In a one-hour pole dance class, you can burn approximately 250 to 350 calories. According to Angela Edwards, owner of PoleLateAZ, women who are 40 to 50 pounds overweight typically lose weight in 6 to 8 weeks with pole dancing. Although I like pole dancing, I never consider it something where I am determined to be incredible in dance or movements or to become a performer of it. I do it mainly because I'm a lazy idiot who hates working out and pole dancing has been something where I can keep doing it without feeling like it's a horrible exercise task (trying to work on a trick or choreography hides the fact that I'm working out, guess what).
I contribute part of this weight to my age, since I am now 31 years old, but above all to the tone and muscles that I have gained in pole position. It depends largely on both, since the first obstacle you will face is achieving the balance of your body against the pole. I think barbell strength training is very different from that in the gym, just because I think that when people lift weights in the gym, they do it mainly to tone up. Pole dancing has always required the same levels of athleticism, elegance and skill as gymnastics and ballet.
Many pole dance maneuvers require you to lift and hold your own body weight, making it ideal for strengthening your back muscles, biceps, triceps and forearms. But I also think that what polo does for my body is that I focus more on what my body can do, than on what it seems. You can't complete this activity without training both of you to a certain extent, and then you'll be on your way to receiving these additional health benefits of pole dancing. Pole dancing is a lot of fun, but with the precise movements involved, you could land clumsily and injure yourself.
Even if you attend a class without much upper body strength, you'll soon develop it by pole dancing. I have a lot of polo friends who don't do cardiovascular exercises, they don't do any weight training other than pole, and even some who don't really follow a diet that's too strict and are in shape. And I think polo actually encompasses a good combination of aerobic exercise, weight training and flexibility, so it covers most of what I need to do to maintain some kind of level of health, which is fantastic. Since pole dancing is an aerobic exercise that tests multiple areas of your fitness, it's an excellent activity to try if you have trouble sleeping.
