Doubles Troubles!

After many years of doubles training, pole comps and a few world titles later here’s a summary of what our instructors Tiff and Ruth, aka Enchanted have learned about the extra challenges that doubles face:

• Transitions can be tricky! You no longer have the whole pole to yourself and you need to work with and around your partner on the pole without compromising each other’s grip … or kicking them!
• The pole burn is intense! You haven’t experienced pole burn till you have had not only your own body weight but the weight of another person hanging off you as well.
• Trust!
• The importance of choosing the right doubles partner. Make sure you choose someone you get along with because if you’re planning on competing you’re going to spend a lot of time together, sometimes in stressful situations.
• Good communication. Like letting your partner know if you feel you might lose your grip.
• Disagreements. You may find you disagree on song choice, tricks, choreography etc. and will need to learn to compromise.
• Training times can be hard to schedule, especially if you both have busy lives, you’ll need to find times when you’re both available.
• Motivation. When you get to the studio to train you may find that you are in different frames of mind, one may be ready to train hard while the other has had a bad day, sick etc. and this can be frustrating for the partner who is ready to train
• There is no such thing as personal space in doubles! You might find yourself with someone else’s crotch in your face and think nothing of it.
• Synchronisation. This is something you never had to think of when you were training solo.Doubles is not about showing up your doubles partner on stage but rather working together as a team, if your split is flatter than theirs then you’ll need to bring yours back to match your partner’s to get those synchronisation points.
• It’s harder to freestyle if you forget your choreography or make a mistake.
• There are not a lot of experienced doubles pairs to learn from, there’s only a handful who’ve been doing it for a long time so you may have to travel to get some help from the pro’s.

But for all the extra challenges doubles presents there are also many rewards. Your doubles buddy will be there to share in all the ups and downs, be backstage to fix any costume issues, settle your nerves and share the experience with you. The opportunity for interaction on stage allows for creativity and makes doubles interesting to watch. And doubles is FUN, so be prepared for a lot of laughs!