SWING, SLIDE AND SPIN YOUR WAY TO FITNESS
Pole dancing, which is Looking to spruce up your workout routine? picking up steam for its many health benefits,
Flexibility, strength, balance and confidence — the benefits of pole dancing are diverse and abundant. In the past, many celebs, including actors Jacqueline Fernandez, Yami Gautam Dhar, Malaika Arora and Kriti Kharbanda, have been seen embracing it as a form of exercise — with the latest being actor Nia Sharma. Her recent post on Instagram received nearly a million views in no time.
But, celebrities aren’t alone to take interest in this dancecum-fitness workout. People from all walks of life, professions, ages, genders and sexualities are increasingly making pole dance a regular part of their fitness regimen.
need might be exactly what you
HEAR IT FROM THEM
When Natasha Dsouza (32), a corporate employee from Mumbai, was looking for newer ways to challenge her body, she came across pole dancing. “It combines physical endurance, agility and flexibility with graceful poise. Pole dancing is weight-lifting, cardio, Pilates and meditation, all rolled into one,” says Dsouza, who is enrolled at Pole Burnt Studio by Aarifa Bhinderwala in Bandra.
For Sofia Premkumar (27), a makeup artist from Chennai, it was watching Anusha Swamy’s (founder of The Pole Camp) workout videos on Instagram that inspired her to give pole dancing a try. “When it comes to the pole, you cannot rush the process to see progress; you need patience, practice and more than anything, discipline,” Premkumar, who is now a teacher at the same institute, tells us.
HEALTH BENEFITS OF WORKING THE POLE
Fitness expert Vesna Jacob from Delhi, who started her institute Vesna’s PoleRise in 2018, was one of the first to open a pole fitness studio in the Capital. On how pole dance engages the body holistically, she says, “You need a strong core and upper body strength for pole dancing, and it further helps improve the same. One can always focus on one aspect of the pole more than the other, and the classes are structured around that: pole art, pole fitness, exotic pole (more dance oriented), etc.”
Along the same lines, Swamy, who opened her pole dance institute in 2019 in Chennai, says that this form of workout focuses on all muscles. “It’s a slow and steady process that helps you gain a lot of strength, flexibility and mobility in all aspects — physical, mental and spiritual,” she adds.
ANYONE CAN POLE
In Swamy’s classes, one will come across students of all genders and ages, ranging from an eight-year-old to a 70year-old. Jacob, too, teaches participants aged between 17 and 50. “A vast majority of them are women, but there is a tiny and distinct minority of men who want to do pole dancing as well,” says Jacob.
BRINGING ABOUT A CHANGE
Doing his bit to shatter stereotypes is Arnesh Ghose (30), a brand communications consultant and a former journalist from Mumbai. Ghose, the only man in his class at Pole Burnt Studio, emphasises that more men should be opting for this workout to avail its many benefits. “In 2019, I did a story on pole fitness, for which I took a group of eight men to Aarifa, who was one of the few people in the city offering pole classes to men. The whole point of this exercise was to involve them in pole dancing and to get rid of the stigma that it only caters to the male gaze,” he says.
In fact, for long, the stigma and stereotypes attached to pole dancing as a form of workout have prevented people from opting for it. While mindsets are gradually changing for the better, Jacob says pole dance is yet to get its due. Another challenge, she adds, is that the “teacher base is smaller than the evergrowing student base”.