The Secret To Achieving Your Pole Goals Faster

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The Secret To Achieving Your Pole Goals Faster


Contents

THE SECRET TO ACHIEVING YOUR POLE GOALS FASTER: TABLE OF CONTENTS ......................... 1

WHY POLE DANCERS NEED MORE FOCUSED GOALS ................................................................ 2

MY STORY; HOW I PROGRESSED FASTER WITH A MORE FOCUSED APPROACH ................................................ 3 WHAT IS GOAL OVERLOAD? ................................................................................................................. 4

HOW TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU APPROACH YOUR GOALS ...................................................... 5

WHAT IS HOLDING YOU BACK? ............................................................................................................. 5 HOW TO REPROGRAM YOUR MINDSET ................................................................................................... 6

HOW TO SET GOALS THE SMART WAY ..................................................................................... 6

SPECIFIC GOALS ................................................................................................................................ 7 MEASURABLE GOALS ......................................................................................................................... 7

ACHIEVABLE GOALS ........................................................................................................................... 8 REALISTIC GOALS .............................................................................................................................. 8 TIME SENSITIVE GOALS ...................................................................................................................... 8

LONG TERM TARGETS & HOW OFTEN TO CHANGE YOUR GOALS .............................................. 9

HOW TO PRIORITISE YOUR LONG TERM GOALS ....................................................................................... 9 THE 12 WEEK GOAL SETTING SYSTEM .................................................................................................. 10

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY ................................................................................. 10

WHERE TO FIND A SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY & BUDDIES ........................................................................ 10 HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR GOALS & STAY MOTIVATED...................................................................... 11

GOOD LUCK ........................................................................................................................... 12

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Why Pole Dancers Need More Focused Goals

How many goals do you have right now? As a pole dancer you probably have a tonne of goals that you need to work on. You’ll want your splits for that Jade, a great back bend and shoulder flexibility to nail your Cocoon and an insane forward fold to one day nail your Spatchcock! And that’s barely scratching the surface. Those might not be your own specific targets, but in a world where tricks are becoming ever more bendy, strong and complex it’s important to make sure you have full control of your goals if you’re going to stand a chance of achieving them all. One way to speed up your progress in both strength and flexibility is to take on a cross training exercise, but if you don’t have great time management that’s likely to make life even harder for you. So what can you do to achieve your goals faster and start ticking them off your to do list? In this guide to achieving the absolute best out of your body, I’ll be breaking down a goal setting strategy to take you step by step through the process. When you follow the advice here you’ll start to progress at a much faster rate.

My Story; How I Progressed Faster With A More Focused Approach I’ve been pole dancing for four years this year, but you might be surprised to learn that most of my progress has happened in the last 12 months. A lot of that time was even spent with minimal access to a pole to practise on, so what changed? As new pole dancers we are introduced to the notion that in pole dancing you will naturally improve as you progress, and this is true to a certain extent. Your body strength will progress without you even realising, especially in your core and upper body, just from regular pole classes. Naturally, I was also under the impression that dance and flexibility skills would follow suit, but here’s the thing. As a beginner I chose pole dance because I lacked motivation, I wanted something fun. Something where I didn’t feel like I was working so hard. In fact, flexibility as a beginner was not something I even knew I wanted! That’s why my best advice for beginners is to start thinking about your flexibility right from the start, you will thank yourself later.

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As you progress past a lower-intermediate level in your pole classes, it suddenly hits home that you just aren’t bendy enough to move further. Many new moves will require next level flexibility, from the bend in your back and shoulders all the way down to the tips of your toe point. This is where progress starts to slow if you’re only going to one or two classes a week and not doing anything to help your progress along at home. And why would you? For a long time I was content just working out in class, but I was still not the strongest or the most flexible. The very first step for me that really propelled my progress forward was buying a pole for my own home. With daily access to a pole my muscles soon got used to working out more and my strength began to improve at an incredible rate. As body placement and knee holds started to become like second nature I worked on strength alone for three months solid. By the end of those three months I was surprising myself daily, finally deadlifting things like my Iguana and Shoulder Mount and managing to hold my Iron X for a couple of seconds! When I lost my training space I started working on flexibility at home to fill in the training gaps and by now I was chasing new moves like an addict. The first thing I worked on with nowhere to practise pole for three months was my splits. With this new and more focused schedule, I progressed from around six inches away from the floor to almost a three block over split in just 8 months! Take a look:

After that I still had nowhere to practise pole so regularly, but I had at least found a space to work on strength drills on the pole twice a week.

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While my strength wasn’t up to the standards I left off at, it was looking really good and coming back fast, muscle memory is an amazing thing! In the meantime I continued to work on back bends at home for the next 3 months. Right now I still only manage to practise on a pole around twice a week, but taking that huge step back to work on flexibility alone has transferred amazingly into my pole sessions. Much more so than when I was practising daily and trying to fit in a little of everything, so now I’m going to share with you the exact method behind achieving your pole goals faster.

