Hello my lovely reader friend!

Today, I would like us to have a little riff around whether pole or aerial training is actually hard.

Quite frankly, I have this conversation almost daily. Whether it’s by chatting with new beginners at the studio, or when I’m out doing stuff, meeting people and ending up doing small talk about what we do for work, and I say about the studio and people then 9 times out of 10 say that they could NEVER do any pole or aerial because it’s too hard.

What do you think? How hard would you say it is?

I’m gonna get a but philosophical for a moment here.
Sorry I cannot help it and I know it’s annoying to always look at the bigger picture. 

I think we are often unclear on what we mean when we ask if something is hard. And I usually go and ask the people that say it’s too hard what they actually mean.

Hard can mean many things, for example and in no particular order most people reference, some or all of these:

– physically challenging.

That’s right, just the one 🙂 

I think hard goes beyond that though no?

Hard can mean:

– progressive so it always stays difficult the better you get because there is constantly harder stuff to work on and what was hard two months ago is now easy so we are upping the difficulty. You don’t “complete” pole or aerial as there is always something you can aim for next.

– pushing you out of your comfort zone

– staying engaged mentally when shit is boring, you’re in a plateau or quite frankly you are at an advanced level where you stop nailing 18 new things in class and instead it’s one new thing a month (if you’re lucky).

The latter point is similar to what you would observe in the gym for example. The first few months, you’re piling on kilos to your deadlift every session.
“Wow this is challenging but also so easy and man is it satisfying to see those lifts go up every single week!”

And then you get to a stage where it takes months to add an extra 2.5 kilos. Not because you’re shit but because you have found your edge, you’re working at your maximum and you are now an intermediate/advanced lifter and it’s just the nature of things that stuff gets harder.

Pole and aerial is no different – the progression curve is really steep at the start with lots of wins and new things, and it tapers off as we become more skilled.

Does that mean it becomes less fun though?

I would say it stays very fun still, but a mindset shift has to occur where we “validate” a class less by list of tricks nailed
and instead:

enjoy moving in and of itself,
effort for effort’s sake,
the social side,
the endorphins and feel good from exercise,
enjoying the journey by measuring progress beyond tricks ticked off a list and instead by stuff like:

– whether or not you can do an extra rep in conditioning
– if a move felt less like death
– that you could actually take two breaths in a trick
– that you didn’t freak out and needed 16 half-attempts before the scary drop
– that you managed to control your entry and exist this time instead of flopping onto the mat
– and in it goes.

Wow ok so we took a detour there and I still haven’t answered if pole or aerial is hard. 

I’ll be honest and annoying will say that it depends.

Depends what you define as hard.

What other movement you do or have done before.

And the coaching support you get.

Because it should always feel a little bit hard to ensure it challenges you.

If it were always easy breezy then it would mean you’d never learn anything new.
Which is ok too BTW, sometimes it’s really nice to just move. At the gym this is what you’d call a deload and it’s meant to be a bit of a breather. One could argue a plateau is your body asking for a deload. 

And yet we don’t want to feel like we’ve been hit by a bus, and you never succeed at anything in class, and your class means you cannot do anything other than lie on the sofa and have hot baths for the rest of the week as you’re so sore and battered.

There is a middle ground where we want it to be hard and feel challenged, but not so much that is fucks you up for the rest of the week. Or that you never have a feeling of success.

So yes, it is hard, but in a good way. 

And a good coach will ensure that your first ever class is somewhat hard, yes totally, but also that you have wins that feel really good.

The hard is what makes them feel good.

We cannot have the satisfaction without a bit of a struggle.

We cannot celebrate smashing the move without it feeling a bit hard to get there.

We won’t have the party atmosphere in classes with everyone clapping and celebrating, the cheers and whooooooop, without the knowledge that the person we are firing on has worked hard to achieve their win.

And the fact that we train something hard together is what makes it so enjoyable, and what gives it that uplifting buzz <3

So just to say – yes some things will feel really hard.

But it’s ok for some things to be hard.

It’s what makes it so special too xxx

You got this!