Do you want to improve your lines on the pole? Have you considered taking ballet classes?
The 3rd spin from the series „15 spins into climbing“ is inspired by a ballet pose, called Attitude. But to get straight to the point, the technique behind it is really easy. The only challenge here is holding the attitude position of the legs, which requires strength rather than flexibility.
In the tutorial below you’ll find the proper conditioning exercises for the legs. You’ll learn what perfect attitude lines look like and how to use your abs and glutes to hold them as long as possible.
Because the video is very short, I’d like to give you a bit more detail about…
HOW TO GET THOSE LEG LINES:
#1 PRACTICE LEG HOLDS
You’ve probably seen or tried the exercise where you hold one leg in the air as high as possible for as long as possible without using the arms. It’s a good example of an active flexibility exercise and it basically strengthens a bunch of muscles around your hips and along your legs. I love this exercise but I adjusted it for this tutorial. For the Forward Attitude Spin you don’t need to worry much about your passive split flexibility because the legs don’t go very high. And because we don’t straighten them, we’ll only work on the muscles around the hips.
Use the exercises in my tutorial and instead of thinking of the legs, focus on:
- Using your abs and glutes to lift your legs;
- Constantly tucking the pelvis in and squeezing your glutes to hold the legs in the air as long as possible;
#2 WORK ON YOUR TURNOUT
If you’ve ever taken a ballet class, you’ve most probably practiced your turnout already. It’s the ability of your hips to slightly rotate the legs, so that knees and feet point away from your center.
Think of knees pointing to the side and heels turning to the ceiling.
When you turn your legs out, they appear to be longer. Some people are lucky to have naturally open hips. Others might feel like their range of motion is blocked by their hip bones. You can check this with a physiotherapist. In most cases, it’s tightness of the muscles around the hip joint. You can improve this through relaxation and passive stretches, like the frog or the yoga lotus pose. If there’s tightness in the glutes, try crossing the legs and knees on top of each other and leaning forward.
#3 LENGTHEN NECK AND SPINE
The pole dance technique of bringing the shoulders down and the chest up, which we use to engage our back, already gives a good extension to the neck. Additionally, you can make the lines prettier during the spin by simply extending your head and neck to the back, following its natural lines. A ballet teacher would say: “Imagine, your head is attached to a balloon.” 🙂 I hope that helps you!
I used the spin in a freestyle, to make a combo of moves I already know.
Play with the spin, get creative and share with others. ❤ #15spinsintoclimb
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