How to Stay Motivated as a Home Poler

Welcome back to another episode of Science of Slink! Today we are talking about how to stay motivated as a home poler. In this episode I talk about the most common motivation that men and women have for exercising, how home based exercise programs compare to center based programs, and how motivation can change depending on your age. I also talk through how to build self-efficacy as you are learning new skills on and off the pole. Whether you are new to pole or not, sometimes our motivation can change. Let’s look together at the research behind it. 

Sources:

Al Kubaisy, W., Mohamad, M., Ismail, Z., & Abdullah, N. N. (2015). Gender Differences: Motivations for performing physical exercise among adults in Shah Alam. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 202, 522-530.

McDonagh, S. T., Dalal, H., Moore, S., Clark, C. E., Dean, S. G., Jolly, K., ... & Taylor, R. S. (2023). Home‐based versus centre‐based cardiac rehabilitation. Cochrane database of systematic reviews, (10).

Schutzer KA, Graves BS. Barriers and motivations to exercise in older adults. Prev Med 2004;39:1056–61.

Crystal N Steltenpohl, Michael Shuster, Eric Peist, Amber Pham, Joseph A Mikels, Me Time, or We Time? Age Differences in Motivation for Exercise, The Gerontologist, Volume 59, Issue 4, August 2019, Pages 709–717, https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gny038

Al-Eisa, E., Al-Rushud, A., Alghadir, A., Anwer, S., Al-Harbi, B., Al-Sughaier, N., ... & Al-Muhaysin, H. A. (2016). Effect of motivation by “Instagram” on adherence to physical activity among female college students. BioMed research international, 2016(1), 1546013.

This podcast is a production of Slink Through Strength, the inclusive, evidence-based online pole studio, which can be found online at Slink Through Strength dot com. Thanks for joining!

Transcript:

Hello, pole Nerd, and welcome to Science of Slank, the evidence based pole podcast.  I'm Dr. Rosy Boa, research doctor, not medical doctor, just to be clear. And today I want to talk about something that comes up all the time when I'm talking to a home poler . And that is the challenge of staying motivated to keep showing up, to keep up with your home pole practice.

And of course, you know me, I'm going to bring in some research. I'm going to give you some research back tips and it should be hopefully super helpful for you. So let's hop right in.

So to start off with, I think there are some things that are unique about home pole. A big one is that you can do it at any time, right?

You have complete flexibility with your schedule. And often that means that it doesn't show up on your schedule at all, right? Cause well, you know, I scheduled time on Tuesday, but then something came up and I could do it Wednesday. But then on Wednesday, something comes up, right? So I think it can tend to get bumped to the bottom of your to do list.

Cause it's just always available, right? You could do it anytime. And another thing that I think is really challenging for home pole  is that we don't always, I mean, you can say if you took online classes with somebody like me but we don't always have community, right? It is kind of just us. So we really have to have especially if you're training by yourself, intrinsic motivation to want to do the thing and show up for the thing.

And that can be really hard to find. So today I'm going to talk about some of the research around motivation, specifically for doing exercise at home, which is what we're doing. My pole's over there. You can't see it. It's off the screen, but it's here.

So why do people  choose to exercise, right?

What is it that makes you want to actually show up and do things and move your body? And there's been a lot of research on this, obviously, and something that comes up quite a bit is just to improve your quality of life, to feel better in your body to move more easily. So there's a 2015 study by could be ASCII at all in Procedura of Social Behavioral Sciences, where they took a bunch of possible reasons, looked at how much people disagreed, agreed with them about why they exercise. They were looking specifically for gender differences. They weren't really gender differences that big.

The only one that like, I would say, seemed to be pretty robust is that the men they surveyed were more interested in increasing the quality of their sex life than the women they surveyed. And that was for them motivating to to show up and exercise. But number one, sort of for most people is  improving your quality of life, feeling better.

Another motivation that comes up, which is not one that I specifically coach for or necessarily think is a great idea is to change your body composition. We can talk about that in another episode. There's actually one where we talked with a a dietician called fat liberation, something, something, something, but we talk a little bit more about why I don't think that that is, it's personally a great reason  to come into exercise but that's, you know, some of the reasons why people exercise. And I think, especially for pole, which is a very extreme type of exercise, right? Like this is not, you know, a follow along, you know, Pilates video, which is very accessible, right? You went out and bought a pole and installed it in your home.

So clearly it's something that you were, you were invested in. I think enjoyment plays a big part in it. And I think that enjoyment can be. You know, again, intrinsic motivation. I like doing this. It's fun. It feels good in my body. I like feeling accomplished when I learn new things. I think that can be a really big motivation for people.

