How long have you been a Pole Dancer?
About 8 or 9 years now

What made you start Pole?
I was supporting a friend who wanted to try it, turns out - I loved it!

What do you get out of it?
Pole is my happy place. It's fun to do and I am passionate about teaching pole. I am not a performer or competitor - that just doesn't interest me as much, I do pole because I have so much fun doing it, and I love to share it with others, It has given my body shape and helped me appreciate my figure - and I notice that in others that I teach too - this in turn sees more changes in how the girls view themselves as their confidence begins to grow - I get to see women flourish in this way and I get to know them for who they really are, at their best - because regular pole dance classes really do bring out the best in people.

Do you have any advice for anyone just starting out?
Try it, and do it consistently at least once a week - be brave

Do you have advice for the advanced pole dancer?
Embrace those times when you hit 'plateau' - re visit older moves and make them stronger, cleaner, flow better, transition better - you'd be surprised at how far you'll have come from just re-visiting the basics!

Thank you to Amy for the interview.

Who wouldn’t love to be an advanced level pole dancer? How many of you think that goal is impossible for you? What would you say if I told you that there are already Elite level pole dancers of all ages who are different shapes, all over the world? Would you still think that somehow you are different and that it could never be you?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but anyone, with determination and desire to make it happen can, and has made it happen.

So you don’t get off that easy, you too can find out how it feels to fly up high on a pole, working with your body and creating amazing shape after amazing shape, gracefully (yes, you- graceful!) and make it look easy too.

Making it look easy is the hardest part to master with Pole. That is the mark of an Advanced pole dancer, to fool the audience into never working out how they are staying up there. To make it look magical, like levitation even!

Motivation and discipline

Pertaining to your ultimate pole goals, and I mean ULTIMATE! Think big! What your ideal pole goals are! You wanna get strong enough to deadlift slow like Zoraya Judd, or lift those legs easily like Cleo The Hurricane? You wanna get flexy enough to slink about like Sarah Jade or Alethea Austin. Or you want to be confident enough to own it sexy style like Anna Diana Serikova or Leigh Ann Reilly?

There are two things you need to get your head round: Motivation and Discipline.

Motivation: Temporary, transient , only there to create the idea needed to gain an end result; your ultimate pole goals.

Everything! Well, I can only vouch for myself and those Defy Gravity members and fellow Pro-Polers who share their information with me. But the general consensus is that pole dancers are very realistic when it comes to food. We don't care about trendy diets and we don't care about  `bikini bodies`. What most Pole'rs want is a body that works well and feels good, and as a side effect of having that, it will probably look good too- as an aside!

Once you fall in love with a hobby like pole dance, that involves you needing a body that works well for you, it soon becomes apparent which foods will help you with this and which ones will hinder.