What Is Goal Overload? Circling back to why pole dancers need more focused goals, we barely scratched the surface on some of the things you’ll be working on. This is why you need to be careful not to overload yourself. Let’s take a quick look at the amount of things your average pole dancer is working on improving.

Front Splits/Over Splits Back Flexibility Shoulder Flexibility Upper Body Strength Core Strength Grip Strength (knees/hands) Deadlifts Dance Skills/Floor Work Handstands Choreography Body Goals/Nutrition

Aside from varying body goals, the rest is a list of areas you as a pole dancer will be working on to be a well-rounded performer. Even if you never plan to perform or compete, they’re all skills you’ll want at some stage as you progress. Now that’s a lot to be focusing on all at once, but they’re things we’re all working on. They’re all long term targets that you’ll be gradually improving, and you probably feel like you’re progressing as fast as you physically can in class. But where do you find the time to work on all of these at once? The answer if you want to progress quickly is, you don’t! With that said though, you do still want to achieve all these things. Working on them all at once and just hoping that they improve isn’t going to get you anywhere fast. So here’s what you need to do…

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How To Change The Way You Approach Your Goals The first thing you need to do if you plan to take this new, more focused approach to your training is re-wire your brain. If like me, you started pole dancing as an almost lazy and fun way to get fit, it’s likely you’re a little short on motivation and commitment to goals. Nothing beats that feeling of getting a new move in pole class though, so try to use that to drive you forward as you begin to change the way you approach your goals. The first thing you need to do, is adopt a successful mindset (if you aren’t already in the zone!)

What Is Holding You Back?

When you are trying to achieve new goals, sometimes the only thing holding you back is you! While you might not realise it, you could be looking at things the wrong way, and your mindset is a huge part of being successful in all things, not just pole dancing. The good thing here though, is that your mindset is not a fixed thing that can’t be changed. Just reading about some of the ways negative thinking affects your progress can be enough to make little changes to the way you think that have a big impact on your personal achievements. Here are a few tell-tale signs that you’re approaching your goals in a way that is holding you back…

Saying ‘I can’t do it’ a lot Feeling like you’ve ‘failed’ to reach a target Being a perfectionist Blaming outside factors (e.g time constraints) for your lack of progress

If any of these sound like you, you’ll be pleased to hear they’re super easy things to change. Be more aware before saying ‘I can’t’ – instead of going over all the reasons something is not possible in your head, think of ways you can make it work. Treat failure as a stepping stone, if you fail to reach a target just assess how you can do things better next time. Don’t forget that you are only human, and regression is a natural part on the road to reaching your goals. We’re all constantly developing skills, so remember that you haven’t failed until you give up trying. As a perfectionist myself I know this one is hard to shift, but making small changes to your perfectionist mindset will make you far more successful in the long run. If you’re working on nutrition, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Have that donut once a week, as long as you stick to your clean eating long term you haven’t failed and you’ll see improvements.

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Working on flexibility? Let yourself have a day off if you can’t be bothered sometimes, as long as you maintain your routines in the long term you’ll see the results. It actually makes life a lot easier, because as a perfectionist you probably feel let down if you have days like these, and that’s not doing you any good. In fact, it’s totally de-motivating. So try to focus on things as a whole rather than getting each individual part of your training absolutely perfect. One of the biggest roadblocks to your own success comes from blaming outside factors for your inability to train. So if you catch yourself saying things like ‘I don’t have time’ think back to what I said about saying ‘I can’t’. Think about how you can make time.

How To Reprogram Your Mindset

Do you need a little help reprogramming that mindset? The first thing you’ll need to do is take ownership of your goals. Not having the motivation to keep going is a personal choice. Instead of blaming your busy schedule, the weather or the person next to you eating pizza every night, you have to really make a change for you. If you really want to make progress you have to go out and get it and own your decisions. If you think you don’t have time, make time. Stretch for 30 minutes instead of watching your favourite TV show, or if you have a back to back schedule go to bed 30 minutes later and work on your goals before bed. If you’re more of a morning person the same goes for the morning, get up half an hour earlier to fit in quality time to work on your targets. If you choose to go to bed without working on your goals for the day, no matter how busy you are, that is your choice. It’s not because you didn’t have time. As you get used to this way of thinking you’ll notice that the key is long term consistency and not perfection, you can still give yourself a break every now and again!

How To Set Goals The SMART Way Now that we’ve covered some small tweaks to the way you approach your goals, I’m going to show you exactly how to break your enormous to-do list down into more manageable targets. This will make things a lot more focused, you’ll feel less overwhelmed and you can work on them for as little as half an hour a day and still see great progress.

