Good habits to get into for the New Year

Happy new year!!

I’ve just had 2 weeks off for Christmas so for me the new year is the perfect time to have a good look at my training routine and tweak any bad habits I’ve slipped into. I find this really helpful to do once in a while as it’s so easy to get caught up in training, especially if you practise at home, that we don’t really think about what we’re actually doing during our practise time. We all pick up bad habits over time, here are some really good habits that’ll help kick off the year!

Warm up properly

It’s tempting to just jump straight onto the pole/hoop/silks without warming up first (we’ve all done it!). Spending just 5-10mins before your session warming up your body will make it so much easier when you get started! It’ll give you a burst of energy, you’ll be prepared to strip off clothes and it’ll help prevent injury! I tend to do a 5-10 minute aerobic warm up then another 5-10 minutes on the pole/hoop/silks doing flow/spins/climbs. Check out my blog post on How to Warm Up for your practise session.

Be consistent

When deciding which days you’re going to train or book in lessons, try to make sure you’re not doing so much that you’ll burn out, this is definitely my new years resolution! I practise everyday for weeks then don’t do anything for a fortnight, which is something I definitely need to change. It’s so much better for your body and mind if you attend fewer sessions regularly than doing loads then nothing. Check out some of my other Small Tips to Improve your Pole / Aerial

Train both sides

I know, it never feels as good on your ‘bad’ side. We all know that we should train on both sides, it keeps our bodies equal and balanced, it’s helpful for when we do combinations, it helps to prevent injury, but it just feels weird! And to be honest it’ll probably always feel slightly weird but the more you train equally the better it’ll feel. I always try to practise on both sides but I only recently realised that I only teach on one side, (what a muppet!) so I’m now going to try to remember to teach on my bad side.

Go over easy moves

We are constantly bombarded with new and exciting moves all the time that we often forget to go over older, easier moves sometimes. This is really good for building up strength, flexibility and confidence! If there’s a move that you can do, maybe try doing it slower, faster, spinning, getting into it a different way, getting out of it a different way, focus on make it look as beautiful as possible.

Cool down and stretch

Just a 5 minute cool down will do so much to ease sore muscles and prevent injury. As a lot of what we do will be working our arms and shoulders it’s a good idea to stretch these to prevent them becoming tight. Then a quick all over body stretching session every time you time you train will really improve flexibility and make those bendy moves more achievable and look amazing!

What are you trying to do differently this year?

Happy training in 2017!! xx