Warm Up

It is extremely important to do a good warm up of the whole body before aerial training in order to avoid entorse or any other traumas. The warm up in this article would suit both the beginners and the advanced levels.

I can definitely say due to my experience that during the pole dance classes as well as hoop I got light injuries occasionally when my body was not well prepared.

We start with the dynamic general exercises and then do exercises to try to reach each tiny part and muscle in the body.

I vary the first dynamic exercises, it can be burpy, jumps, squats, if you do jogging, that could also go. But then I always do the leg swings forward and backward and from side to side as I love doing a lot of splits, and that’s the best way to prepare legs before general warmup.

After dynamic exercises we finally start the general warm up and in order not to forget anything, I always go from upper parts of the body to the lower ones.

I will list the exercises with screenshots and captions below, and you can find the whole video in the end of this article.

1. Neck. Head turns from side to side, left and right, and slow circular movements with the head.

2. Shoulders, arms, elbows. Circular arm movements from the shoulders, then bend the arms at the elbows and make circular movements with the elbows.

3. Hands. Clasp the hands together and stretch them, then circular movements or vice versa

4. Back. This area demands special attention as it plays an important role in numerous elements.

Side-to-side rotations, keeping the feet pointed forward and trying to move only with the upper part of the torso.

Forward and backward bends, right and left bends, windmill.

After bends, you can proceed with the circular movements of the upper part of the torso, and then circular movements with the hips.

Hug your elbows and do the circular movements from one leg to another.

The next complex I find super useful:

• Downward Dog to Cobra and back

• Cat Cow Pose

Love this exercise as well: fold forward and then feet over head:

Sit down in the position closest to the side split, feet pointed.

Fold to the right leg, then fold to the left leg. Rest folded for 8-10 seconds.

Then bend to each leg: if you are bending to your left leg, stretch your left arm forward, your breast should stay and look forward or into the ceiling when you bend.

And this is an amazing exercise for folding and stretching, which I found on the Intsagram page of the founder of My Pole Space studio.

Initial position is sitting with the straight back and holding your straight leg in front of you. You pull the leg to you, then you slowly round your back and distance your leg at straight arms, you lie down and drag the leg to you again. Then when sitting back up you do the same movements in the reverse order.

Bridge.

Make a bridge and then try to stretch your leg up one at a time :-)

Then try to straighten your knees while standing in the bridge.

To finish your back, you can do rotations while lying on the ground. You lie down with your face down and rotate only the lower part of your body.

5. Plank is in general very useful exercise to warm your body up as it activates multiple muscles:

You can start with 30 secs making it up to at least 1 min.

6. Legs and feet.

I always do lunges to warm up legs, then half plank (plank in the lunge with elbows on the ground),

Stay in the lunge for a while.

It is important to stretch your anterior thighs as well.

I haven't included the exercises for feet, but I often do them as well. It is crucial to prepare feet when you do pole dancing.

You can do rotations with the feet while standing and also when sitting with your legs together in front of you or lying with your legs together up straight

After rotations point-flex your feet.

7. Splits. That is the last thing I do in my warm up, cause after the exercises above the body is ready for the splits whichever splits you have.

If you are not there yet, go slowly and carefully and rest in the lowest position you have for now at least for 10 seconds. Don't be overenthusiastic, it can lead to traumas. Be careful with the area under the knee.

If you are already there, you can use fitness blocks to go into minus splits.

Be creative, do the stand splits, use pillars or whatever you have around, but carefully.

Always be careful with «the weak» parts of your body (if you don’t know them yet, you will feel them during the trainings) and do a few more exercises on them, thus your weak parts will become your strong parts.

For example, for me it is back and under the knee zone, hands. They always need a bit more attention.

You can watch the accelerated video of the full warm up process I created below (note: the order of the exercises in the video may differ from the order above, some exercises may be omitted):

Now you are ready to train!

Don't forget to finish your training with stretching your back, arms and legs.

Feel free to share your own favourite exercises for warm up in the commentaries :-)