Clients history and pain points - Steph is young and healthy (20’s). She works full time during the week at a mostly seated and desk-based job with an emphasis on Social Work. She is single with no children. During the pandemic Steph taught herself how to sew, and now she is an amazingly accomplished seamstress - she creates gorgeous pole performance clothing! She started learning to pole dance during the pandemic around March of 2021. She quickly became the student who was attending the most classes of anyone at our studio each week, really immersing herself in all things pole! I resumed in-person teaching at our studio in July of 2021, and Steph quickly became a regular. My class focused on what I considered at the time to be pole foundational elements that generally were not being taught in other classes at our studio.
By that time I had taken the first public offering of Marlo’s initial “Invert Ready” course in earlier 2021. Because this course had such a significant impact on my own strength, body awareness, and understanding of inverts, I began using and teaching many of these concepts in my classes, and quickly saw improvements in strength and position of the students who attended regularly. They were happily reporting changes in their strength and awareness, as well, and seeing the impact on their pole work. I also had some of my regular students reporting that mine were the only classes where they did not feel hurt or injured after attending. I have had a group of “regular” students who attend my weekly Sunday classes religiously (our studio owner calls it “the Church of Karen” LOL).
Before taking the Invert Ready Coach training, my approach to teaching the Invert Ready ideas and exercise was less organized, as I had yet to really conceptualize the learning for myself. Yet I wanted to document the progress of one of the regular students who reported benefitting from the teachings. Steph came to pole with no prior experience with dance or movement, as well as no strength training. But she had tons of excitement, focus and motivation for all things pole. Unfortunately, in the few months of pole before she came to work with me, she had not received any safe or in-depth invert training, hence the significant injuries, and faulty self beliefs about her pole limitations.
I have observed profound improvement in Steph’s inverts and pole skills over the past year. When I first began working with her one year ago, she commonly experienced muscle strain and injury. She also had low confidence and fear for a number of moves. She loved the “invert ready inspired” method of teaching that I was using, and eagerly volunteered to be a part of this final project! I was also excited to record her moving through 3-4 well-organized post-Portland sessions!
Include before/after photo/video of -T + L spinal flossing, Squat, Chin-up (or attempt), Invert (whatever version they are closest to), OLH (BM+ILH optional), Feel free to include anything else you would like to track progress on (forward hinge, shoulder mobility etc.…)
II. What are their goals?
I originally emailed Steph asking her to participate in my final project. In the email I asked her what her initial goals had been when we first started working together one year ago, and what her current pole goals were now.
Some of my goals were mainly related to inverting. Learning not to kick up to invert. The only injuries I have ever had throughout my pole journey (1.5+ years) have been during an invert. At the beginning of my pole journey, I was so determined to invert, it did not matter how I got up. Then once I got up from the ground, I wanted to learn aerial inverts. Aerial inverts caused my second injury. Every time I would invert it felt as if I was yanking on my back. Inverting has been /(still partially is) the ugly part of any trick combo I attempt. Inverting is the piece I tend to fast forward to get to the "tricks" part of my combos. I wanted/still do want to make inverting look and feel effortless.
Some of my current goals still relate to inverting. I want to be able to do inverts on the ground with straight legs and pointed toes. I want to continue learning how to properly (meaning really grasping the technique) execute inverts from different transitions such as on the ground spins, aerial static rotations, positions like Jamila and prancing, and other neat ways! I want to really focus more on static rotations and how to make my body move in ways that give the illusion I am on spinner. I want to be able to complete beautiful aerial inverts through different transitions. Chopper or "wheel downs" are ones I have seen that look so beautiful!
Inverting and hooking my outside leg on spinner pole is another big one. However, I feel like once I have mastered inverting aerially on static (I will have a sweeter time mastering inverting on spinner). These moves feel so much heavier on a spinning pole.
Inside leg hooks is another one. Like inverting, anything involving inside legs is heavily rushed because my body is not yet comfortable or confident in this position.
Practicing both sides is another goal, hehe.
My last and overall goal is proper technique in all things related to pole. I was once listening to a pole podcast where the person being interviewed was asked what differentiates a beginner poler and an advanced poler. The person replied "technique". She mentioned how even having a Jazmin can make you look advanced if you have proper technique when executing the move.
III. What are your goals?
Based on who you’re working with and what their goals are, where do you hope to get them?
My initial goals when I first began working with Steph (and the other students) in July of 2021 were primarily injury prevention, which would involve teaching new habits of inverting by building strength and body awareness and positioning.
Once I was more immersed in the IRC training, and I had a fuller understanding of the concepts, my goals for Steph became more specific:
Improve shoulder joint positioning
Focus on “ramping up” muscle activation, focus on pre-engaging muscles
Improve step one of Invert “focus”, and the last step “the exit”
IV.What is your hypothesis/strategy?