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It’s ok to say ‘I want a straight Needle Scale’, ‘I’m going to get my splits’, ‘I want to be strong enough to do an Iron X’, but how exactly are you going to get there? These are huge targets that can often feel like they are never getting anywhere, especially if you are working on them all at once. When you have lots of long term goals in mind it’s really important to break them down into SMART goals. SMART goals are goals that are; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. So next, I’m going to show you how to organise your goals the SMART way!

Specific Goals First, let’s take that enormous list of goals you have. I want you to think about which one is most important to you. Which one is going to make you feel the most amazing? Which one will open doors to more new moves on the pole? With that in mind I want you to pick one pole dancing goal, yes that’s right you heard me. Out of all of those things I know you’re itching to work on I want you to pick just one. Once you’ve decided on your specific focus goal, write it down. Then you’ll need to write down some more realistic short term goals for that target. This could be anything from small increases in strength to an improvement in your splits or even just sticking to a new schedule to embed new habits.

Measurable Goals

A major part of successfully achieving your goals is tracking your progress through targets that you can measure. You can easily measure your splits by taking pictures and using an angles app. Your strength can be measured in either the amount of weight lifted or new progress with a pole move. If you are trying to lose weight or inches, try to avoid looking at the scales for progress. Weight often fluctuates and with an intense workout plan you may even put on a little weight to begin with as you build muscles. For this reason, I would advise focusing on strength or endurance. Set your goals in distance running or the amount of push-ups or pull-ups you can manage. Increase these small targets as necessary to progress and the change in your body will soon follow. Setting body goals this way will help to take your mind away from your scales. They hold little value anyway unless you have a detailed body composition scale.

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Since it’s possible to tone up and lose fat while gaining muscle and sometimes gaining weight, a journey set specifically on weight loss can be a sure fire way to feel defeated early on.

Achievable Goals Next, we’re going to break down your chosen goal even further to make it more achievable. You’ll need to set yourself small milestones to aim for that contribute to the bigger picture. If your splits are six inches off the ground, think about how much closer you would like to be at the end of your set time frame. It’s important to choose targets that are less of a leap to keep yourself motivated to carry on. These smaller stepping stones allow you to celebrate little wins along the way. If you hit these targets early (which will probably happen as you focus in on just one goal) you can re-evaluate your goals and make them more challenging as you progress.

Realistic Goals Along the same lines as making your goals more achievable, you also need to think about how realistic they are to avoid disappointment. If for example your goal is a Needle Scale, remember that this incorporates many skills, from flexible back and shoulders to a nice front split. For this you will need to work on those other goals one at a time at first but you can still put it into your training plan. Just attempt your Needle each time you practise to get a feel for it and get used to the balance. This is why it’s important to know your capabilities so that you never end up feeling down about not hitting your targets, as this is a major motivational setback. Especially if you’re still working on mindset and trying to embed your new more determined habits. The biggest advantage of setting smaller, more realistic goals is that you will notice yourself achieving them more easily and in turn progress faster. This will leave you feeling more proud and motivated than ever before! So just to recap, setting the bar too high will only leave you feeling down and demotivated if you don’t reach your target. You should set goals that are challenging but realistic for you personally.

Time Sensitive Goals Finally, you’ll want to set a ‘timeframe’ for your new short term goal. Having a set timeframe will help with measuring your goals, and with such a huge to do list it also allows you to change what you’re working on regularly to really compliment your pole skills.

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At the end of your chosen period you can measure your progress, celebrate success to keep yourself motivated and re-evaluate your goals to keep things moving. You can set any timeframe that suits you, but for best results I have a suggestion that has been proven to work.

Long Term Targets & How Often To Change Your Goals As a fellow poler reading this I know you’re probably wondering what will happen to your other goals as you work on just one at a time. If you’re working on just splits, how much is your back bend regressing, and what about those strength gains? There’s no need to worry though, as I mentioned in my story at the beginning of this guide, muscle memory really is a wonderful thing. When you truly adjust your mindset you’ll build the habit of a lifetime while working hard on your first short term goal. When you focus in on a goal like that, you see much bigger gains in a shorter space of time and it would take a very long time out to have a big impact on your progress. If you’re very worried, you can add a little ‘maintenance’ time to the goals you’ve already achieved while you’re working on something else. With that said though, you’ll still be using those skills in your regular pole sessions, so they won’t be completely out of action!

How To Prioritise Your Long Term Goals Remember that list of goals we started out with? To plan out your long term goals you’ll need to revisit that list. Prioritise your goals in the order you want to work on them. A good example of this is if you feel totally inflexible and want to achieve a straight Needle Scale by this time next year. Write out the months of the year and split them into three monthly sections. You’ll be changing your main goal every 12 weeks, I’ll go into more detail on that in a minute. So for a Needle Scale you can plan out January to March to focus on your splits. April to June you can work on your back and shoulders and from July to September you can combine the two slightly to focus on your full Needle. Through October to December you might want to focus on any weak areas again, or if things are going well change it up and work on a totally different goal such as strength or choreography. While it may seem like you’re missing out on other goals working this way, I can assure you that this more focused approach will have you progressing faster in the long run.

