Welcome back to the Off The Pole Podcast, where we help you train smart so you can dance more. Episode #6 features Jazzy K as my guest – she found pole dance in 2009 and quickly got into teaching and competing.

She’s been a finalist in the Felix Cane Pole Championships multiple times, won Pole Theatre Switzerland in the Classique category and Exotic Level 4 at the PSO Europe Edition in 2017. As an XPERT trainer she teaches at Gravity Arts in Zurich, and when she’s not there she’s traveling the world teaching workshops.

But what I really wanted to get her on to talk about was her change in attitude with her training – highlighted in a recent Facebook post which was hugely popular as I think so many people related to it. Enjoy our chat!

Really hope you guys enjoy the 6th episode in the podcast series – you can subscribe to our pole podcast on iTunes to keep updated with all the latest episodes and it would mean the world to me if you could leave a review!

Hit play above or watch or read the transcript below.

 

Sarah:                      Welcome, Jazzy. Thank-you for doing my podcast. Much appreciated you little Swiss beautiful creature.

Jazzy:                        Thank-you so much, Sarah.

Sarah:                      I’ve already given a little bit of an introduction about who you are, where you come from, how long you’ve been doing Pole. But I’m sure everyone knows you already because you’re everywhere. But I thought we could start off with maybe you letting us know, what are your plans or your pole goals for 2018?

Jazzy:                        Pole goals? Like one … I don’t have a goal that you can say, “I want to do this trick”, or, “I want to be able to do this”, for me at the moment. It’s actually really about getting to play more. To enjoy myself more. Again, I do pole for eight years now. Sometimes I kind of lost the play in pole. For me it’s also that I really set my goal for 2018 to go and play more and do different things. Explore pole more without having to be like, “I want to do this competition”, or, “I want to go to this showcase”, or whatever. It’s, just get the joy again.

Sarah:                      You did a lot of competitions last year. Can you remember how many you did?

Jazzy:                        No.

Sarah:                      Okay. Almost too many if you can’t even remember how many.

Jazzy:                        I think it’s –

Sarah:                      Do you feel like you lose that sense of play when you are competing because there’s that extra pressure to get a routine done? Or do you actually feel like you get more creative when you have the pressure of a routine that you have to do?

Jazzy:                        It is kind of both. Competing always gave me a platform or a chance to improve, because it put me under pressure. But at the same point, I feel like I lost so many opportunities to just explore more of what my body can do, or where I want to go. Being free of having to do a routine, being on time pressure, and a lot of teaching. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t have that much time to spend more time improving my teaching as I wanted to. I think it was a good thing. I did it, for four years now, kind of a lot. But in the last year, I got to a point where I actually felt like I lose the joy. I didn’t want that to happen. I love pole, and that’s why I set myself a goal, two max a year, nothing more.

Sarah:                      That’s even, that’s a lot for most people.

Jazzy:                        I know.

Sarah:                      That’s more than I’m doing!