Spin City Newbury Blog

Speeding her way into the blog this week is Stef!  © The Image Cella Name: Stef (Stefani Fisher) Age:  31 What do you teach?  Pole All levels, Pole Silk Workshops How long have you been in your respective discipline(s)? 7 Years What inspired you to become an instructor? I actually was asked whether I’d like to become an instructor, I hadn’t thought about it before that point – but I was always very motivated with my personal training and worked hard to improve my strength. I also really liked the fact that at the studio there was such a diversity of people, whether that’s age, weight, ability, background etc. It made me feel like I could be myself and be successful rather than needing to be slimmer/stronger/better to fit in. This has always been what I try to pass on to students as well. What’s the most important thing about instructing for you? Students having fun and going home feeling like they’ve achieved something even if that is...

Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who filled in the survey - the whole team is dedicated to making your experience in classes a good one, so it is really important to us all that we pick up on anything we need to improve on! It's also really great to be able to pass specific feedback on to instructors - I know that they work insanely hard at every aspect of their teaching, so it's lovely to see that is clear to you guys too!  We had 52 responses (beating last years by 1!) - so that's about 20% of our current, active student body. Please keep in mind that we love getting feedback all year round - I need to know if there's anything you are unhappy with and one of my favourite things is being able to message one of the instructors to tell them I've just had a random message about how amazing they are, so do keep those coming too! Overall it seems you're pretty happy, which is great. I feel it's important to share the results with you, it keeps us accou...

Our first TA profile is the wonderful Charlotte! Our Teaching Assistants provide support for our instructors and some of them are training to become instructors themselves. TA-ing is a fantastic way to build confidence and experience while working towards a qualification or can simply be a rewarding thing you enjoy, even if you're not in training! © The Image Cella Name: Charlotte Wright Age (optional): 26 What do you teach? TA for aerial silks How long have you been in your respective discipline(s)? Silks student for 19 months - TA for 10, hoop student for 12 months. [As of December 2018] What inspired you to become an instructor? I always found myself wanting to help others in class - whether that be spotting, advising on fabric theory, or reminding people to point their toes. When the TA position came up I knew I would regret it if I didn’t apply, and I couldn’t be more glad I did.  What’s the most important thing about instructing for y...

We’ve all missed a class because we have a lot on, we’re too tired or we just aren’t ‘feeling it’ and I can imagine a lot of us beat ourselves up about it… but why? Rest and recovery, both physical and mental are extra important. Once we’ve got ourselves into a routine, it’s difficult to give ourselves a day off. When we don’t take the time to rest and recover, we’re at risk of ‘overtraining’. Overtraining doesn’t necessarily mean we’re training a lot more than we usually do, it could just mean we’re not rested enough to carry on with our normal routine day-in-day-out. When I’m feeling washed out and deflated, I like to take a bath, use all manner of lotions and potions, and go to bed early. If I really don’t feel like missing a class, I might just attend a Thursday class rather than my usual Monday one. It’s all about listening to your body and your mind and knowing when it needs a bit of time to play catch up. Once I actually took about 7 months off the pole b...

“I am writing a blog post about passive body shaming - that is, being indirectly made to feel bad about yourself by the way other people talk about themselves. I would love some contribution from others - if you have any experience of this, as either someone who regularly puts themselves down (don’t shame yourself for that either!) or as someone who finds posts like this have an effect on them, could you PM me or comment here?” This is the post I popped up into our studio Facebook group a few months ago. Once I had posted, shit went down. It also hit the fan. It got deep, we shared, we laughed, we quite literally cried, we had stories and anecdotes and feelings and then it grew legs and ran and it led to so many other interesting topics… I was honestly completely overwhelmed, so instead of doing what I said I was going to, I procrastinated wildly because I am in fact only human and trying to balance so many different viewpoints along with my own is frankly bloody terrifying....