But also, you know, that sort of social aspect as well, right? I don't know, pole dancer is kind of a cool thing to be. And when people learn about it, they can be really interested and they may be, you know, intrigued or excited. And that can also be a really helpful motivation to exercise. So even though the motivation may be coming intrinsically, that doesn't necessarily mean it does not have social factors associated with it.

Cause I am trained as a social scientist, and I'm not going to forget the social stuff.  Interestingly some of the research that's been done, particularly a lot of the research and exercise motivation is looking at patients who have had some sort of cardiac event and are doing rehabilitation, because if you can do that rehabilitation at home is it as effective? Do people actually do it? Why do they do it? Why don't they do it? Et cetera. It's a big research question. And a lot of the exercise motivation research is more in that clinical area. I am not a clinician. I am not a medical doctor as I, as I mentioned previously but.

That is what a lot of the work is on and interestingly so looking at McDonough et al,  2013 home based versus center, it's spelled British based cardiac rehabilitation, looking at these exercise programs that are specifically designed for, you know, getting your heart back in order after an event. This is a big meta study looking at a bunch of different work. It looks like there was no difference in efficacy between exercising at home and exercising in a center, right? So like, the, the goodness of the intervention was the same regardless of where it was applied. Which is great for us as home polers, right?

Because that suggests, hey, I can get, The same benefits of working out at home that I can in the studio, which I think is obvious. Maybe I don't know, maybe it's not obvious, right? Like sometimes it's helpful to have data to back up things that seem foundational. But evidence to suggest that you're going to get worse pole workouts at home.

And again, looking at this big, this big metastudy, another thing they found was that people who are exercising at home are slightly more likely to actually do it, which I think is very heartening because for  You know, we're home polers, we're working at home I think we see our challenges, right?

Like we see the things that are hard, we notice the things that are hard but it is good to know that even with those challenges there are benefits and actually showing up and doing things. It seems like working from home makes it a little bit more likely that you're going to be able to, to show up and do it again, based on this, this meta study of patients doing cardiac rehabilitation, which.

Obviously they have another motivation, which is that this has been prescribed by a doctor. Also interesting research that the degree of trust that you have with the doctor who prescribed the, the home exercise affects how likely you are to actually do it. So working with trusted professionals,  me, maybe,  I don't know.

I don't know if you trust me or not. I mean, if you don't know me and you want to go through and look at the research for yourself, I highly encourage that. I think a little bit of skepticism is a spice of life.

So, people's motivation to exercise, a number of motivations in general, people want to feel better in their bodies. I mean, I want to feel better in my body. It's a big reason why I exercise exercising at home, exercising in an exercise place, same efficacy. It doesn't seem to be a big difference in how good it is.

You might be slightly more likely to actually show up and continue to work if you are working from home, which is great. If you, you already are working from home.

Let's go from the general now down to things that are a little bit more specific. So specific research backed recommendations that I would make for you as a home poler to help you stay motivated.

And this is a really big one. So a lot of the research on exercise and movement particularly in adults. Cause I don't work with children. I only work with adults. is self efficacy. So self efficacy is something I've talked about in a couple of episodes before.

 It's this concept from psychology where basically the idea is that you believe that you have the ability to create change in your life for yourself, right?  When it comes to exercise, that's things like.

If someone shows you how to do something and then you can do it, right? You know, thinking about pole moves, like you see a pole move, you learn a pole move, right? And you believe going into it that you can learn that pole move. So you have that belief that you can affect change on yourself. And particularly when you are first starting out with home exercise, particularly in this sort of like malleable initial stage, you really want to see evidence that can help you build this sense of self efficacy.

You want to be successful in You don't want to do things and fail and fail and fail and fail and fail. And I've talked about that before where I just.  I don't think that's a great way to learn anything. I do know that for some people that is from how they've been taught pole. And I do think that that's something that comes from other movement teaching traditions that I personally am not a huge fan of.

Which means you really want to find something that is accessible and level appropriate and fitness level appropriate for you as a person. Also the, a lot of the foundational study about self efficacy is shifts are in graves. barriers and motivations to exercise in older adults, really, really widely cited chapter.

If you've been reading in this, in this area at all, you've presumably already read it. So you want to see yourself succeed and ideally early and ideally often, and it doesn't have to be succeeding at something that is absolutely you know, overwhelmingly difficult, right? But it should be something that's non trivial, right?

You should be able to see evidence of your own ability to do something new. And I think this is where a really experienced teacher can help you, right? They can look at what you're doing and give you like the feedback the, the tweak, the, you know, adjustment for your body that's going to help you have that success, which I think is super important for, you know, all students.

All students period, but particularly when you're first starting out, particularly when you're struggling with motivation, seeing success really gives you that sort of flywheel momentum to keep going and keep training. And it's super, super, super important. So find a way to be successful. Do things that are maybe just like A  little past your capability.

