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Jeni Janover performs at PoleCon 2025

Creating Efficiency in Movement

There are lots of ways to understand what “efficiency” means in a movement context.

Efficiency could be seen as using the least amount of tension to provide the most amount of force in a given situation. This might be about using leverage more effectively—like we do quite a bit in pole—or even about developing clearer introception with what muscles should be doing what action at a given time and which muscles should be relaxing.

Efficiency could also be about how to pace yourself during a routine or a class. How do you maximize your available energy on a given day so that you aren’t tired when you are only halfway done.

Finally, efficiency could also reflect the concept of flow or fluidity. In dance and movement, we often talk about something looking “effortless” when the reality is far from it. It’s when your teacher demos something and you try it, and you realize its soooo much harder than it looks!

How do we improve efficiency in motion?

Now that we know what it is, how do we improve efficiency in motion to create that effortless fluidity?

There is a level of practice of course that we know inherently goes with this concept but sometimes if we practice the wrong thing or the less efficient thing, we just get better at doing it “wrong” and our movement doesn’t look or feel more fluid.

So how do we *actually* improve?

It starts from perfecting a movement. There are lots of movements in pole so start anywhere you feel comfortable, preferably something that already feels easy to you right now.

Dissect the movement. Where are you moving from? Are you reaching with your hand or are you initiating the movement with your shoulder, and it flows through your elbow to your wrist to your hand? Understanding biomechanics and the anatomy that make a move can provide information on which muscles we should be using most effectively. Once you understand that, consider drilling or conditioning parts of the movement on and off the pole. Be careful of doing this too many times. If your form starts to suffer, stop. Come back to the move the next day.

Understand the tension in your body that you should feel during a movement AND understand what muscles shouldn’t be tense while you’re doing that movement. This can be hard to do when some moves feel like you are using all the muscles at once! One set of muscles you likely shouldn’t be using when you are poleingare the muscles in your face. Relaxing your face will help you be able to focus on your other muscles more, it may also decrease the perception of threat that your brain feels about a movement, and it will absolutely communicate to your audience that what you are doing is effortless.

Lengthen into every position. Create space in all your joints and reach your body parts away from your midline. Imagine there is a string coming out of your head and pulling the crown of your head away from your butt. Reach your feet away from your torso in splits. Imagine there is your hips are attached to balloons that levitate them up in a backbend. There is tension in this concept, but it is usually less tension and more of a reaching sensation that can provide additional spinal stabilization. This concept can also be very important for hypermobile humans who might tend to “sit” in their joints instead of “using” their muscles.

Find your breathing pattern. Breathing is one of the best ways you can get in touch with your nervous system and your brain to decrease any perception of threat. Once threat perception—actual or imagined—decreases, often mobility increases.

Maximize your breathing for the movements you are doing. Generally, folding and downward movements are better with exhales and arching and upward movements are better with inhales.

There may be lots of breath cycles to achieve a specific move. For instance, before you invert, inhale expanding the air in your torso, setting your shoulders and back muscles, and exhale as you lift your legs and fold into the inverted “pancake” position. If you are backbending, inhale as you push up or rotate into position. Once you are in a movement, continue breathing! Finding the pattern that makes sense for you particularly if you are creating a several minute long routine will help make the routine look more effortless and create more efficiency in your movement.

Explore your rhythm. When performing you might inhale and get very big before you dramatically exhale and get small. You might reach out before retracting. There is a cause and effect in every movement and the more you can find the rhythm in your movement—while working on your breath and understanding the tension constantly being created and released—the more fluid you will look and feel.

It takes time

All of this takes time and a considerable amount of thoughtful reflection. The more time you spend thinking about a movement, feeling it in your body, reviewing videos to see if what you are seeing matches what you are feeling, the more your movement will improve.

Be careful of over doing it! A few really solid repetitions of a movement or sequence before your form starts to degrade are better—and safer—than drilling a single movement for hours.

Colleen
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