As a pole dancer or aerialist, you’re no stranger to pushing your body to new limits. Whether you’re aiming to perfect a new trick, increase your strength, or enhance your flexibility, there’s a vital piece to the training puzzle that many overlook: cross-training.
If you’re ready to elevate your performance and unlock your full potential, cross-training might just be the missing link in your routine. Here’s why it’s so important and how you can incorporate it to improve your pole and aerial game.
Why Cross-Training?
Cross-training involves diversifying your training by incorporating different types of exercise beyond your regular pole or aerial work. While dancing, tricks, and stretching are fantastic, these repetitive movements can lead to imbalances in your body, and if you’re not careful, this can increase the risk of overuse injuries.
By targeting different muscles, improving flexibility, and enhancing overall body strength, cross-training helps you build a more resilient, balanced body. The result? You’re back on the pole or hoop feeling stronger, more coordinated, and ready to tackle those new moves.
The Benefits of Cross-Training for Pole & Aerialists
1. Injury Mitigation
Pole and aerials can place repetitive stress on your body, leading to overuse injuries if you’re not careful. Cross-training allows you to strengthen weaker areas and improve overall body strength, which helps reduce the risk of injury. Whether it’s strength work or flexibility drills, cross-training is essential for building a body that can handle the demands of your sport.
2. Increased Strength & Power
Many advanced pole and aerial moves require significant strength. Cross-training builds the necessary muscle to help you power through those challenging tricks, enabling you to feel stronger and more confident every time you’re on the apparatus.
3. Enhanced Endurance
Pole routines, especially when combined with aerials, can be exhausting! Cross-training helps improve your cardiovascular endurance, so you can perform longer routines with more ease and control, without gassing out halfway through.
4. Balanced Flexibility
Flexibility is critical in pole and aerial arts, but it’s not just about being able to stretch further. Strengthening your end ranges of flexibility through cross-training allows you to gain more active flexibility, giving you better control in your movements. This leads to more beautiful lines, a stronger, more resilient body, and ultimately, a reduced risk of injury.
Why You Need Cross-Training in Your Routine
Without a well-rounded body, you might find yourself hitting plateaus or even suffering from injuries. Cross-training allows you to target weak spots, build strength, and improve endurance, giving you a more balanced body that’s better equipped to handle the challenges of pole and aerial arts.
Whether it’s working on your flexibility, strengthening core muscles, or adding endurance training into your schedule, cross-training gives you the tools to break through performance barriers and reach new heights in your practice.
Ready to Elevate Your Training?
At Body & Movement Collective, we understand the unique demands pole and aerial arts place on your body because we’re passionate about these disciplines too. That’s why we offer tailored 1:1 personal training sessions, both in-person and virtual, focused specifically on the needs of pole dancers and aerialists.
Each session is designed around your goals—whether you’re working on injury mitigation, building strength, or enhancing your performance, you’ll be making meaningful progress every session.
And if you prefer to train on your own time, we also offer online individualised cross-training programs that are customised to fit your current level, goals, and available equipment. These programs ensure you’re working with a plan tailored just for you, no matter where you are.
Let’s Get Started
Ready to strengthen your body and elevate your performance?
Book your in-person or virtual 1:1 PT session here
Or check out our online individualised cross-training programs here.
Your next breakthrough is just around the corner, and we’re excited to help you get there!
About the author
Loren "Lorna Shadow" Kowal is a qualified chiropractor with both a bachelor and masters degree from Macquarie University. She is also an elite pole competitor and pole instructor.
Loren is the owner of Body & Movement Collective, and has a huge passion for treating pole dancer and aerilaist injuries, as well as improving their overall health, fitness and pole performance.
Loren has been teaching pole for 9 years, as well as having been an educator to fellow instructors in both pole technique and safety. She has also been featured on numerous podcasts from around the world sharing her knowledge and passion.
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