Don't try to push yourself to do the hardest possible thing. Really break things down into bite sized steps, work on each of the bites and chain in turn, give yourself like success points, feel that emotion of success, very, very important for you to continue to want to show up because no one wants to show up and do something.

If they're just going to fail the whole time, right. That feels bad. That does not feel like a good time. And I encourage you not to set yourself up in that situation. And this is where a teacher and instructor or coach can really help you. Another thing, and this is interesting, this is something that seems to change over the lifespan is  whether or not you find a social aspect motivating.

So I talked earlier about how there's like this intrinsic  facet, I guess, and then you also have this external social facet.  And particularly for younger exercisers and here I'm sort of summarizing Suttland pole et al. 2019 Me Time or We Time, Age Differences in Motivation for Exercise and the Gerontologist.

So again, looking at, at aging. And exercise. What I found was that younger exercisers were really motivated by specific instrumental fitness goals. Right? Like, I want to work out to hit a PR. I want to learn a specific pole movement. I want to you know, climb. I want to do something specific with my body.

And that's why I'm exercising. And that's why I'm making time to work out. Whereas older adults were much more likely to want to exercise, to have exercise. Social interactions with people. They were more likely to want to exercise for the enjoyment of the movement itself, right? Like, because it felt good to do.

And this seems to be something again, that looks like it changes over the lifespan. So,  especially if you started polling a while ago and you had like lots of like, I want to move, learn, move X, Y, Z sort of like, I always talk about like sports anime kind of style, like, I'm going to master all these moves.

And you're finding that that's no longer motivating. It may be helpful to reframe your motivation and reframe how you are pushing exercise to instead focus on pole moves that feel good, right? Movement that feels good. Taking care of your body, spending time in community with people, right? Especially as a home poleer.

Online classes, I think, are a really great way to do that. There's lots of ways to do them now. There's lots of different online studios. I mean, there's mine, of course,  but you have other options, especially if, you know, my style just like doesn't work for you as a teacher or you're really, you enjoy choreography.

Like I don't teach choreography. So you know, maybe, maybe you're looking for somebody else to work with, but you have a lot of options. And I think particularly as you get older, having that social component, having some sort of live class where you can meet other people helps. Those relationships is really, really important to actually continuing to stay motivated as you age.

And also just realize that like, as your life situation changes, as your motivations change, you are going like your, your larger life motivations change, what makes you want to keep showing up to pole is also going to change and that's normal, right? And absolutely take time to pause and reevaluate as needed.

Speaking of  the social component, this study, I thought this is probably my favorite of all the ones we're talking about today. So this is Al Isa et al. 2016 effect of motivation by Instagram in scare quotes on adherence to physical activity among female college students. So again, looking at slightly younger folks here in Biomed Research International.

And what they did was they were looking at exercise adherence for, again, college women and they split them into the group of people who had Instagram and the group of people who didn't have Instagram. And what they found was that having an Instagram account was associated with more exercise, right?

They gave everybody like the same program to do but actually like sticking with the program and doing it more.  And  I think there's a lot to be said about social media. It was actually one of my research topics at one point in time. I think that  sometimes the motivations to exercise that come out of social media, especially considering that we were just talking about how younger movers are more likely to have instrumental goals, perhaps about making their body look a certain way.

Again, I don't think that that is a healthy goal for you to create movement and ease in your body long term. I don't recommend it. As a personal trainer, that's not something that I help people with. I'm not going to help you change your body composition. But

Even if  perhaps the underlying causes of the greater you know, ability to keep up, keep showing up and do exercises weren't necessarily ones that I'd be delighted by. I do think that the fact that social media and having that relationship with people online is. He is associated with actually doing the thing more is potentially useful for us as pole , right?

Because if you, if you're not on Instagram, there's a lot of pole dancers on Instagram. I recently joined blue sky for the studio and there are very few pole dancers on blue sky, right? So just as a, as an example I'm interested in social media network where there just aren't as, as many of us, but also quite a few on tik tok.

I'm not super active on tik tok, but the studio does have one. So if you want to follow us on tik tok, feel free. So, the effect of social media, of having that sense of being in community, of being able to see other people's movement and be inspired by it, there's some beautiful freestylers on Instagram that I am deeply, deeply inspired by and I love whenever I see their videos come across my feed because I'm like so pretty, right?

Or just like interesting or visceral and just like draws me in and makes me want to move. That I find really motivating, right? When I see somebody have a dance and I'm like, Oh, that looks like it feels amazing. It's like, I want to, I want to feel amazing. I'm going to make time to dance. I want to get a little, little dancey dance on my calendar.

