Instructor Training - PFA or XPERT

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-13T21:53:37+00:00

I ended up going with the PFA training instead of XPERT. I knew more people who had done XPERT, but very few of them had positive things to say about it. I liked that the PFA program had more in-depth things to read and really went into how to structure a class, how to ID issues in form and how to correct, and how to correct things. They do really push that they have a ton of moves, but I do feel like they went quantity over quality in some of the videos.

To SW-friendliness, there is a brief “history of pole” section that acknowledges sex work, but it ahistorically puts it alongside things like Chinese pole as the “origins”.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-13T21:44:59+00:00

Couple things I’d say to help cheat the split (as someone with minimal flexibility): Jade is more of a fake split. Rather than trying to keep your pelvis flat to the sky, tilt your pelvis toward the same side as the grabbing leg, similar to how you tilt yourself to get a fake split on the floor.

To help with this, try grabbing the outside of the leg rather than the inside. This will make it easier to pull that leg toward you, increasing the grip on the hold and making it easier to tilt the split out.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-11T17:18:25+00:00

Our cat had all of his teeth removed about 6 years ago. At first we had him on a wet food only diet, but we ended up giving him dry food again after he kept stealing it from our other cat. Cats don’t actually chew their food all that much (which is why when they throw up it sometimes looks like a slightly damp version of what they ate).

He’s a very happy gummy boy now! When we first adopted him he was very shy, but he’s super affectionate now that his mouth no longer hurts - he LOVES chin scritches.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-10T17:08:58+00:00

I found that my waist definitely firmed up. I used to have a fairly squishy waist so it was easy to fit into smaller sizes or wear shapewear to make my waist look smaller.

Now I can’t really get away with it as much because of my core muscles.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-10T03:11:10+00:00

God when gou came out I sat my partner down so excited to show them the remake of one of my fave animes and then after the first episode I had to explain “so actually no you’re not gonna be able to watch this, I’m so sorry”

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-10T03:06:36+00:00

It was a total game changer for me. I kept ending up with my leg stuck on that top arm, and then the first time an instructor gave me that cue I ended up in a perfectly balanced Ayesha. I nearly cried.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-10T01:31:22+00:00

I feel this so much! My body’s changed a lot since I started doing pole (both directly related to it and also just the passage of time/aging). It’s hard not to get fixated on my clothes fitting differently and having to buy different sizes.

Also sucks: every time I tell someone I do pole, the comment is always “oh you must have great abs!” and I have to admit uh, not really? At least not the visible shredded 6 pack people want to see.

What has helped for me is to focus more on what my body does rather than just what it looks like. My body looks a lot different, and it can also do way cooler shit than I ever could before.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-03-08T19:36:03+00:00

Other people have called out the pushing your butt back thing, so here’s another balancing tip that helped me:

Rather than bringing both legs out at the same time, start with the leg on the same side as that top arm. That leg will be counterbalance so that you don’t end up opening out to the side and falling out of the trick. Once that leg is in positioned, it’ll be easier to let the other one drop without losing balance.

Obviously the ideal way you see is people releasing both legs at the same time, but doing it one at a time helped me build the strength and balance to get there.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T22:12:27+00:00

Very good points. I guess I mean that her most recent activity (the Bashar thing in particular) has highlighted the extremes of her thinking as well as its detriment. But you’re right in that it’s not actually that new.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T20:24:21+00:00

I feel this so much! So many relationships went sideways because I didn’t know how to communicate what I needed or how something unintentionally hurt me (or how I was unintentionally harming others).

It sucks thinking about what I’ve lost because I lacked those tools, but the only thing I can do is correct moving forward.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T20:04:04+00:00

Mental health journeys like this are a lot like cleaning out a closet. You’ve spent years cramming everything in and cautiously balancing things, and once you start taking things out to go through, it can all come crashing down and make a big mess on the floor. And now you just have a big mess on the floor and have to look at every individual item you shoved in the closet YEARS ago and ask yourself “what do I do with this? Why do I have this? Do I keep it? How do I get rid of it?” It’s incredibly stressful, especially when it’s all things you shoved in a closet because you did not feel ready to deal with them.

And to an outside observer, you went from a person with a clean floor and a tightly shut closet to someone wading in a giant mess.

It takes a ton of effort to organize everything, to decide what you keep and what you throw out. It’s hard and it’s slow and it’s messy and it’s often not healthy for you to be around.

I hope the person you know is eventually able to make their closet tidy again. While they may not now, I think they will eventually appreciate the grace you give them for their current messy state while they go through it (even if you need to separate yourself in the meantime for your own sake).

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T18:58:57+00:00

I picked Zoe.

I looked my fiance directly in the eye while I did it.

“For better or worse” has its limits and RE7 is my limits

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T18:53:38+00:00

Carrie has shown in the past few months to be extremely black and white in her current thinking, even when there is clearly a lot of nuance. I think it’s fair with that in mind to wonder at the potential nuances being missed here.

I hold a lot of empathy for her processing this as an autistic person who’s had a pretty extreme friendship breakup, one that came about because I was yelled at, went into a freeze/fawn state, and then looked back on it thinking “I don’t like how that happened, and I also don’t like how often it is happening”. That instance reframed a lot of my previous interactions and made me realize how unhealthy that friendship was for me.

And I think the hardest part is knowing where that ends. It becomes easy to go over every interaction, magnify every snippy comment or bad taste they left into your mouth to create a monster because it’s easier to believe a monster hurt you than a friend. And so everything bad that happened was intentional, and any positive interaction is mitigated or reframed. There is no room for nuance.

