How i went from a complete beginner to a professional pole dancer in under 1 year.

First i need to say never compare yourself to anyone - you have your own beautiful journey and path, you are special and unique.

What I mean with this is that you will take as much time as you need for your body to grow, become stronger, more flexible, mobile, more artistic etc. It really all depends on your body.

But there are ways you can speed up the progress and in this blog i will share what helped me:

1) You need to be honest with yourself.

Write down all your weaknesses - for example mine at that time were:  i’m not strong. I can’t do pull ups, my abs is weak, no core really. No splits. I want to become more flexible. Want to have better lines.

These are just some of the things that were my weaknesses 15 years ago when i just started pole dance.

 2) After you write everything down - look at the list and see what you can do to improve it.

I hired professional coaches and started taking private lessons with them. I found the most strong people in Moscow and asked them to teach me, to help me to become stronger fast. For my lines and flexibility i took private lessons with incredible circus artist Natalia, who was preparing people for Cirque Du Soleil. We were practicing ballet, contortion and strength exercises with her. She was also my choreographer for World Pole Dance Championship in Zurich. This performance put me on the map of pole dance industry and my international journey started from there.

If you are not able to take private lessons, i know they can be costly - find an app where people have already recorded tutorials of all exercises for the muscles you need for your growth, conditioning routines and trainings. Or YouTube it and make a schedule and practice by yourself or with a friend. And of course nobody cancelled group classes. Take as many as you can.

3) Try different disciplines that can help you with your growth and with your weaknesses.

I started taking classes with Aerial Silks. It helped me so so much! My strength and core developed so much faster compare to when i was only training on the pole.

Here are some more examples of what you can try: Yoga, CrossFit, Gym, Swimming, Dancing, Climbing, Running, Parkour etc.

4) Write your goals.

Everything you want to achieve. And start with small goals that you can almost see soon. For example i really wanted to win World Pole Championship. But I knew it wont be soon, so i wrote in present tense - i am in the finals of World Championship. That helped so much and took off a lot of stress from my shoulders. Goal can also be - to create a memorable performance, to meet new people, to join first ever pole competition , to create a routine where you spend all 4-5 minutes on the pole without touching the floor etc. Then when you get closer and closer to your goal you create more.

5) Meet and organize workshops with the people you admire.

In 2009 i was a huge fan of Felix Cane and Amber Ray. So when i saw that Amber was traveling to Moscow i knew i wanted to meet her. At that time I could not go to her workshops in another studio so i rented a pole room and wrote her and invited her for a private lesson. I organized everything. Her transportation to the rented studio, our training, then transportation to the airport ( she was leaving that day to Milan i think). We had an amazing session, she taught me how to do proper jade and how to do drop from jade. She was incredibly sweet. (Btw all of this i did almost NOT speaking any English, at that time my English level was almost zero) . AAAAAND to that training Amber came with her manager. That’s how i met Krystal and she became my manager too and invited me to come to her studio in Milan and teach there for 3 months in the upcoming year.

That’s it for now 😍

I hope it will help you. Something else that i can say - always experiment, explore, be curios, travel if you can, train with different people, join competitions, showcases, workshops online and offline,  learn how to teach , take courses, classes, private lessons. It all will accelerate your progress and help you develop your own unique style.