Building Muscle For Pole Dancing

PoleDani

Hey everyone, I don't often post but I've recently been focusing hard on my nutrition in order to gain more muscle for my pole dancing. I just do it recreationally for fitness reasons and its helped me so much in terms of muscle development and confidence, but I have noticed that I tend to have a harder time gaining muscle than my peers. I'm currently eating around 1800 calories a day on my non-workout days, but I allow myself to go over on workout days - although eating a lot is a struggle for me. I was just looking for some advice from people who may have been in a similar situation. I've always been thin all my life and have always had low body fat and never really fluctuated in weight or anything. Any help would be appreciated! Let me know if you need more detail

nowlayamit

I recently started a bulk to gain muscle, if done right with calories mostly coming from whole foods then you'll gain weight in a good way and look great. Raise calorie intake slowly till your eating about 400 - 500 more than your maintance calories. I've been trying to get leaner and lose more weight most of the time but don't be afraid of gain weight, like I said before, if done right you'll look great, hope this helps

ndj1979

if you want to gain muscle you need a consistent calorie surplus + a structured lifting program with progressive overload built into it.

is 1800 calories a surplus of calories? What are your stats?

rsclause

Well I am sure this post won't get many views.

jdhcm2006

I am not sure of your stats or how long you have been poling, but I can give you some insight. As someone who poles, and here's a quick disclaimer I did not gain muscle from poling b/c I was eating at a deficit the entire time. I just moved to maintenance this week.

Pole will make you gain strength. You will be able to do the shoulder mounts and inverts and handstands. Pole is body weight training. All of those spins and inverts require strength which you will gain through time. Depending on how your class is set up, it will hopefully be progressive. For instance, we started with spins, chair and floor work, after working on that we progressed to sits, l-stands, and armstands, after working on that we progressed to inverting, handstands, core-ups, and after working on that we progressed to doing inverted moves, combining moves while inverted, harder inverts, harder climbs, shoulder mounts, ayesha's, all while continuing to make sure we weren't losing the fundamentals like making sure you keep your shoulders drawn back and out of your ears, etc.

From my understanding (I've never bulked so I have no real life experience with this), you have to eat at a surplus to gain muscle. And the easiest way to gain muscle is to lift heavy. But I think it is possible to gain weight while doing body weight training, but a program is necessary like You Are Your Own Gym, it's just harder and takes longer.

I am personally beginning the recomp process, eating at maintenance while lifting heavy and poling to shed fat because I want to stay within this weight range.

As a poler, you need to make sure that you have strong lats, core, glutes, forearms, shoulders, grip strength, etc. So I would find a lifting program that will incorporate working on those areas. I would recommend adding in flexibility training while lifting heavy b/c you don't want to lose one while gaining the other, but are very important to pole.

If you own a pole, I would look into joining studioveena.com. It's an online pole dancing site that teaches you moves as well as has different conditioning workouts. It is $99 a year, but they have a sale around Black Friday and it drops to $79. I think it is good resource to have to supplement class training or learn if there is no class around. But it's not a necessity. If you have to chose between joining a gym to lift or Studio Veena, go with the gym b/c you want to bulk.

I hope this helped some. I can tell you that you will get where you want to be, it just requires patience and determination. When we were learning to invert, I struggle hard with it and I didn't think I would ever be able to, but I stuck with it and I'm inverting, shoulder mounting, and very close to being able to do my ayesha (from the inverted crucifix) without any spotting. I'm still working hard to get into a deadlift ayesha, but I'll get it one day (fingers crossed by the end of the year).

PoleDani

jdhcm2006 wrote: »

I am not sure of your stats or how long you have been poling, but I can give you some insight. As someone who poles, and here's a quick disclaimer I did not gain muscle from poling b/c I was eating at a deficit the entire time. I just moved to maintenance this week.

Pole will make you gain strength. You will be able to do the shoulder mounts and inverts and handstands. Pole is body weight training. All of those spins and inverts require strength which you will gain through time. Depending on how your class is set up, it will hopefully be progressive. For instance, we started with spins, chair and floor work, after working on that we progressed to sits, l-stands, and armstands, after working on that we progressed to inverting, handstands, core-ups, and after working on that we progressed to doing inverted moves, combining moves while inverted, harder inverts, harder climbs, shoulder mounts, ayesha's, all while continuing to make sure we weren't losing the fundamentals like making sure you keep your shoulders drawn back and out of your ears, etc.

From my understanding (I've never bulked so I have no real life experience with this), you have to eat at a surplus to gain muscle. And the easiest way to gain muscle is to lift heavy. But I think it is possible to gain weight while doing body weight training, but a program is necessary like You Are Your Own Gym, it's just harder and takes longer.

I am personally beginning the recomp process, eating at maintenance while lifting heavy and poling to shed fat because I want to stay within this weight range.

As a poler, you need to make sure that you have strong lats, core, glutes, forearms, shoulders, grip strength, etc. So I would find a lifting program that will incorporate working on those areas. I would recommend adding in flexibility training while lifting heavy b/c you don't want to lose one while gaining the other, but are very important to pole.

If you own a pole, I would look into joining studioveena.com. It's an online pole dancing site that teaches you moves as well as has different conditioning workouts. It is $99 a year, but they have a sale around Black Friday and it drops to $79. I think it is good resource to have to supplement class training or learn if there is no class around. But it's not a necessity. If you have to chose between joining a gym to lift or Studio Veena, go with the gym b/c you want to bulk.

I hope this helped some. I can tell you that you will get where you want to be, it just requires patience and determination. When we were learning to invert, I struggle hard with it and I didn't think I would ever be able to, but I stuck with it and I'm inverting, shoulder mounting, and very close to being able to do my ayesha (from the inverted crucifix) without any spotting. I'm still working hard to get into a deadlift ayesha, but I'll get it one day (fingers crossed by the end of the year).

Thanks so much for this! I've been doing pole for a bit over a year now so I can invert, should mount and handspring. I also do doubles as well so lifting my body weight as well as someone elses. I will definitely look into studioveena! I have a pole at home and am always looking for new conditioning moves.