four novels in one year and being broadsided by menopause at the same time. I wasn’t fit for human company. I wasn’t fit for my own company. 

After a couple of weeks, I was no longer working out because I had to; I was doing it because I wanted to. I started going to the gym more often than my twice-weekly PT. I started asking my trainer if we could try new things, harder things. Then one fine day I discovered kettle bells, and I was in love. By that time I was always looking a for new challenge, not because I’m an adrenalin junkie, but because I was astounded by how resilient my body was and by all of the amazing things I could do with the proper training – even at “a certain age.”

The wild, sometimes painful, journey on which I’ve take my body these past several years has been a stripping away, a laying bare of the woman hiding behind her fears and doubts. The beginning of that journey was just to keep from falling apart. Then I began pushing myself because I enjoyed the challenge. Finally, I lost 35 pounds in a healthy way and have kept the weight off two and a half years and counting. That I did because it was time, and because I knew my body would function better without weight I didn’t need. 

As I said, I am my mother’s daughter, and I inherited her fear-based personality -- something I am more aware of as I grow older. Everything I do has been an effort to push through being terrified, and few things have been more frightening than pole. Pole took that stripping away to the next level. As much as the physical challenge -- which has been staggering as well as exhilarating -- pole has been about finding the woman huddled in the corner and, sometimes coaxing, sometimes cajoling, her to come out and play, to stand up, throw her shoulders back and celebrate herself.

As a writer, I’m often astounded at how the fictional worlds I create for my readers reflect my inner landscape. I never plan it that way, but with the symbiosis of mind and body, and the creativity that results, I’m not really surprised either. Isn’t writing, in some quixotic way, the author’s unconscious effort to heal herself or to possibly expose herself?

Exposing myself. Yes, pole has been about exposing myself in so many ways. It has definitely uncovered my neuroses. Most of the time I don’t think about being twenty to thirty years older than almost everyone else in the studio. I know I’m fit, I know I am holding my own, even doing fairly well. Most of the time I’m just focused on meeting the challenge of the day. But what to wear has brought my age neurosis back to me with a vengeance. Skin contact with the pole is necessary to perform some of the more difficult moves. Wearing less and less clothing to compensate for more and more complex moves has been, and still is, one of my biggest challenges. Most of us start beginning pole in our sweats and tee shirts. But if we stick with it, the process becomes a slow, and sometimes reluctant, strip tease. As we learn and improve, we move to leggings, then to shorts, then to racer back tops we can tuck into our sports bras when we need belly for grip. Then finally the day dawns when we graduate to pole shorts and tops, with not much more coverage than a bikini, and we just get on with it. But here’s me in all my vanity, wanting to look good and fearing being judged for not looking twenty no matter how good I look. 

And yet, all that fear and insecurity goes out the window when I approach the pole, when I find myself inverted and working my way into moves that, if I’d seen photos of a year ago, I’d have never imagined I could do. I am an equal among equals, a student learning with other students, all of us with our own challenges to meet.

Owning my age is one of the benefits from my pole training. (Still a work in progress, I have to admit) I’ve made an amazing discovery. There is no downhill slide once you pass that “certain age” and find yourself looking sixty smack dab in the eyeballs. There is, however, a paradigm shift – or can be if I’m willing to open myself to the possibilities. I was much more fearless when I was younger, back before I had been battered about by the world a few times. But the older I get, the more I fear. That seems to be a common side affect of getting older. 

The paradigm shift comes when I’m bold enough to say, “fuck it, I’m just going for it!” Whatever ‘it’ is. There’s another kind of fearlessness that happens as I approach sixty. I’ve battled my internal version of ageism long enough to know that most of what I fear is never going to happen, and it’s going to be a long boring journey to the grave if I let those fears about being “of a certain age” control me.

The push, the challenge, becomes to live in the moment, to live urgently and boldly, to remind myself when doubt rears its ugly head that age is just a number. It is NOT who I am. I’ve been on this fitness journey long enough to realize that the bumps and bruises and aches and pains as well as the challenges met and the triumphs celebrated are just an outward manifestation of the deeper journey going on inside me. The slow strip tease, the exposure of skin – bruised and abraded, and not as supple as it once was, goes so much deeper than muscle and bone. It becomes the laying bare, the exposing, of the inner wounds and bruises, the deep-seated fears that I’ve kept hidden away. It is a viewing of myself more clearly, a loving of who I am and what I’m becoming more completely. It is

learning to be more gentle with myself even as I push myself harder than I ever have before. I am still filled with doubts, still afraid of the challenges ahead of me, I still want to run away and hide underneath my duvet. But I’ve fought the battle long enough to have some success at pushing through the fears, and success breeds more success — something worth reminding myself of every day.

The wonderful surprise of it all is that I’m stronger, fitter, more sure of myself now than I ever was in my twenties. And the even bigger surprise is that I keep getting more so. My skill improves with my strength and stamina, and with those my confidence and my view of myself as a creative force and of the world as a place full of possibilities. The paradigm shift is a reminder that I get to choose. I get to embrace this journey and move forward in spite of my fears, because overcoming those fears, one step at a time, one challenge at a time, is truly what it means to be fearless.