March brought with it rain, more rain, blossoming flowers. And COVID19. When you think of once-in-a-lifetime events, global pandemic isn't high up on that list. In the wake of the government lockdown, all pole studios have been forced to close. Loads of studios have switched to online classes, pre-recorded videos, and even one-to-ones. It proves one thing: once you have fallen in love with aerial fitness, nothing will part you from it, not even a pandemic.
We've been poling at home this week, and because we've had a rare bout of sunshine in Cardiff, we took one of our xstage poles outside and poled in the garden with our guinea pigs, rabbit, dog and cats watching.
We figured it would be the perfect time to work on our Shit List. Everyone has them - those moves you're desperate to nail, but nailing them means actually doing them, and if we liked doing them, we would've nailed them by now. Top of our Shit List is the no-handed Cupid, and no-handed Genie. A new addition is the cup grip hangman. After several failed attempts, we finally held the Cupid for like a second. Sadly we weren't consistent enough to consider it nailed, but it's closer than it has
been. Which is pretty good, considering we only have one or two attempts when training on our own, then we get distracted by things we can actually do.
We've also discovered a book - Strength and Conditioning for Pole by Neola Wilby (we will be reviewing it in issue 2) and have been reading it obsessively. There are great exercises in there that shows you how to you measure your flexibility so you can mark your improvement. It turns out, our shoulders are quite flexible, our hips not so much.
Sadly, we've had to close our shiny new mobile polefit studio, The Pole Vault, so we're doing free videos online that target different areas for flexibility and conditioning.
Oh and issue one is complete! Stand by for the launch.
