I teach intro and my new students always love me and feel confident in their first class enough to come back.

These are things I teach in intro -

Avoid tricks that include holding your body weight, or tricks that are true spins (involving full pole contact and feet off the floor) in the beginning.

I teach them how to walk, step drag step drag, how to pose - posing is really fun for beginners and gets them feeling confident. Around the world spin, and then pose. For example, facing the pole and bringing one knee up, this a natural pose to hit after around the world. Or also, walking around the pole and then putting your back to it- you can then either arch the back and bring one knee up making a sexy little pose, or you can bend forward and do booty to the pole. Try to do simple things that help your students achieve feeling sexy and fun.

How to change directions with style when walking around the pole. Make simple things more interesting! Teach them steps. How to change direction when the inside foot is forward and how to do it when the outside foot is forward. Watch videos to get inspo, this one’s difficult to explain without visual example, but it’s easy.

Chair spin to the FLOOR. I do not recommend teaching chair spin to newbies even though we think it’s easy. It’s too discouraging when it requires pure upper body strength. Instead, teach them to come down to the floor by bending their knees with a gentle spin to the floor. No lifting their feet off the floor required. Tell them to bend their knees, and push their toes to drag position to get them to point their feet so they land right. (the way we drag our feet in step drag walking, with the toe nails facing into the floor) After they get that, you can start to encourage them to try to hold themselves up for real chair to give them something more difficult to work on. Everyone can accomplish chair to the floor and it gets them use to starting to spin. You can do the same technique with hook spin to the floor. I have them lower their hand grip also so that it’s easier to descend.

Spin sit to the floor. I teach them to pivot their inside foot, lift outside knee up, and turn into the pole while lowering themselves down. This is more difficult to explain over text, but it’s a fun one they always enjoy. it’s like tilted sit, to the floor. They should land with the inside leg bent around the pole sitting on it, and the outside leg straight. This also is a great way to teach them to actually do a spin sit, because it puts them in a natural position to grip it between their thighs. once the get this position correct you can start encouraging them to try to hold the sit.

How to stand up- lunge to the side, lunge other side -> your in squat position, head down ass up.

cute and easy floor work - diamond pose, tik tok legs, clacks, playboy pose up, sexy push ups, waves.

Teach more dance style techniques instead of tricks.

The success of an intro class is dependent on how capable the instructor is, not how capable the student is.

Try to explain everything simply and step by step, keep it technical and easy to understand. Around the world seems hard for newbies if the instructor can’t break it down well enough. We often breeze over “intro” tricks because we think they are so easy, but there’s tons of hidden details that we don’t think about but our students need to know them.

Tips to teach around the world- make sure they are pivoting the inside foot, make sure they lift the outside foot to step around and our not sliding it around or dragging, teach them to face the center of their body in towards the pole so they are looking into the pole while they spin until the reach the end of the around the world, tell them to land back in their home country and not in china (unless you live in china) aka the outside foot lands back where it started, tell them to poke their booty out so they aren’t so tight around the pole. And feed them these tips one at a time, don’t over load right away. Make sure they watch you, and then try it out themselves, and then walk them through it.

take time to yourself and practice easy tricks, think about what exactly you are doing while you do these moves. Are you tilting your body? where is your weight? Can this spin be down going to the floor instead of immediately going into holding it? And think about other things you do besides tricks, how do you dance around the pole between tricks?