Possibilities

I just had the most amazing pole lesson and I wonder if my pole instructor even knows what she did. What fire she lit. In what way she was a catalyst for my current state of being. I literally left the class buzzing with the possibilities of my future.

For a while now I have been slowly becoming more confident and less afraid of what I’ve been doing in pole. There has been less screaming in fear and more swearing in frustration when a trick has eluded me.

There have been tricks in class that I have thought, no way would I ever get that but if I think about it, all the way through pole, I have seen them do moves and thought nup and then the moves have come and I have thought how’d that happen?

I remember seeing the Extended Butterfly way back when and just loving it and thinking yeah dream on Trish but now that is a staple in my repertoire.

So the screaming got less and the swearing got more and my trust in the instructors grew and grew and grew. I won a competition that got me some free lessons, this gave me money to get some privates and all of a sudden unobtainable moves started to show me some kindness. Ok Trish I’m just going to give you a little taste of the handspring.

That’s all the encouragement I need.

I did a photo shoot with some scary arse moves and I was starting to slip out of them but I didn’t care because I wanted the photo so bad. So all of a sudden I knew that I could get out of a move if I had to and my life wasn’t in danger and I thought mmmm things be changing around here.

I did a private with Nicole on of the instructors and I got my cross knee release and my inside leg hang and I thought WHO AM I!!!!.

Then I did a private with Sarah another one of the instructors and I was kicking up into the handspring by myself. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?

I had a taste, a taste of a static pole move that I really wanted and I thought these are not isolated incidents. Trisha you are improving. I don’t know how this happened expect for turning up to scary arse classes like Sarah’s static pole class and Nicoles 34 class but oh my goodness. Things be changing.

And then today happened. Oh my.

I had a one on one lesson with Kat. I had been ill so hadn’t trained in a week so I wasn’t expecting much from the lesson but to just start to work my way back in. We warmed up and even just warming up I was starting to feel better. She plays this song that I love and it was my favourite warm up of running around. The song gets faster and as it does our warm up gets faster. We walk then run then do side steps and so on. The faster we got the happier I got. It had felt like forever since I had been in the pole studio. Like I said I’d been ill so the warm up while fun was nearly the death of me. Kat looked at my face and said we’ll do handsprings first while you have the energy. I thought good luck with that as I suppressed a coughing fit.

I told Kat that I thought I had started to get up in the handspring by myself when I was with Sarah and she said show me. I tried and I failed but I think I got about half way. She said it’s cool, you bailed, I’ll spot you. Now for whatever reason I was doing those handsprings like a woman possessed and they just felt easy today. Like sometimes you are heaving yourself up and today, kapow I was up. This was both sides. I finally understood as Kat has been saying over and over, it’s easier if you go faster. I was rocketing up, it didn’t take so much strength and then I was starting to balance while I was up there. OMG!!!!! Amaziballs. Not in a million years did I think that I could hand spring. Booyeah Trishy.

We did shoulder mounts and I said Kat I think I’ve got it flat now and by George I did. I told her that I was working towards leg hang from a shoulder mount and she said no you could do that now and by golly she just upped and showed me how to do it. REEDICULOUS!

Then we did static pole and I got my lower hand on the pole and I thought Universe kill me now I will never be so happy again. That is of course an exaggeration.

Here is the transformational aspect of the lesson though.

Somewhere after the hand springs and before the static pole I told Kat that I was a member of a facebook group called 50+ polers. This group allowed me to see polers of my age doing tricks and allowed me to see what I could do at my age. Kat drops the bombshell that there is pole masters competitions.

It was like a gong went off in my head, masters… masters… people of your age to compete against. No more feeling like the old woman in the room. I had the opportunity to train for a comp that was for people like me. I had possibilities, potential, I left that studio on cloud nine.