Pole Dance is one of those sports that does not have an official syllabus, which means it’s pure chaos out there in the when it comes to levels, trick prerequisites, progressions, etc.
As a pole dancer – no matter if you train at home or at a studio – you’ll ask yourself questions like:
👉🏻 What should my next pole goal be?
🤚🏻 How do I prepare if I’m not there yet?
👌🏻 Are there any “gaps” I need to close before you move forward?
And since there’s no global pole syllabus, we often try things that we’re not ready for and get discouraged. Or worse, injured. 😩
That’s why I developed The Pole Curriculum. And it’s absolutely FREE.
As a teacher, I use it to structure and plan out my classes.
As a student, YOU can use it to find out where you are in your pole journey and what the best way to move forward is.
It’s based on 9 years of teaching experience at studios and lots of different teacher training.
But always use your own judgement and see if my recommendations suit your own needs.
Here are the biggest milestones you’ll work towards, as well as common struggles and challenges you’ll encounter.
Complete beginner
As a pole newbie, your main goal is to build the strength to hold on to the pole. A good way to start is with off-pole exercises for the back, shoulders, and core (especially the lower abs). These exercises can be integrated into your warmup.
On the pole, you can work on shoulder activations (+walk), easy pull-ups from the floor (sitting and climb pull-up) and basic holds.
You should be focusing on muscle engagement before adding in spin momentum and technique.
I recommend starting at a pole studio and looking specifically for “Intro to Pole” classes. That way, you’ll learn the very basics with fellow newbies.
Beginner
The big challenge for beginners are inverts. The inverting journey is different for everyone. For some it’s easier, and for others it can take months, up to a year, or even longer.
How do you know you’re ready to invert? And how do you make sure that you’re doing it safely?
There are three components that will make your inverts successful:
- Pull-up – Work on upper body strength to hold yourself up in the strong-hold grip. Gradually, you can add more of a pull-up.
- Pelvis tuck & crunch – Working your lower abs to lift your legs WHILE keeping your back straight (very important!)
- The tilt – combining the pulling-down motion with the lower body crunch.
While you’re conditioning for inverts, you can also work on Cross Knee Release, Forearm stands, Inverted Crucifix, and Handstand Butterfly to practice stacking those hips over your chest.
After getting your invert:
- Continue polishing your Chopper – holding it longer (without sliding) and on both sides
- Work on getting a strong outside leg hook
- Learn the correct contact points of leg hangs (both outside and inside)
Your first tricks upside down might take some time to master, but they will open the door to all the cool moves higher up on the pole.
Intermediate
The fundamental tricks that you commonly learn in intermediate level are:
Other important moves are
- Superman
- Aerial inverts
- Dragonfly and Torso switches are other cool transitions that can be helpful later on in your journey.
Things you should nail before Butterfly:
- Forearm stand
- Inverted Crucifix (Bat)
- Handstand Butterfly
- Outside leg hang
- Jasmine
Once nailed, you should keep making your Butterfly stronger by pushing your body away from the pole, practicing different entries and exits, and going into Extended Butterfly. This will help you later on.
Things you should nail before Jade:
- Leg hangs and slow, controlled leg switches
- Hip-Hold split as a floorwork move. But also on the pole close to the floor.
- You don’t necessarily need a flat split on the floor, but you should feel strong in your “splits”.
The rest is technique and active flexibility.
Take time to polish these inverted fundamentals. Consistently nailing them, holding the shapes longer, etc.
Besides the upside-down tricks, there’s a lot more happening in the intermediate level.
💪 Conditioning becomes more trick-specific.
🙌 Flexibility becomes important.
💃 Maybe dance, flow and choreos shift more into your focus
The more you pole, the more it seems like there’s so much to work on.
If you try planning your weekly training so that it covers all of these skills, it can become tiring after a while. You might even feel like you’re plateauing.
That’s why it’s beneficial to decide what’s actually important to you and set specific goals for your training.
ADVANCED
In the advanced level, you’ll work on 2-contact-point moves like
- Ballerina
- Shoulder Mount
- Brass Monkey (technically 3-contact point move but with more advanced entries)
- Ayesha
- Handspring
There are many more cool and trendy moves, but these are the most common ones.
And these are the requirements.
Ballerina:
- Shoulder flexibility and opening up the hips. Esp. the diagonal line btw one shoulder and the opposite leg.
- Twisted grip conditioning
- One-arm holds and spins, like the Reverse Grab
The Shoulder Mount is a pure strength move that requires conditioning. You can get into it using momentum, but it often looks heavy. You can tell that it’s a hard move.
Here are some of my tips for the shoulder mount:
- Work on your cup grip
- Train your core & upper body
- My shoulder mounts became strong and clean when I stopped trying them from the regular standing position. I moved closer to the floor and kept conditioning there.When I then moved higher up the pole, the difference was huge.
Brass Monkey is one of my favourite moves to teach because there are countless entries & exits.
In my opinion, it’s an important and fundamental move in your pole journey because it’s a gateway to many other moves. It’s where you actually start understanding the game of maintaining and shifting contact points.
Before you start working on it make sure that:
- You feel comfortable in completely vertical inverted positions (like handstands, Inverted Crucifix and Caterpillar)
- Strong leg hooks and hangs
- Stable Brass Sit hook
- You should be familiar with Hood Ornament- The Brass Monkey is actually the Hood Ornament upside down. Same shape and contact points. But the inversion makes the Brass Monkey so much more advanced.
And finally, the most aspired milestones – Ayesha and Handspring.
For Handspring, you need Ayesha.
For Ayesha you need a solid Extended Butterfly and Inverted-D. Caterpillar Climbs are also a great way to prepare. We often do these during conditioning in my classes.
Just as important is the conditioning and strengthening of the different grips – especially split grip and twisted grip.
I often see people who are able to swing themselves into Ayesha/Handspring, but can’t hold it well. This is actually pretty dangerous.
Before jumping into Handspring, you should feel somewhat strong in Ayesha first. It’s okay if you’re still finding your alignment and balance, but you should feel like you’re engaging the right muscles.
The fun thing about the advanced level is that the list of moves is endless and that you can just work on moves you want to nail, instead of having to master other things first.
Additionally to the splitty moves, you’ll find bendy and twisty shapes, like Allegra split, Broken Doll, Eagle.
You’ll discover power one-arm spins, fearless flips, drops and tumbles.
Or you might want to explore special techniques like static rotations. It’s up to you.
The Pole Curriculum
The best thing about the Pole Curriculum is that you have all of the info you need in one place. It makes planning your training and keeping track of your progress SO much easier.
It consists of two parts:
THE VIDEO GUIDE
📌 Check the milestones and prerequisites for each level.
📌 Check if you need to close any „gaps“ in your journey before you move on.
THE ONLINE CURRICULUM
📌 A big list of pole moves divided by levels.
📌 Watch videos of variations and progressions, as well as of some tutorials.
📌 Create new goals and get ideas for your next training.
Is the tool easy to navigate? How are you using it? Is anything missing for you? Let me know in the comments
RECOMMENDED: How to turn a single pole move into a whole pole dance routine?
Leave a Reply