How do you plan to approach coaching them? What methods will you use?
Even though I had been employing the Invert Ready concepts with Steph for about one year, it had been less organized, a bit of a “patchwork” presentation. After the Portland weekend training, the Invert Ready theoretical approach, as well as how to implement it became more solidified for me. I was excited to go back to the foundational exercises of IR - spinal differentiation through spinal flossing, shoulder mobility, thoracic mobility, squats, chin ups/pull ups, 360 degree breathing, external cueing, bridge positioning, and detailed OLH exercises.
Despite the fact that Steph and the other Sunday regulars have been presented with these exercises at various times over the past year, a good revisit with a more thorough explanation and presentation (the “why” of the exercise), can really help a student understand a move more fully. My plan was to almost “start from the beginning” - by revisiting the foundations in a cohesive manner, and to use these exercises as an assessment of where Steph was after more long term exposure to this methodology, to hone in on the individual challenges she was facing, and implement various methods of focusing in on these challenges.
V. Documentation of Implementation of strategy:
What actually happened in each session? What did you do? How did it go? What worked? What didn't?
Session 1 - (see accompanying video linked above)
Steph came to the pole studio for her usual weekly group class with me, that I had been modeling after “Invert Ready” for a number of months. She had agreed ahead of time to participate in a focused 3-session project for my Invert Ready final and agreed to videotape herself. Due to studio constraints the class was only 60 minutes. The studio does not have horizontal bars for chin-ups.
PLAN and ASSESS - I wanted to use Steph’s first “official final project session” as a way to really dive into some of the IR body awareness exercises, particularly “spinal differentiation” and awareness of shoulder and hip joint positioning and mobility. I planned to use these exercises as a way to assess where she was at currently, and to see where we could best focus the remaining sessions for her.
We began with shoulder mobility - use yoga straps and elastic bands to make circles with the arms. We also did the intense wall roll down (which took about 5-6 minutes), following by 360 degree breathing and spinal flossing with the elastic band (for about 8-10 minutes). Then we did some chair squats to practice positioning and full muscle engagement in the legs and hip joint. I have been training Steph in pole pull-ups for a number of months, and she has shown tremendous improvement in this area, in both strength and position. Today we reviewed in greater detail than usual the shoulder positioning and muscular activation, using an overcoming isometric (OI), cuing her to “pull the pole apart”. With both the chair squat, and pole pull apart exercise, I brought attention to “ramping up” the efforting… counting from 1-10. We then included pole pull-ups, after warming up with the OI exercise.
60 minutes is a short amount of time to include all of this awesome “off the pole” stuff! It took at least 40 minutes in this class! At first, I actually felt kind of “bad” that people were coming to learn pole, and we were doing this very unusual stuff for most of the class!!! I usually do approximately 25-30 minutes of “warm-ups” in this class, but it often involves more “on the pole” type of warming up.
But to my surprise, no one complained! These more experienced students, including Steph, reflected that a lot of these exercises made even more sense now than they had many months ago! Steph, and the other students have really enjoyed these opportunities to “focus” on their muscle efforting, and body positioning. They have reflected a number of times that this is what they enjoy most about my classes!
Remaining 20 minutes or so were spent “on the pole” reviewing in detail the fundamentals of inverting, while reflecting back on all of our previous conditioning and warm up exercises. We did the waist hold bridge slide down to the floor, the belly on the pole exit from this move, the low waist hold invert without jumping, as well as both OLH and ILH
As you will see in the videos, Steph’s body awareness, control, positioning and strength have improved tremendously from her “before” video. She inverts and exits beautifully, elegantly, with strength, confidence and control on BOTH sides with both OLH and ILH. LIke many students (including myself) she tended to just invert into her dominant side OLH
From this detailed class, I observed that many of her foundations were solid and strong. I also observed that even though she could exit slowly, with control, she also had a tendency to lose that strong, safe exit once she began to execute more complicated moves; but would instead find some more precarious exits. There was also a tendency to lose the shoulder positioning towards the end of class or again when the movements became more complicated. Therefore, I thought we could bring more attention to strong, focused exits, and consistent shoulder positioning and conditioning in the upcoming classes.
Session 2 - (see accompanying video linked above)
Steph came to the pole studio for her usual weekly group class with me, that I had been modeling after “Invert Ready” for a number of months. She had agreed ahead of time to participate in a focused 3-session project for my Invert Ready final and agreed to videotape herself. Due to studio constraints the class was only 60 minutes. The studio does not have horizontal bars for chin-ups.
