Why learn to Pole Dance?

Every year, new students come to Candy & Chrome to learn how to pole dance.  But why?  Why do it?  What’s in it for YOU?

There are MANY reasons why people come to our classes, but one of the biggest is because of it’s fitness benefits…..



The Fitness Benefits of Pole Dance Exercise…

Pole dancing has time and again been proved to improve:

*Cardiovascular fitness
*Assisting weight loss
*Strength & muscle development
*Flexibility
*Posture/Poise/Grace
*Balance
*Co-ordination


Pole dancing is NOT just a sport, it is outrageously good fun! It gives you something to be focused on, and get passionate about.

It’s also a fabulous accompaniment to any other fitness regime you currently have.  Most of our students who have completed even just a basic pole dance course come back feeling motivated, supported and encouraged to revive their gym or fitness regimes, which would otherwise still be festering ont the ‘to do’ list!  YOU WILL WANT to spend more time in the gym, making use of that wasted membership in order to loose that little bit of niggling weight, or improve your stamina - so that you can nail new tricks in class and build a whole repetoire of pole dance skills!

You might be very surprised at what YOU can achieve through pole dance – it’s not just about shimmying around a pole anymore!



Calories burnt whilst pole dancing…

Well this is a debatable topic in such early years of research, but it is DEFINATELY safe to say that pole dancing as a form of exercise kicks ass! Here is what we have found so far…..



Average calories burned per hour of dance:

POLE 290 calories per hour THE WINNER! (sourced from Boots.com)
Disco 261 calories per hour
Salsa 261 calories per hour
General 261 calories per hour
Ballroom 203 calories per hour
Irish step 255 calories per hour

We found this information to be a bit old though, also… it doesn’t really shed any light on what intensity level of pole dancing it is based on, for example – one hour of shimmying around a pole at a basic level of ability might burn 100-250 calories per hour, but if you were spending the hour training at a more advanced level, with higher intensity content and much more difficult moves – placing more demand on the muscles, surely that would burn even MORE calories?! 

So we had a poke arount the net again and found some more results…..

Calories burned per hour of pole dance 2:

400 According to Wiki Answers.
350 According to Polesations Yahoo group
250 According to Millymin.com
250 According to weightlossresources.com




Amazed by these figures, we decided to dig a bit deeper to try and find someone who has been able to measure it more accurately. Sadly, we only found this one post on the forum of about.com.  It is a pretty interesting find though…

“Well I scoured the web and there are a few sites that have calculated the burn of pole dancing they seem to consistently agree on anything from 400 – 600 per hour depending on how many lifts you are doing – (200 if you are just dancing around the pole no lifts/spins).

Having borrowed my friends HRM, I also found a website that lets you input for age, weight, average HRM and time and calculates the number of calories burned – (I’m not sure how accurate if it but it’s better than nothing and it seems to give me roughly the same results as the gym machines that allow details to be entered).

In a hours practice last night I burned 533 calories … anyway it lets me know I have seriosuly been under calculating my burn which is what I really wanted to know…”





Other Benefits of pole dancing lessons…

Like we said earlier, there are MANY reasons why people come to Candy & Chrome for pole dancing lessons, and the fitness benefits was just one of them.  Other good reasons include:

*Having a laugh!
*Confidence – For your body & you!
*Better self esteem
*A new hobby
*Making new friends
*Enjoying the progression, week by week
*Having a regular, weekly social activity
*Having something different to talk about!
*The support network you ONLY get with pole
*Feeling inspired
*Learning a new skill
*Embracing new sides of your personality
*Enjoying the ability to surprise oneself each lesson
*Being motivated – it rubs off in other areas of life too
*Enjoying a challenge
*Having a stronger body & stronger mind
*Feeling sexier – little by little
*Having something fun to look forward to every week