Pole 2018 Goals

Having missed a class, I went to go to a Burlesque 1, week 1 make-up class; but it turned out to be a Pole 2, week 6 class! Well, that was fine with me. The other two girls there were super cool, and I liked having Kate as a teacher much better. Sadly, there were still a ton of things (new things or things we didn't learn until much higher classes) that I couldn't do. Sad sad sad. The other gals were taking Pole 3 and since I liked them and figured I could use the recaps, I decided to sign up, too. I'll be simultaneously taking Strength and Conditioning class, so my hope is that I'll still be able to retake Pole 4 when it's all done. 

So, as previously mentioned in my 2017 round-up, I took up pole again this last December (last month). The last time I took a pole class was in 2015 when I was still working at Safe & Sound, and I've been really wanting to get back into it. A lot of it was the time commitment thing, but some of it was just not wanting to actually go out there in whatever weather was going. Again: commitment issues.

But I bit the bullet in November and decided to get up off my ass and sign up. Having not done it in 2 years, I knew I couldn't start off where I ended - plus, I was never super great in the first place. I still couldn't do things other people in my levels could easily. I figured the best place to start would be a level 3 class; but since there were none available until mid-January, I just signed up for a level 4 and thought I'd do the best I could.

Well, it turns out that Patty completely overhauled the level system. The things they were doing in Pole 4 were things we didn't ever begin touching in Pole 6, things like shoulder mounts and inverted Vs. It was... intimidating. And of course I couldn't do any of the things, either. The class is almost entirely strength-based, my biggest weakness, and all but one of the gals is buff as hell. The only moves we learned were a Jamilla mount (which, hey! I finally figured out) and the cross-ankle and regular hang-back, which I found weird, as we learned those in Pole 3 when I was learning.

All that said, my goal this time around is to become strong. Flexibility is great, but I want to become my strongest self, to be able to do things I never could before. I'd rather be able to lift myself off the ground this year than do a Yogini.

So my #1 goal this year is to be able to do a shoulder mount. My #2 goal is to get a better invert and do an actual Ayesha. Eventually, I'd like to be able to do a handspring, but that may be too ambitious a goal for one year.