Does pole dance make you stronger?

Dr. Rosy Boa dives into the science behind pole dancing, discussing the physical adaptations required for the sport. She clarifies the specific strength requirements for pole dancers, emphasizing the importance of specialized training over general fitness. Through examining recent studies, she highlights how pole dancing improves core, upper body strength, and grip strength, while identifying the need for anti-rotational strength, unilateral strength, and proper shoulder flexion. The podcast also offers insights into the unique physical and psychological benefits that come with pole dancing experience.

Citations

• Hawley, J. A. (2002). Adaptations of skeletal muscle to prolonged, intense endurance training. Clinical and experimental pharmacology and physiology, 29(3), 218-222.

• Gustavo F. Pedrosa, Fernando V. Lima, Brad J. Schoenfeld, Lucas T. Lacerda, Marina G. Simões, Mariano R. Pereira, Rodrigo C.R. Diniz & Mauro H. Chagas. (2022) Partial range of motion training elicits favorable improvements in muscular adaptations when carried out at long muscle lengths. European Journal of Sport Science 22:8, pages 1250-1260.

• Ignatoglou, D., Paliouras, A., Paraskevopoulos, E., Strimpakos, N., Bilika, P., Papandreou, M., & Kapreli, E. (2024). Pole Dancing-Specific Muscle Strength: Development and Reliability of a Novel Assessment Protocol. Methods and Protocols, 7(3), 44.

• Nawrocka, A., Pawelak, Z., & Mynarski, A. (2024). Longitudinal Effects of Pole Dance Training on Body Composition and Muscular Strength in Women.

• Greenspan, S. J., & Stuckey, M. I. (2024). Preparation For Flight: The Physical Profile of Pre-Professional and Professional Circus Artists in the United States. International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, 19(5), 591. 

• Dias, A. R. L., De Melo, B. L., Dos Santos, A. A., Silva, J. M. A., Leite, G., Bocalini, D. S., ... & Serra, A. J. (2022). Women pole dance athletes present morphofunctional left ventricular adaptations and greater physical fitness. Science & Sports, 37(7), 595-602.

• Nicholas, J., Dimmock, J. A., Alderson, J. A., Donnelly, C. J., Jackson, B., Dimmock, J. A., ... & Donnelly, C. J. (2024). Exploring the psychological and physiological outcomes of recreational pole dancing: a feasibility study. Circus: Arts, Life, and Sciences, 2(2).

Transcript: 

  Hello, pole Nerd, and welcome to Science of Slink, the evidence based pole podcast with me, Dr. Rosy Boa science slash research doctor, not medical doctor, comma PhD, not comma MD. I'm not, I mean, I can help you with body stuff in my capacity as a, as a pole dance teacher and personal trainer but certainly not in any medical capacity, just to be clear about that from the jump.

And today, I'm going to talk about something that I get so many comments about, and I'm sure y'all do too. When you tell somebody you pole dance, they're like, Oh, you must be so strong. Don't you need like crazy upper body strength for that? Don't you need like crazy core strength for that? And I mean, the answer, yeah, we know is yes, it is very challenging.

It does require a lot of strength. But I thought it might be helpful to go over some of the studies and talk about the specific physical adaptations that have been measured in pole dancers as a response to the stimulus of pole dancing. And also talk about some of the specific types of strengths, some of the things that I'd recommend including in your off pole cross training that you may not necessarily see quite as often because they're a little bit more sports specific.

And the reason why I want to talk about things in specifics is because, and those of y'all who, you know, have been hanging out with me for a while have probably heard me talk about this before, physical adaptation to load, to stress is specific and not general. So it's not like there's a. A bucket of like being fit.

And every time you exercise, you put a scoop in the bucket of being fit. And when the bucket is full, you're an Olympian, right? That's not how it works at all. Your adaptation to load, your learning of how to do things, your flexibility, your endurance, your strength, all of that. These are things that will change because you make specific demands on the systems that make that happen.

And it's specific to like a sub cellular level.  You will get better at the types of things that you do. And that is you know, blessing and a curse, right? The blessing is that that means that, you know, we can do specific training and we don't have to, you know, get amazing at jumping in order to be really good at you know, low flow because they.

If you're, if you're not jumping, you don't need to really develop that skill. But it also means that if you are not specifically working on conditioning something to help you improve your movement in a specific way, just, you know, doing, let's say a bunch of elliptical stuff is not going to make you stronger, right?

So. We need to match the things that we do to the things that we need to do to achieve our goals. But it also means that when we do something, it has a specific effect on our body. And there's actually been a fair amount of research done, especially quite recently in the last couple of years on what those changes look like, what those physiological adaptations look like for pole dancers specifically and particularly for recreational pole dancers.