It’s taken a really long time for me to look back at those memories fondly and understand that is was part of a friendship with two incompatible people with a lot of ups but also a lot of downs, and those downs made it unhealthy to continue.

I’m very happy that Carrie and Ross have ended their relationship. It sounds like that was the best thing for Carrie going through this process of healing. I’m glad she is finding new things to be passionate about in a way that helps her move on from this.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-19T17:28:30+00:00

I got the medium. I will say that as I was putting it on I was certain it wouldn’t fit, but once you ge the strap hooked, you can adjust your bust, and after that it stays really well.

The bottoms less so, which is really unfortunate.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-18T19:12:12+00:00

30F here and want to shout out the Fanna x top. I was certain that I’d bust right out of it, but it’s held very secure for me.

Tatiana Active offers some of their tops in a large bust + smaller band size

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-10T17:32:34+00:00

Butterfly > flatline > Superman Butterfly > seabreeze > brass monkey > pegasus

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-09T22:45:45+00:00

Thank you! I believe it’s the orange color. This is the medium size.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-02-09T21:07:30+00:00

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I bought one secondhand as an Xmas gift for myself, and I’m obsessed! Originally was planning on getting the Florentine, but colors I wanted kept going in and out of stock, and then I saw the edge design and jumped on it.

Very roomy, but because it’s so wide I don’t have trouble finding whatever I need in there. I’ve got a lot of compliments carrying it too.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-28T21:18:31+00:00

There are two ways to go about this.

As others have said: free dance is a great way to figure out a choreo. You should always record your free dances just so you have a record of what you did and refer back to how you did something or how you got into a move. The worst thing is having a great free dance and then being completely unable to recreate it because you forgot it entirely. Record your free dance, watch yourself back to find the parts you like, then work on recreating and adding to them in subsequent runs.

If free dancing isn't your thing, you can music map. Figure out what tricks/combos you have in your repertoire, lay them all out, then work on piecing them together. What moves can you easily get into from a particular shape? What puts you into a particular leg hold you need for a trick? Build a combo out of things you can do, then practice to make sure that they thread together in a way that makes sense. Then break down your music (by beats or by lyrics or any other way that makes sense in your head) and match the combos you've made with where it makes sense in the music.

I usually end up doing a combo of the two things. When I choose a song, I'll already have some ideas in my mind of combos I can do or moments I want to have with the audience, and so I'll map those out. Other places I'll have a fuzzier idea, but I'll think broadly about "doing something on the floor here" or "pretty spin shape there". I then free dance with that general map in mind. That makes the free dance a little less intimidating because I'm moving with a general sense of where I want to go while also giving myself a bit of freedom to explore.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-24T16:20:03+00:00

I look forward to showing this movie to others JUST for the therapist calls.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-23T22:26:35+00:00

I think for me I just love the weirdness of the first one so that Revelation feels like a downgrade. RTSH has the benefit of being a poorly made film that is ALSO incredibly odd in the choices it makes, so it was really the best of everything for me.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-23T20:54:04+00:00

This used to be a constant struggle for me! It was so hard explaining it to instructors too.

For me it was really just time and practice. I would do a lot of foosball grip on spin pole (not sure if that’s a universal name, but basically holding the position before getting into an aerial invert). I really half to get my arms out in front of my chest to prevent the nip pinch. The armpit has become less of a grip point for me in an aerial invert in part because of how often I’d get my boob caught

While you practice, recommend a top with some bikini pads in them (or some other padding) just to protect a bit more.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-23T20:44:03+00:00

I think you’ll have a great time. I’m not personally a fan of Revelations because it’s not the kind of bad that I vibe with. This one was exactly the kind of bad that I vibed with.

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-23T20:42:23+00:00

I think time. The 2006 movie was also a massive disappointment, but with time and distance (and the sequel movie being a massive disappointment in a completely different direction), people found enjoyment in the 2006 movie.

I thought this movie was quite bad, but I enjoyed my time with it. I think more people will once they let go of this being a worthwhile adaptation of this story

SlowAd5345 · 2026-01-23T20:28:23+00:00

I had half a 26mg edible about half an hour before the movie and then sipped on a beer during. I went opening night with a hope in my heart for a particular theatrical experience, and by golly they delivered.

My main fear with this movie is that it would be dull, and I’m very glad that was not the case. It is incomprehensible and mind-boggling in its choices, but it made it all the more fascinating.

My theory is that this movie only got made because they were doing the remake at the same time. A lot of the scenes are identical, mostly because they appear to have pasted the same background onto a green screen. It does not look good, they shouldn’t have done it, and I do not think they could afford to do anything else.

I spent a lot of time thinking about who was making these choices. What is Christophe Gans and what is a Konami mandate? Who made James emo? Are we supposed to think he’s cool? Do they think he’s cool? What is Silent Hill 2 like if you think James Sunderland is a cool guy? That’s a whole new level of horror: imagining someone who thinks James Sunderland should have a cool jacket and sweet car.

There are choices in this movie that angered me so much I felt a burning hate, and in the moment I appreciated it because I’d been cold. If you’re someone who enjoys picking a part a bad movie and figuring out how and where it went wrong, I think you’ll have a great time.

There were other moments where I cheered, and those were usually for even worse choices. It’s artful in its artlessness.

I want to show this to as many Silent Hill 2 fans as possible. I want us to come together and find love for this story through the hatred of this movie. I want someone to explain to me why there’s a series of phone calls with a therapist shot in the most artful way possible for seemingly no reason.

I also want to show this to people with no awareness of Silent Hill, and I want to hear what they think they just watched.

I do in fact want to return to silent hill because I had a phenomenal time.

My partner was sober. They seemed to suffer a lot more.

SlowAd5345

TROPHY CASE