Pole dancing for fitness is a fun, challenging way to strengthen and tone your entire body and get a cardiovascular and fat-burning workout. Pole dancing also creates self-confidence and helps you feel better about your body, according to the CNN article "Pole Dancing Helps Strip Off Pounds." Pole dancing takes extreme upper-body and core strength to support your body weight when doing tricks.
Warm-Up
As with any workout, a proper warm-up is essential for pole dancing. Pole dancing requires muscular strength, endurance and flexibility, and without warming up you increase your risk of injury. Your warm-up should be five to 15 minutes long and should slowly elevate your heart rate using large muscle groups. Movements such as step touch or march with shoulder rolls or shrugs are effective warm-ups. Adding wrist circles to your warm-up prepares your wrists, arms and shoulders for lifting movements and helps decrease potential for injury.
Cool Down
Pole dancing requires whole-body flexibility to fully extend into some moves. Increase your flexibility by adding full stretches to your cool-down after your pole dancing exercise workout. Your cool-down should take your heart rate down gradually with small movements, such as toe taps. Once your heart rate has slowed, you can begin deep stretches. Stretch every major muscle in the lower and upper body and your core, holding each stretch 20 to 30 seconds to help increase flexibility.
Clean Your Pole
A dirty pole is difficult to hold onto and dangerous to perform tricks on. You can clean most poles with window cleaner or rubbing alcohol; clean the pole before, during and after your pole dancing workout. If you feel your pole begin to get slippery during your workout, stop and clean it before continuing.
Avoid Lotions
Using lotions or oils when pole dancing is hazardous and can cause you to lose your grip and fall. Lotions and oils also build up residue on your pole and make it hard to clean. Before your pole dancing workout, make sure your entire body is free from any lotions or oils.
Have Fun
Pole dancing for fitness is about expressing yourself, feeling free and having fun. Forget about what you look like when you execute the moves; just have fun and move. Taking a deep breath and relaxing your shoulders and neck before trying the moves helps you focus and relax, which helps you perform the move better.
Stay Safe
When executing advanced pole dancing moves, you should always have a spotter and a mat. It is extremely dangerous to attempt advanced moves, such as inversions, alone.
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