Most of these studies have been done on recreational pole dancers. Far, far fewer on, on folks who are dancing in clubs. If you know of work on folks who are dancing in clubs, please send it my way. I would really, really like to read more about it, but most of the studies do tend to focus more on recreational folks.

So. Physical adaptation specific, not general. I've got a couple citations in the, in the down there for you. So the Hawley 2002 and the Gustavo et al 2022 are both good places to start for that. They talk a little bit about, you know, the fact of, you know, Physical adaptations being very specific and also a little bit about how it works at a subcellular level.

So really cool research if you want to get into it. But let's talk about pole dance. That's what we're here for. So like I said, there's been quite a bit of work in the last couple of years. And I've talked about some of these studies on the podcast before, but I think it's worth revisiting and sort of looking at them as a, as a body of evidence.

So first of all, if you're wondering how to study pole strength there's a couple ways that people do it. One is that they, especially if you're looking at something like a range of motion you'll have it analyzed by usually a physical therapist or someone with similar training. off the pole.

So or off the apparatus. So some of the stuff that we'll talk about today is more generally circus aerial. We had Stephanie Greenspan and Emily Scherb actually both on the podcast at different points a while ago. Both of them have worked in this research and that's sort of the protocol that they've been using in their research.

So you can just sort of look at the physical adaptations of the body. You can also look at the strength and the specific movements that you're looking at. So the. Study. I have talked about this before. I will spell it and then I will try to say it. It's I G N A T O G L O U et al. In methods and protocols.

So Ignatoglue. I apologize if I got that incorrect. Pole dancing specific muscle strength development and reliability of a novel assessment protocol. So for this, instead of seeing how many pushups can you do, counting that and using that as their variable. They took a handheld dynamometer and they actually attached it to the pole in a way where when the dancer engaged with the pole, they squeezed the dynamometer so you could get information about how much exerting on the pole. And then their study was more, less about like measuring those specific differences in strength between pole dancers and non pole dancers, and more about looking at the reliability of this as a measurement. And it seemed to be pretty reliable. So, if you're interested in doing research on sport specific strength for pole, I think this is a pretty good method to use and might potentially be more accessible unless you happen to be, you know, a physical therapist than doing you know, expert assessment of things like range of motion So a kind of aside before we get into, into some of the measurements that we've got.

 A couple of different studies. So one that came out in 2024 Naraka et al. Longitudinal effects of pole dance training on body composition and muscular strength in women. We talked about this. I think, in fact, we did a whole episode on the study when it first came out. I think there are possibly some issues with this study.

I would like to see sort of like a, another round of data connection, collection and analysis. But some of the things that they found were that for students who had completed, I believe it was an eight week training program, at the end of it, they had more overall muscle mass and they noticed a increase in grip strength for this group of students in particular.

Which I thought was particularly interesting because the Greenspan and Stuckey 2024 podcast, actually, we've had both of those authors on the podcast was looking at the difference between pre professional and professional circus artists. ground based, aerial based, and then both.

And so for pole, I think a lot of us would be both because most of us do, do floor works. We usually do something like handstands or you know, base work as well, stuff where you touch the ground. So most polars I think would be in that, that both category. And one of the particularly interesting things that they found is that they were looking at isometric.

So just like. Squeeze and hold hand strength for both assigned male at birth and assigned female at birth circus artists, professional and pre professional. And what they found was that assigned male at birth artists in both studied had lower isometric grip strength than the general population.

While assigned female at birth participants, strength, hand strength, again, so like squeeze and hold in your hands, was similar or statistically higher.  I think that's particularly interesting because we have, I don't know, I guess I sort of assumed pole was making my grip significantly stronger. But again, if we're looking at sort of like aerialist circus artists as a whole there's evidence that the effect size, if it exists, may not be that great.

On the other hand, the Newark study at all at all study found that perhaps there is an increase in, in grip strength as a result of working on the pole.

So. I think more data needed before we have a a firm conclusion about the effects of a pole on grip strength. I also imagine it has something to do with specifically what you're trying to do with grip strength, right?

So if I am climbing and I am gripping the pole to keep myself from sliding down, I don't need as much grip strength. If I'm doing something like a one handed spin, where I need the squeeze to keep myself from sliding down, but also I have the pressure against my fingers. So for something like a one handed spin, I need more grip strength to hold myself on.

So I think there may also be potentially some, some difference there in what specifically it is that you're training because physical adaptation is specific and not general. That's why personal training is a thing. Well, it's part of the reason. Yeah, so it's a Greenspan and Suckey et al study.