My goal for this week was to focus in great detail on 1) shoulder awareness and positioning, as well as using “pre-engagement” as a way to ramp up and tune in to engaging muscles around the shoulder area during inverts and exits, and 2) to consistently be thoughtful and attentive to the exit particularly when executing more complex invert work
We actually warmed up with that fun partner exercise we had done in Portland with the ropes - the one where we explore different shoulder positions by keeping the rope taut between 2 people. With these experienced students it was a fun and engaging exercise, as they had awareness and confidence to explore various ranges of shoulder positioning. Our studio does not have the cool ropes that we played with in Portland, so we used Yoga Straps, which led to more hand fatigue than the knotted ropes! But anyway, this was a fun, playful and engaging shoulder warm-up!
We then spent a bit more time really examining the shoulder position during pole pull-ups. We began on the knees, with a leg-assisted pull-up - pulling up the body to raise the knees off the floor while keep the feet connected, minimizing the amount of body weight being lifted, giving more opportunity to tune in to shoulder positioning. Focusing on pre-engagement of the muscles was reviewed in detail as well. I then added a rubber banditz to the pole to help with pole grip, to again enable Steph to focus on her shoulder positioning during the pull-ups. And then another pull-up involved, starting on “tip toes” pulling down on the pole and pulling self up to “tippy-tippy toes” - this micro-lift again really helps dial in the focus on the muscle engagement
We reviewed the Phase 9 of the Invert - the Exit! Finding a slow exit from any Leg Hook, by slowing down, and pulling the pole across the belly, finding moments to pause in the exit, fixing the position of the spine, shoulders, and chest in those moments as well. Steph noticed that reminding herself that this was actually “phase 9” of the invert helped her remember to use it every time she inverted. We both acknowledged that this was also a great way to keep building strength!
Near the end of session #2, Steph acknowledged that the detailed focus on shoulders and exits was extremely helpful, and important area in which she wanted to continue focusing and improving - so she had found all of the exercises helpful.
I do wish I had more than 60 minutes each week, to fit more into these classes, but again, I saw that Steph and the other students were appreciated the detailed conditioning and positioning work, and were not left feeling like we “didn’t do enough on the pole”.
Session 2 - (see accompanying video linked above)
Steph came to the pole studio for her usual weekly group class with me, that I had been modeling after “Invert Ready” for a number of months. She had agreed ahead of time to participate in a focused 3-session project for my Invert Ready final and agreed to videotape herself. Due to studio constraints the class was only 60 minutes. The studio does not have horizontal bars for chin-ups.
For this 3rd official Final Project session, I wanted to continue to focus on shoulder positioning and exits; but to apply it to more complex pole movements; which Steph is doing in most of her other classes.
For the warmup, we again focus on shoulder positioning and conditioning. Because I had been researching and writing a report on “Overcoming Isometrics” (OI’s) as my “interest area”, we used some OI’s for the warm-ups - not only for shoulders, chest, and back, but also for glutes, and quads - pushing against an immovable object, proved to be a fun, engaging, and efficient full body warmup for the students.
After warming up with our standing waist hold inverts and exits - bringing focus to the 9 phases of inverting; we began applying these principles to complex patterns of movement such as climbing and aerial inverts with OLHs and ILHs. These are all movement patterns we had trained previously, and Steph does lots of climbing, aerial inverts and various tricks in other classes throughout the week with other teachers, too.
Overall, she has made huge gains in her strength, positioning, confidence and safety. She and I both notice the tendency for her to round the back a bit at various points in these movement patterns, but she also is tuning in enough to self-correct at numerous points, as well. And again, this gives us some material to continue working with in upcoming weeks!
Bonus Session #4 - Chin-ups and Pull-ups at My House!
I had been talking about horizontal bar work for quite a few months with all of the students. Steph had recently purchased her own doorway horizontal bar, and was eager to learn some exercises for the bar, so we decided to do a session at my house!
Before this session, Steph said she had never tried or done chin-ups or pull-ups before. She was a bit skeptical about her abilities, but I told her that we had TONS of options to experiment with, that would lead her on a path towards happy chin-ups!
We started with a “dead hang” letting the shoulders elevate. But first we examined handgrip a bit, and explored the various options for wrapping the hands - I recommended the thumb wrap for all of the exercises, and recommended bringing attention to all of the fingers on the bar. It was fun seeing her drop lower as she relaxed and elevated the shoulders! She enjoyed the feeling as well. Being a pole dancer with a strong hand grip, she was able to hang for about 40 seconds on her first try!
Next we explored some spinal movements and undulations while hanging. This was challenging for her to figure out how to initiate this movement - and I honestly told her it was for me the first few times, too! So we broke it down a bit into pelvic tilting and tucking, and beginning to turn those movements into body waves. Steph is excited to experiment more with these movements at home.
