Learn How to Pole Dance

Teach Yourself at Home

How to get started on your pole fitness journey…… 

From stripper moves……to advanced inverts & tricks…….to full workout routines…

So you really, really want to get fit or have fun with an alternative form of fitness? You’re a pole virgin or you’ve had a few lessons at a studio and now you want to learn at home. But you have no idea where to start. I get it I’ve been there. 

It’s daunting at first but fear not, it’s quite easy once you start. All you need is the right equipment and a way of learning the moves. 

Luckily there is a range of ways you can learn how to pole dance.

Firstly we would always recommend that if you are a total beginner that you have a few lessons at a studio.

But saying that it is possible to learn everything from the many resources that are available. 

There is a great selection of online lessons, instructional videos, detailed books, video libraries, pole fitness apps and more to choose from. 

 

Online Lessons

Online Pole Fitness Lessons

Online lessons are great way to learn how. It’s dependant on the school, but in general you get exactly what you would get in class. Someone teaches you the move, giving detailed teaching points and showing you the move from plenty of different angles. You can watch the clip over and over again until you grasp what they are showing you.

Some online lessons will give you the opportunity to learn individual moves and then build them up into a routine. The best resources will give you detailed instructions on how to warm up and cool down. 

When we started to learn at home there was only one online website you could use to learn from. Since then plenty of other websites have been set up that do exactly the same thing. We take a look at which are the best online lessons in our review of  online pole dance lessons. 

Online Pole Fitness Lessons

Discover the 6 best online pole dance studios

pole dancing for beginners

Pole dancing can be as easy or as strenuous as you want to make it. As a beginner you could start with simple dance routines are the base of the pole – even for those that have never done any exercise before this wouldn’t be too taxing. But if you are desperate to climb the pole and hang upside there are simple steps you can take to get you there.

As a beginner embarking on this journey, you do need to keep in mind that pulling your own body weight up the pole can be quite strenuous if you have never done any bodyweight or weight lifting before – and even if you are able to throw around big boy weights at the gym, pole workouts can be still quite tough for the novice as you use your muscles in a different way and possibly use other muscles.

Take a look at our article all about pole dancing for beginners that will tell you everything a novice needs to know.

Pole dancing workout dvds

A bit old school but it’s what was available before online lessons became the norm.  These are perfect if you just want to pay once and have a video / dvd that you can pop in the machine whenever you want to workout. 

In our opinion these are best if you are a total beginner or you want a dvd that gives you an aerobic workout that you can repeat time after time. 

There are several different styles of instructions available. If you want to learn moves there are some great instructional sets available that allow you to move through the series as your skills progress. 

Other DVDs are available that will give you a great aerobic workout.

Pole Dancing Books

It’s quite old school but it’s how some people like to learn. I just learned some new moves using a book as my medium and it worked great. You have the teaching points and images to enable you to learn the move and instructions on how to link moves together into a short routine. So you can get a strength or aerobic workout and learn pole fitness at the same time.

Pole Dancing Videos

Invest in one of the best 5 instructional DVDs and learn to pole dance at home

Learn How to Pole Dance

Interested in pole dance and want to learn a few dance moves at home? Here’s how. Pole dance is a multi-purpose skill. You can use it to get aerobically fit, build strength, confidence and meet new people? Lots of people learn to pole dance at a  studio. But the prevalence of the internet, many resources like videos< and online communities for support, anyone can learn to pole dance at home.
    1.  Buy a pole and perhaps a safety mat
    2. Decide on a style.
    3. Do you want to dance around the bottom and get aerobically fit or do you want to build strength and invert?
    4. Find the best medium for you to learn from
    5. Now is the time to find your teacher. There is a ton of people out there that want to help you learn. From professional dancers, teachers to amateurs. Lots of videos are available to learn from. Lots of websites offer classes, tutorials, or tips for the would be pole dancer — some are free and some cost money.
    6. Warm Up
    7. Before you dance around you pole, it’s important you warm up. You need to raise your heart beat and get your muscles warm. You can dance around to your favourite tune, go for a jog around the block and do some stretching. Take a look at some warm up videos available online. Most mediums that teach you offer some kind of warm up or advise you what you should do to get that body warm.
    8. Do the Lesson
    9. Finally it’s time to learn. Use the resource you have chosen to start learning how to pole dance at home. Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. You may need to practice some moves a lot before you get it. You may get some pole kisses (bruises) and it might hurt your skin at first……this gets less as time goes on. Read our post on Peripheral nerve desensitisation elsewhere on the site. Grab some arnica for bruise relief.
    10. Practice
    11. Remember practice makes perfect. Nobody masters something the first time they do it. An old rule of thumb is that it takes up to 10,000 hours to master a new skill — don’t give up!
     

Frequently Asked Questions

That’s a tricky one as it depends on your prior experiences, how quickly you learn and how much time you have to dedicate to learning. But lots of people do learn so it’s definitely not impossible. Take a look at the resources above and pick a style of learning that suits you. 

 

Yes you can. You can teach yourself using books, videos, dvds, online lessons. You can even learn from YouTube clips.  Some resources are free such as the pole dancing dictionary (1) and others are paid for.

How long is a piece of string. New moves are always being discovered so there is always something to learn. Some people pick pole up really quickly and almost experts after a year, others it can take many, many years. 

Any form of exercise combined with a healthy diet will help you loose weight. 

Again, that depends on you prior experiences and how quick you learn. The basics are usually quite easy to master, some other moves and techniques require that you build strength before you can master a move.

pole dancing poles

>> Find more things you might need for pole dancing & fitness on our home page. <<