Warm-up:
1) Light warm up with pole, similar to pole spin (shoulder stretches, side bows, pencil grip warm up, lunges and hips warm up) + additional leg lunges, triangle yoga poses
Technique:
1) Knee hold
– i had 3 turns on the pole on this but really struggled with this because i got a very bad bruise very quickly
– somehow i really struggled to get my knees into position.. and adjusting my knees took so long that i developed the bruise!
2) Heel, shoulder hold / hook: shoulder mount position (with open grip), lift hips into eagle, then hook one foot onto the pole and extend the other leg straight out (almost in a split position)
– was struggling with this initially, but managed to get into eagle (just a split second and hook leg onto the pole) if i pushed off/ used momentum
– anyway i tried this 3x on each side (i would swap shoulders when i swapped leg, but others kept the same shoulder on the pole)
3) Handspring tuck
– i had 3 turns on the pole and tried this several times each turn
– the last time i did it, EG was there to look at me, and i got high enough that she helped hold my bum up / in place in the tuck, but i think because of the angle, i kind of semi ‘dislocated’ my shoulder… as in, something clicked and it hurt a bit and i couldn’t hold the position
– so anyway, now i have to go see J to get her to check it out
4) Falling angels
– managed to do two sets from a climb caterpillar eagle (EG noticed the second time round that i cheated on my climb eagle – oops)
– in both cases, i stopped when i felt somewhat insecure: i didn’t feel like the grip from my waist and shoulders were strong enough (i think my body didn’t slide down into place quickly enough, or to the extent necessary); and that tended to happen when i swapped from the inside angel to the outside angel. also, i was struggling to swap as quickly as EG was calling out
5) Handstand 4: from inside angel, arch the back and make sure one shoulder is in FRONT of the pole so it can be supported by the pole, hands slightly more than shoulder width apart, one hand clearly in front of the pole, then bring the outer (in my case, right) leg straight to the side like a split, unhook left leg and split out
– i only tried this twice – shame i didn’t get to try this a third time 🙁
– anyway both times Louise spotted me / supported my hips
– the first i felt super insecure and didn’t dare to unhook my leg. that apparently happened because my body was to the side of the pole instead of in front of it
– the second time, it felt slightly better. i really had to make a strong effort to arch my back and get it in front of the pole though