We explored hanging shoulder elevations and depressions (shrugs) next. Steph did a great job with this, as this is a movement pattern we do every week in class (without weight), and she reflected that this felt good, but also noticed that her lack of grip strength inhibited her a bit, and I also reflected that this was a new thing, and she may be fatiguing from the other “hangs” we had done.
So, next I introduced chin-ups with a knee in the Rubber Bandit. This is a great way to explore the movement and positioning with less weight. This just seemed effortless for her!
Because the band-assisted chin-ups were so easy, we decided to see how chin-ups felt without the band. She surprised herself by effortlessly executing 3 non-assisted chin-ups with beautiful form!!! Her movement was smooth, and her grip looked solid!
Lastly I showed her an eccentric lowering down from a chin-up, as another add on for building strength.
This was an extremely fun and successful session. Steph left feeling empowered and strong. I really believe that the many months we had done of strength training, positional and body awareness; as well as that days lead-up exercises helped her with the chin-ups - again the first time she had done these in her life!
VI. Results of strategy:
Steph is an extremely motivated, dedicated and focused pole student!I have seen great improvement in her muscle engagement, body awareness, self correcting of position and engagement, improved position, and great improvements in strength.
When I emailed her in June and asked her to participate in this final project, I asked if she had any initial feedback on what she has learned from the IR concepts I’ve taught over the past year - she wrote, “I feel like your class has strengthened not only my body, but the understanding of my body. How an invert is a squat upside down, how an inside leg is a pigeon pose, how the placement of my arms and hips is key to get to an invert or proper static rotation, and the list goes on! I don't think I would have made the progress I am making if I did not have the breakdowns of moves and simplifications your class provides! LOVE LOVE LOVE your class, Karen! “
After our last meeting for this final project (9/6/22), I asked Steph if she had any final feedback, now that she had received a more “condensed and organized” presentation of IR concepts.. She stated that her sense of body awareness and body confidence has improved; She continues to notice huge leaps in strength; She does not get injured; She enjoys inverting for the sake of inverts and feels that she has met her goal of having beautiful invert technique; she feels safe and confident with aerial inverts; she feels safe and confident with ILH; She has met the goal of consistently training both sides. She feels that she really uses the IR principles in so many aspects of pole.
VII. Concluding findings: Explain what this case study has taught you and how it can help other people.
To be honest, working with Steph and the other “Sunday regulars” (this past year) has helped me grow tremendously as a teacher. Without such incredibly fun, committed, and eager students, I would not work half as hard as I do!
With the Invert Ready Mentor training I feel much more educated and prepared to teach inverts. I understand the mechanics of inverts, I understand body anatomy and specifically the body parts related to inverting, and I can demonstrate and explain these concepts to students. Bringing AWARENESS to our bodies as we execute movements in pole, keeps us all safe, strong, and beautiful. What pole dancer doesn’t want those things?
Through working with Steph throughout my IRC training, I have grown in my ability to observe my students, and provide helpful feedback. I can spot energy leaks, and translate these observations into strategies and exercises to improve positioning and engagement of muscles
Knowing that Steph attends multiple classes per week with other instructors, and is definitely practicing more “advanced tricks”, I at times have wondered “am I offering enough” in my classes to keep her and the other experienced students engaged? Well, the obvious answer is that they would keep coming every week to my classes if they weren’t getting something useful from them! But, I think my self-confidence was solidified after the Portland weekend; particularly when I began the 3 week Final Project classes with Steph. Going back to the foundational exercises, and being able to coherently and confidently explain “why” these were important and useful, and to see the students fully focus and commit to this learning has been rewarding and reaffirming. I feel like I offer something extremely useful and relevant to pole students of various levels.
How can this help other people? Trusting the process of teaching the IRC concepts and applying them to your students with confidence and patience. These methods work. I have seen profound changes in myself and others.
VIII. Reflection Questions: Did you invest yourself in this process? What are you proud of in this process?
Yes!!!! Whole heartedly! I’ve probably sprinkled answers to this throughout this report… but will add a few more thoughts. I love learning and I love teaching! And most of all I love the challenge of seeing each person as an individual, and adapting to the student’s needs in the present moment. Being knowledgeable and prepared is an important prerequisite. But for most effective teaching situations, you cannot teach a class like a recipe out of a cookbook. Know the foundations and theories, but be fully present in your observations of the students. Communicate effectively, and problem-solve creatively, based on your foundational knowledge. I always tell people that there are the “3 A’s” or phases of learning something new: Awkward, Aware, and Automatic. I feel like I have moved through the “awkward” phase of learning/teaching this new material of IRC, and am operating in both the aware, as well as the more fluid/dynamic “automatic” phase at times. Those are the moments that are exciting and joyful as a teacher. But I love also being in the “aware” phase, as I still have much to learn myself. I enjoy being intentional in my research and preparation before each class. I love being able to go back and watch more videos in our vast IRC library of resources!