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While you’re working on one specific goal, your regular pole sessions will help maintain any previous targets you have achieved. So you don’t need to worry about losing any progress you’ve made.

The 12 Week Goal Setting System To get the best out of each goal you set you should use a 12 week plan to achieve it, and there’s a reason why this produces great results. The idea behind 12 week goal setting as opposed to the annual plans and goals set by a lot of people, is that over the course of 12 weeks you don’t have time to slack. If you are working on many goals over a longer period of time it’s very easy to become relaxed and more complacent. This doesn’t happen if you keep your SMART short term goals to a 12 week plan, because it creates a sense of urgency in your mind that you need to reach your goal more quickly. In fitness the reason this works better combined with SMART goal setting, is that we need to be careful not to over train. This is why we have already broken our long term pole goals down into manageable chunks. Then, the less time your mind believes you have to complete your goal, the less likely you are to procrastinate. Combining SMART goals with this 12 week goal setting system will help you to prioritise your most important goals and achieve amazing results. If you set yourself a nice realistic goal that you think is achievable in 12 weeks, you can even set yourself micro-targets for the end of each week to keep your mind focused on those little wins on your journey! What’s most interesting about this style of goal setting is that the results are often so good that you will progress much further by the end of the year than you first anticipate in your planning stage.

The Importance Of Accountability It’s important in all of this to add a little accountability to your goals, and I have the perfect solution for that here. You have to find a way to hold yourself accountable to help you really embed your new lifestyle habits and stay motivated to achieve your goals.

Where To Find A Supportive Community & Buddies A fantastic way to keep yourself motivated towards your goals, is to have a buddy who knows your start points and end goals to hold you accountable. I found this to be the most driving factor behind reaching my first ever 12 week goal. The best buddy will be someone at a similar stage of progress to you who is working on similar goals.

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The way this works is to communicate with each other daily, update each other with progress and struggles and support each other. If you don’t have someone that springs to mind already, you can look in relevant groups on Facebook to find someone working on similar goals to you. If you take this route as an online buddy, you have to remember that you are also a buddy for your partner, this is one of the things that really drove me to keep going with my own new habits! Knowing that someone else is relying on you to go through the journey with them is something I find especially motivating. You need to help each other out and give advice and encouragement. You’ll support each other if times get tough and celebrate successes together. You can reach out in the Love Pole Kisses community on Facebook if you need help finding a buddy.

How To Keep Track Of Your Goals & Stay Motivated Keeping a record of your achievements will help you stay motivated to continue, so be sure to keep notes of what you achieve each day. Don’t worry if some days are worse than others, or your progress is not consistently going forwards. Remember that the path to your destination is a winding road with lots of curves and turns. It may not be straight forward but you are on the right path so stick to it. Recording your goals and achievements allows you to stay on track easily and look back to appreciate how far you have already come. After reading everything included in this guide to achieving your pole goals faster, you might be feeling a little unsure of how to organise your notes and track your goals effectively. If you need a little help to put everything here together in a more organised and structured way that is easy to manage you should take a look at the Smart & Simple Pocket Pole Fitness Planner. The planner is uniquely designed to work with this guide using the methods I personally used to fast track my progress in the last year. It is set out with the 12 week goal setting system in mind, with space for weekly targets and ideas that you want to work on as and when you think of them so you don’t forget. The planner includes extra motivational tools and workout ideas to help you take full control of your goals and reach them faster than ever!

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Good Luck! You now have everything you will ever need to really focus in on your goals and turn them into bite size chunks. Tackling your goals this way will really speed up your progress and leave you feeling better than ever and surprised at your results. Here’s a quick checklist of important points to remember;

Before planning your goals, get yourself in the right mindset to succeed Write out your goals in order of priority Break your main goals down into 12 weekly time slots across the year Make your main goals SMART and set micro targets to keep yourself motivated Keep yourself accountable with a buddy & join the community for support Stay on track of your goals with the Smart & Simple Pocket Pole Fitness Planner Have fun and be proud of your progress!

When working on each goal remember not to get side tracked with others. Stick to your regular training and only focus on one side goal at home at a time, then watch it transform your pole capabilities! Please join our community on Facebook, share your progress and remember to get in touch if you would like to be assigned a buddy You can also drop me an email to let me know how you get on, I can’t wait to see your progress! Best of luck! Love & Pole Kisses,

Gemma Young

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The Secret To Achieving Your Pole Goals Faster

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