Save your Shoulders

Course Overview

Pole dancers all want strong and mobile shoulders! And unsurprisingly, the most common injury amongst pole dancers is the shoulder. Whether you’re a seasoned pole dancer or brand new to the scene, chances are that you’ve felt some aches and pains in your shoulder! But how familiar are you with what’s actually moving or engaging in your shoulders to build shoulder strength and mobility safely and effectively?

Well, in this exclusive collaboration with physiotherapist aka shoulder magician Mark Seuring, we will:

• explore the mechanics of the shoulder and its surrounding structures;
• look at the relationship between strength and mobility and how it applies to your body and practice;
• analyse which muscles should be firing up and engagement cues when doing specific moves on the pole;
• look at some strength and mobility tests;
• take you through some important rotator cuff isolated exercises, and shoulder strengthening and mobility exercises that are specific and functional to pole fitness; and
• in this process, we will also be looking at specific drills and cues for you to explore and immediately implement into your training.

What does it cover?

1. Basic shoulder anatomy: understanding how the shoulder moves. What are the “movers” and the “stabilisers”, and what role do they play?
2. Shoulder anatomy in practice: we look at the same anatomical structures working in the context of executing various foundation moves on the pole e.g. pole pull-up, split grip, invert and twisted grip.
3. The Strength-Mobility continuum, and how this applies in pole fitness.
4. Strength and mobility tests: are you hypermobile? How might this end up in injuries? We will go through some tests you can do to assess where you are in your levels of shoulder strength and mobility. This is important to enable you to tailor and choose what exercises you need to focus on based on your shoulder strength, health and mobility.
5. Shoulder Warm-up Sequence: we’ve built a cool little warm-up sequence you can do with a theraband at the beginning of your training, which will activate all the right muscles.
6. Rotator Cuff Isolation exercises: we call this the “buttering of the bread”. What are some of the exercises you can do to activate the little unsung heroes in your shoulder, before you train/perform, and at the end of your training in order to build stability in your shoulder joint.
7. Functional movement patterns: these involve more complex functional exercises that will build on scapular and rotator cuff strength and stability.
8. Strength training for Twisted Grip & Split Grip: we go through some exercises which will help train and build your strength for these foundation grips in pole fitness.
9. Mobility: what are some exercises you can do to optimise shoulder flexibility (spoiler: it’s not just your shoulders that you need to work on! We also analyse thoracic mobility… your pole shoulder’s knight in shining armour…).