Very interesting. I think one of the bigger takeaways that I had from that particular study is that the big difference between the physical outcomes for professional and pre professional circus artists it did just seem to be a factor of how much time they spent training, right? So the more time under load, the stronger the adaptation, the, the bigger the change in, in strength and ability to do various things.

So there've also been a couple of studies looking specifically at The particular adaptations, right? So measuring things and saying like, is there a difference between pole dancers and the general population? Or is there a difference between people before and after they do do this pole dance? So Dias et al in science and sports 2022 women pole dance athletes present morphofunctional left ventricular adaptations and greater, greater physical fitness.

They were a little bit more concerned with cardiovascular adaptations. So ventricle, like. the card than they were on specifically measuring strength. But they did find a difference in strength at both for the left and the right hand. The difference was greater for the right hand than the left hand.

Presumably as a, as an effect of spending more time gripping with the dominant hand and most of their participants being right handed.

Also a difference in number of push ups, where pole dancers could do more push ups. Curl ups, so if you're not familiar with the curl up, it's sort of like a sit up, if you ever did those in gym. Where you start prone with your feet bent, someone's usually holding your feet or there's a weight.

You're on your back and you round up through the spine to come up to a seated position. Well, dancers could do more of those. And also greater distance on a sit and reach. So this is putting your feet flexed on a, a box and then reaching forward with your fingertips and seeing how far forward your fingertips can go.

So for all of those measures, they found more strength in the pole dancing population than the non pole dancing population. And then also Joanna Nicholas and co authors in Circus Arts, Life and Sciences, open access journal. You'll love to see it. Great journal, by the way, if you're, you're into the podcast definitely recommend checking them out.

Open access means it's free to read. And lot of really cool research coming out of there. That's super relevant to us as pole dancers. So definitely recommend checking that out.

They looked at exploring psychological and physiological outcomes of recreational pole dancing, a feasibility study.

If there's a study with feasibility in the title, it means that like they intend to do more work later on. This is sort of like the first round where like, Hey, the thing that we said we wanted to do looks like it does work so we can continue our work. That's kind of, if that's in the title, that's generally what folks are getting at.

And then we're looking at the relationship between time spent. many of our students have been studying pole dancing, right? Like how long have you been pole dancing and various measures some of the psychological measures that did have a difference for this, for my stats folks, they were looking at a correlation.

So reporting Pearson's R where time spent training is on one axis and then like your, your, survey results on the other. And what they found was that and these are all positive correlations. So the longer that you have pole dance, the more increase there is in this time holding a flexed arm hang stepping up and then sit and reach, which we just talked about that sort of leaning forward.

All of those increased with time spent pole dancing, time spent studying pole dancing. And the Pearson's for the flexed arm hang is  almost 0. 5. So fairly strong soak there. If you want to get really good at flexed arm hang so like holding there with your, hanging there with your arms bent, pole dance will probably help you do it.

Has also been my experience. But also very interestingly in the study, they also looked at psychological correlates. So asking people how they felt about their blank and also found the strong positive correlation that the longer you've been doing pole dance, the more you felt like this was true of you.

Right. So increasing the concept of coordination, physical strength, endurance strength is higher than endurance. So strength is 0. 5 endurance was 0. 2 self esteem 0. 38. and flexibility, 0. 18. So that's the lowest correlation of all of these measures by quite a bit. But it's still positive, right?

So the longer you've been pole dancing, the more you, you feel flexible, but the increase is not as great over time as it is for something like, like strength. Which is great. I think I think feeling confident about your body and feeling like you're strong and feeling like you're flexible and feeling like you have endurance is a good feeling, and I hope that you have that now and if you don't, you, you get to the point where you do, and whether that takes change in your feelings, or it takes change in your your physical activity I think you probably know best.

So, all that is to say, we have pretty good evidence that pole dance makes you stronger. And specifically core strength, specifically upper body strength. They didn't, folks tend not to look at lower body strength as much. I suspect there is some. Probably a little bit less than other things where you're doing more weighted lower body stuff.

Because for us, usually we are only doing You know, our body weight as resistance. So, so that said, some specific things that I would recommend training, some specific types of physical adaptation and strength that I think are particularly important for pole dancers that you may not necessarily be prompted to if you're just doing sort of general, you know exercises.

is strength. You go to the gym, you work with your personal trainer or you know, you're, you're following like a lifting program that's not specifically designed for, for pole dancers or aerialists. So the first thing that I would definitely recommend working on strength wise is anti rotational strength.

So this is the ability for you to keep your hips and shoulders in alignment as forces are put on your torso. So a place where this shows up a lot for us is in that strong grip invert hold position. your armpits on the pole and you are lifting both your legs. If you are struggling with the anti rotational strength, that this is a weak point for you, you will probably notice your outside hip dropping down and your belly button rotating to face away from the pole.

