Helen Knox owns a pole fitness company based around the South East of England, and runs regular classes in Maidenhead. Pole dancing is so much harder than you think… and the perfect exercise to get you beach body ready for the summer. Have you tried it out yet?
Tell me about you and your family and what you do...
I own a pole fitness company based around the South East of England. I live with my partner – who owns his own strength and conditioning gym – and our dog.
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Tell me about your pole dancing classes
The Pole Studio runs classes in over 19 studios – all our classes are very structured to make sure that everyone gets a good workout as well as practicing safely, with a good warm-up and cool-down as well as lots of conditioning to help build up strength. We have five levels within our school – this starts from beginner 1 where you learn the basics of essential moves, up to elite 2 where you learn to flip and drop from the pole.
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Have you always been interested in doing this? What do you like
about it the most?
When I was at uni I did my normal partying and put on lots of weight – I'm not a fan
of the gym. In my final year of uni, I saw an advert for pole classes, so when I moved home, I looked it up and went to my first lesson a week later. I was hooked from the first 5 minutes. I love the fact that every class I teach or every training session I do
is different. I can focus on certain parts of my body, or work on basic moves for conditioning as well as work on routines to help build my cardio fitness. I didn’t
do anything else work wise or fitness wise before I started pole.
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What qualifications do you need?
I have lots of fitness qualifications. They include exercise to fitness, as well as pole instructor qualifications. This is essential nowadays to ensure you can get insured and teach to the best of your ability. I try to do at least one new fitness qualification a year to keep my knowledge up and for my own progression.
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What is the best part of it? And the worst?
The best part of pole is how versatile it can be, how different each class is, how you meet such awesome people and how good it makes you feel about yourself. The worst part is that it's HARD. If anyone ever says to me that pole is easy, I always try to get them to book a class so they realise in the first few minutes that it's anything but.
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What are your goals?
My own goals business-wise is to build my business more over the next few years to have 10/12 studios of my own running at once. My goal within my own pole progression is to compete again, hopefully within the next year or so.
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Who is your idol?
I have a few pole idols for different reasons; the main one is Sarah Scott as she is just amazing on the pole and I love watching her videos, she is also the loveliest person. Another idol is a lady called Felix Cane, as she is one of the first women I watched who made me admire and appreciate the sensual side to pole a lot more.
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What's in your handbag right now?
I don’t have a handbag – all I have is a gym bag and this has got my pole shorts, spare shorts and sports bras, my hand grip, massage balls, resistance bands and much more inside. I am not a girly girl, so no make-up is in there.
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Anything else we don't know about you?
I love all animals, especially dogs, and would one day love to own and run my own rescue centre. It is my ultimate dream.