So having that community, that inspiration potentially that support, hopefully, hopefully Instagram is a positive place for you. And if it's not block button still exists there, so I recommend you use it. And having that sense of community, having that sense of being with other people, of not being alone, especially if you are training at home or you're physically alone, I think can be really, really motivating.

And again, Research suggests having an Instagram account, having that sort of social media interaction seems to be associated with exercising more. I think that that is, there's a little bit more there than just like Obviously they weren't looking specifically at pole dancers, and I think there's a little bit more there than just necessarily the existence of social media.

And I think that some of the underlying ediology of that relationship may not be something that I am delighted by or would espouse, but having that sense of community is, especially for older folks, definitely associated with more motivation to actually show up and do the dang thing. So it might not hurt is where I'm coming down on that.

Some research back tips your motivation and what motivates you is probably going to change as you age when you're a little bit younger, it's probably going to be more like, I want to learn this trick.  As you're a little bit older, it's probably going to be more like, I want to move to feel good.

I want to hang out with people. I want to make friends. Notice if this change is happening to you. And I'm not going to say it's necessarily going to happen to everyone, but it does seem to be sort of a general trend. So especially if you're a little bit older, having that social component,  focusing on learning things that are available to you. So if you've heard me talk about the pyramid of pole, right? The bottom layer is capacity, your physical capacity to do things. So once you are strong enough to do X, then starting to work on X rather than trying to work on X, even though you're not strong enough, because you're just going to fail and fail and fail and fail until you build that strength.

And I would always prefer you build strength off the pole using targeted exercises to help support your own pole movement. It's just a little bit more efficient. And I would rather you were not trying to build strength and do your motor learning at the same time. That's my preference. That's also why a lot of times if you're, if you're working with a personal trainer, right, or you're learning a new lift, you'll start to learn the lift just like miming it  with nothing in your hands and then like with very, very lightweight and then you begin to add weight and sort of progress the movement once you understand what you're supposed to be doing in your body.

But the building of the strength and the understanding of the movement in your body are two separate things. They're sort of decoupled in that learning process. And that, that is my recommendation for, for how to learn a new lift personally.

So I would rather that you work on your capacity first, and then work on the new trick, and try to work on things that are already in your capacity, especially if you're training at home, especially if you're training alone at home.

You know, be a compassionate observer of yourself and your movement and what your capacity is. Know that it's going to vary from day to day and don't try to do the hardest possible thing that you feel like maybe you could do. Maybe take a step back and if something is really challenging for you and it's challenging for you for strength reason, for flexibility reason, for balance reason, working on that fitness component off the pole and then bringing it on the pole once you've, made sufficient gains there.

So that's my recommendation. Working with a coach can be really helpful there, working with a teacher can be really helpful there, because they can, ideally they will be able to provide you know, variations, regressions, changes, exercises to support you so that you do get to feel successful, because I think that is super, super important for actually being motivated to, I mean, stick with anything, right, like, is there anything that you've gone and done in your life where you've just failed over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again,  unless you are, you know,  I am describing myself here a little bit pig headed,  a little bit obstinate.

You probably stopped doing the thing, right? Like it felt bad. And you were like, okay, I'm not getting results here. I'm going to do something different. So. I would definitely recommend doing things that make you feel successful, that help you build that sense of self efficacy that is associated with being able to successfully exercise and move and pole dance at home, long term.

And then finally having that online social media component, right? Like, Whether that's on Instagram or TikTok or on some folks like Facebook, but having that way to connect with people to get inspiration, resources, support, I think can be really, really helpful. I mean, certainly it's, it's a way that I interacted a lot of the pole community, cause I don't do pole classes in person these days.

So those are my recommendations, some things that you can take to help you build motivation in your home pole. And of course.  And this is the point where I mentioned that you can come work with me. And these are things that I obviously keep in mind, right? Like I teach all my classes live. So you have that social component.

If you're in my membership, I build everything to work together. Right. So what we are doing in strength and conditioning builds into what we do on the pole builds into what we're playing this freestyle. Like I try to bring everything together in sort of this cohesive whole. To help you have more success and feel more successful.

Because again, it's really, really important to you being able to stick it out long term and move your body. Cause we all, listen, we all need to move our bodies and it might as well be fun. And we might as well enjoy it. And it might as well be as easy as possible to show up. And that's what I want for you.

I want you to show up consistently, move your body and have a fun time doing it.

That's all I got for you today. I hope you took some, some little pointers, some little granules with you for your, your pole journey from here. As always, feel free to reach out. I am on the internet. And my website is scienceofslink.com, just like the podcast or slinkthroughstrength. com. They go to the same place and you can learn a little bit more in the studio and what I do. Thanks so much for joining today. And I will talk to you very, very soon.