Why is mobility important for pole dancers?
Mobility is a term that is thrown around a lot these days and it has many possible definitions. I define it as safely accessing your maximum range of motion. Why is that important for pole dancing? Well, we put ourselves in all sorts of crazy shapes. We need to be able to move between those shapes safely without injuring ourselves. This requires a unique blend of strength, flexibility, and body awareness—mobility!
If you are a pole dancer that started movement later in life, or maybe you’ve been spending a lot of time behind a desk at your “day job,” your mobility might need a tune up to be able to safely do all those cool goal pole moves you keep saving on your phone.
Keep reading for some ways to get started on your mobility journey.
Assessing Your Mobility for Pole Dancing: Self-Tests and Measures
Our body is made up of many (MANY) pieces. The most mobile parts of our body are our hips and our shoulders. As pole dancers, we often create parts of stability and tension against the pole using one body part. For example, our arms in an Ayesha pole move must be stable. Meanwhile our legs create many shapes which are not attached to the pole. This endless combination of changing points of contact, or exchanging stable parts with more dynamic parts, needs a lot of body awareness AND a lot of safe access to range of motion (mobility!).
Generally, we want to find equal range of motion in all ways that the joint moves so we can safely move our body. Because our shoulders and our hips move in similar ways, we can look at them together. These super mobile joints can flex, extend, adduct, abduct, and rotate internally and externally creating all the cool pole shapes that you love.
There are lots of ways to check your existing range of motion, here are two, both for internal and external rotation, one for your shoulders and one for your hips.
When you do both of these tests, you want your rotations to be equal on both sides of your body and in both directions. For instance, if your external rotation is more than your internal rotation in your hips, you would want to work more on improving your internal rotation to balance yourself out. If you notice that one arm rotates internally more than the other, then you would benefit from working on improving the internal rotation on that arm to balance yourself in that way.
How to Get Started with Mobility: Your First Steps Towards Better Movement.
After you start to identify what you specifically would benefit from working on from the assessments above, you need to make a plan. You can integrate mobility into your warm-ups for pole or you can spend time just doing mobility work, you can even do mobility while you work at your desk!
Start small and learn to listen to your body to see what is working or what is not working. Recheck yourself using the assessments above regularly, such as once a month.
Pick out the exercises that work for your body!
You can also check out some tips for what to do at your desk on my instagram. Click here.
To learn even more about your body and how to improve your mobility for pole, check out my book: “Mobility for Pole”. It includes 200+ pages of information. I created 4 mobility programs: one for shoulders, one for hips, one for core and one you can do at your desk with a little bit of everything. You can do them on your own time.
Use code: 123Mobility to save $5 off the ebook!
Start today and you’ll see improvements in your mobility soon! Hear what one of my mobility students has to say: “Omg!!! I did the hips floor program yesterday and slept without any pain in my leg for the first time in forever! I will be doing this every day!!! Thank you SO much for this awesome program!!!❤️❤️❤️” –Donna K.
Why is Colleen Jolly the best mobility guide for you?
Why am I so passionate about mobility? I started pole dancing later in life (29) with no movement background and after a debilitating motorcycle accident 10 years prior shattered my right leg. At the time, I was told that I’d never walk “normally” again let alone dance, run, or otherwise move freely again.
Through years of trial and error creating a movement practice first for myself and later for my students. I unlearned, learned, and relearned what it meant to move my body.
On my journey to move better, I found many teachers who were beautiful movers that had no idea how their bodies were moving in space. I found other teachers/coaches that did understand how to explain their movement but struggled to help students with chronic injuries, differently-sized or differently-abled bodies, or basically anyone who didn’t have a basic movement background access the same success as more able-bodied students.
To achieve the results that I wanted, I had to become the coach that I was looking for and understand from a practical (rather than clinical) perspective how to help myself first and then later my own students. Now I’m sharing that information with you!
Closing thoughts about why mobility is important for pole dancers
In closing, mobility is important for everyone, especially pole dancers. To stay healthy and injury-free, all pole dancers should take their mobility seriously. You can improve your mobility at any age, so the right time to start is now! If you don’t work on your mobility, you could lose it and that would make pole dancing as you age harder and harder. So what are you waiting for!? Use the resources above and start working on your mobility today!
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