If you do notice that Training anti rotational strength can really help you find that stability in your core to resist that rotation. And lots of things that we do in pole require anti rotational strength because we are often braced on one side and free on the other.  What you're trying to do is you're trying to build stability in your core so your core does not move, your core does not rotate, your core does not twist until you decide that you want it to.

Again, something that, depending on who you're working with to train, depending on your own movement background, may or may not be something that you've been intentionally training before.

Another thing, very helpful for pole dancers. So like I mentioned, We are often braced against the pole.

We're often braced on one side and not the other. We'll often be in positions where we are asymmetrical in our body. You can't be directly under the pole, right? The point where the pole, the point where the pole attaches to the ceiling, unless you're in flying pole. I'm not talking about flying pole.

So we often end up in asymmetrical positions. We often end up needing unilateral strength for specific things. So I do recommend working on unilateral lifts. So if you're, if you're doing strength training in the gym, I'd recommend things like working with dumbbells and working with one dumbbell at a time instead of perhaps barbells.

Also if you're training at home alone, in general, I don't recommend barbells. They are associated with greater injury risk and you know, if you're working with a coach, you know, talk to them but that's just sort of my general recommendation. So yeah, working on unilateral strength, working on one sided lifts if you've got a cable machine or access to a cable machine, unilateral cable machine work, really, really fantastic for pole because you have that like additional stabilization requirement, which we need because often we have few points of contact with the ground, we're doing a lot of open chain movement.

So really, really very powerful for pole.

And then also another thing that you may or may not be training, unless you are working with a coach who specifically specializes in overhead athletes shoulder flexion. So opening your shoulder up overhead with external rotation. This is really, really important for building longevity in your overhead movement in your pole life.

Far and away. The most injured body part is the shoulder far and away. The most common type of injury is overuse. And in particular, it's overuse without supporting the rotator cuff without finding that external rotation.

 Our shoulder is a ball and socket joint, and it has an incredible range of motion, right?

If you control the range of, compare the range of motion for our shoulder compared to the range of motion in our hip, which tend to have a much deeper socket, we cannot do anywhere near as many degrees of freedom in our hip as we can in our shoulders. Human shoulders are kind of weird.  If you have a dog or a cat or a small quadruped in your house you know, they can't do, like, we can easily touch the back of our head.

No problem. Even dogs with particularly, like, long limbs kind of have to, like, Finagle to get in there. But part of the consequence of having that huge degree of mobility of having that smaller socket is that we need to provide the stability that we get in our hips by having a deep socket and having all those ligaments holding, holding stuff together.

We need to provide that with our muscles. And also we need to create the correct sort of pattern of movement, especially as we're moving our arms overheads. So if you've ever heard about like glenohumeral rhythm I, we talk about this in class sometimes, but working on external rotation as you move into shoulder flexion, overhead, shoulder movement, super, super important.

Finding that scapula movement, all that good stuff. And being able to do that under load is again, unless you are specifically working with a someone who specializes in working with overhead athletes, you may not be, be, you know. Prodded, let's say, to do but it is super, super important for pole.

We need that specific adaptation. So coming back to my first point, physical adaptation is specific. It is not general. You need to train for the specific thing that you want to do. Fitness is not a bucket. You can keep putting stuff in. And then as the bucket gets full, you get magically better at pole.

Unfortunately, not how it works. You get better at the specific things you train. We talked a little bit about the difference. Specific adaptations that have been measured, some of the ways of measuring them Yep, the research does seem to suggest that you get stronger when you do pole dance. I don't think anyone's surprised, but it's nice to have citations to point to.

And then finally, if adaptation is specific, if pole does make you stronger, what are some of the specific things that I recommend focusing on, particularly if you're off pole conditioning, that anti rotational strength. Unilateral strength, upper and lower body. We need them both. And then working on shoulder flexion with external rotation.

Super, super important for us as pole dancers.

That is all that I've got for you today. The next time somebody asks you if pole makes you strong, the answer is yes. Here's your citations. I hope you found this interesting.

Also, I don't always mention this, but I do teach online.

So if you're a home pole dancer and you'd like to come take lessons with me my, my website is slinkthroughstrength. com or scienceofslink. com will take you to the same place. I got the URL. Might be a little bit easier to remember cause it's the name of the podcast and I started putting full transcripts of the episodes on my website as well.

So if those are, those are helpful for you, I yeah. I have them for you, please to enjoy. Anyway, that's all I've got for you today. I hope you found this interesting. I hope you've maybe got some new, new reading to do. If you are the type of nerd that I am dig into some of these studies. And I look forward to talking with you very, very soon.

Bye!