Will Losing Weight Help You Move Better?

Short answer: Not necessarily. Consider the value of resilience instead.

“I’m too heavy right now. I need to lose weight so I can do (insert name of activity here).”

This is exactly what these two ladies in the photo said on Day One of their pole journey. Both have zero background in fitness training, or dance. One week later, this is what they looked like in their second class with me. And they were already halfway to learning how to climb the poles, safely.

“My bum / hips / arms are so fat… there’s no way I can do that.”

I hear this, or some kind of variation of this statement so often from my students. It’s understandable. With pole dancing, the predominant mental picture that comes to mind is a person flowing effortlessly mid-air, as if defying gravity.

When we make our first attempt at moving around the pole, the reality we often face is quite the opposite. For some of us, no matter what we do, we just can’t get off the ground. Or we trip over our own feet, stumble clumsily, not knowing what to do with our bodies as we feel the fear from the momentum generated by leaning away from our centre of gravity — something that more seasoned dancers get used to, with practice.

So most of us focus on something that is drummed into our consciousness, as the first thing to fix — our weight. I’m not a gym goer, and I have no formal certification in personal training, but somehow my students all seem to know their “ideal weight” to aim for (I’m guessing that they used the Body Mass Index to arrive at this number). So they share their diet plans, their body weight goals, their exercise regimes (or lack thereof).

All this is fine with me, and I’m always supportive of their efforts — but what I also sensed was their anxiety about losing weight. This is what bothers me. While there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to get a trimmer figure, or to get more toned up overall, we needn’t get caught up with hitting that magical number on the bathroom scale (unless there is a medical reason for doing so — in which case, it warrants more focus of course).

Whenever we practice any sport, or just get our bodies moving, what we are doing is actually training our bodies to support themselves, in their current form. If we take a series of movements to form a simple dance, for example — mindful, deliberate practice of these movements will eventually result in a person mastering this sequence, regardless of body shape, weight, or size.

This is why you might have seen people who do not look lithe, trim, or slender still able to perform quite eye-popping feats. Like this guy:

“But I’m not as talented as these kinds of people,” I hear you say. “I’m just a regular person.”

Well… So are they. :)

So what I like to tell my students to focus on instead, is to feel how their bodies get stronger over time. We work on getting their technique correct from the start, to protect themselves from getting injured too easily. This is especially important to me, because most who come through our studio doors don’t have any experience in dance, or have very little exposure to regular exercise of any kind.

We start, literally, from the ground, up.

I never harp on their need to lose weight, or to look a certain way. What I’m concerned about is how they feel as they move. Do they notice the change in their quality and ease of their movement, over time? How is their confidence level in attempting new movements, as they get more comfortable in their bodies?

Sometimes the needle on the scale won’t budge no matter how hard you’ve been training. And with pole, it can be particularly brutal because of all the painful bruises we invariably get when trying out new movements. This makes it even more important to get clear about the kind of results you want to focus on. Otherwise we’d be wondering what the whole point is, in enduring all that discomfort.

If all this sounds a little fluffy instead of scientific, I suppose it is. You can’t measure or track confidence the same way as you can with weight, and a weighing scale. As a teacher, however, the change in a student is almost palpable. It may not manifest immediately as a physical thing, like shapelier arms or a trimmer stomach… but it shows in how her eyes light up when she conquers a trick that she never thought she would, the eagerness to refine a movement even more, and that radiant smile that just won’t be suppressed.

That’s a far better goal to work toward, rather than a number on a scale.

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