Sorry on the delay for week 6, I was traveling and caught a terrible chest cold….. I wasn’t feeling very….  Normal, let’s just put it that way.

When I knew I was going to miss writing the week 6 Recovering blog post, I felt my perfectionism kick in and worried that I was a bad person for not following through.  These kinds of thoughts often happen when things don’t go as planned.

My mind was telling me I should feel bad for not posting and that my 8-week recovering series wasn’t going so well because I haven’t been nearly as consistent as I had hoped to be.  I really wanted results and I started to worry that I wasn’t going to see the results I wanted and let my fans down.

If you have ever “fallen off the wagon” for any reason including family matters, illness, partying too much, having too much fun on vacation, too heavy of a workload, or another stressful condition (both good and bad), then you know what I am talking about.  The guilt and feelings of failure creep up fast in your mind and if you don’t deal with them correctly, then they can crush your self-esteem and keep you from moving forward.

When this happens to me, I remind myself that I don’t have to be perfect.  I also remind myself that I am lovable with my flaws and S$%T happens.  After reminding myself of these things, I continue forward as planned.  I get back into my workouts, I get back on the pole, and sometimes I enlist the help of friends to get things re-fired up.

I was sick most of Week 6 and didn’t exercise at all with the exception of my ab workout routine I did in the week 2 video for a single day.  Thank God for short quick whole body workouts like that because if not for that, I wouldn’t have worked out at all.  The short workout made me feel like I didn’t totally lose it.

On week 7 I resumed my ballet-inspired leg exercises at home and also got together with a friend to teach her a pole dancing workout routine.  She comes to my house for a private lesson and we have a lot of fun dancing together.  For me, getting your friends and family involved can be the best “uplifting” motivator to keep going when you feel like you are not doing so well on your own.

My friend, Ambar, is new to pole and has lost 10lbs by pole dancing, doing baby carrying workouts, and cleaning up her diet.  Pole makes her muscles sore every time and we have so much fun doing it that we dance for hours without realizing how much time has passed.  I always feel more inspired after I am done teaching her.

Here is a video of the first pole dancing lesson I taught her (she is not in the video for privacy reasons, but I recorded the same pole lesson in my studio a while back.  I decided to bring back an old pole dancing routine I taught to my student’s years ago and teach it to her. It’s a great online pole dancing lesson for beginners to do at home):

Yes, that is the Pro Quality No Brand pole dancing pole I am using in the video ( I get asked that a lot).

In addition to the pole dancing lesson in the video above, we worked on building strength in the skin for pole dancing and upper body strengthening exercises.

After re-living my old pole dance routine, I must say that my muscles (and hers) are very sore today.  We both feel like we got a workout and we are back on track once again.

Moral of the story is >> When you are recovering, don’t expect to get things right all the time. Life Throws Curve Balls! You never know what you are going to get! 

You may fall on and off the wagon several times before any level of “consistency” develops.

Hang in there!!!  I am.