Want to improve your pole grip strength without using the help of grip aids? Here are a few tips to keep your grip strong and your polework fluid whether you’re on a home pole, practicing at the studio, or working at the club.

Why Warming Up is Important

If you’re having trouble sticking to the pole, it might not be your grip strength at all, but the elasticity and moisture of your skin. You’ll find that if you try to hop onto the pole first thing in the morning before you’ve warmed up, you’ll have a lot of trouble with your grip. Once you’ve been moving around already and the room feels like a comfortable temperature, you won’t have as hard of a time gripping.

Warming up prepares your body for rigorous exercise and keeps it fluid so that you can perform your moves better, with a lower risk of injury, and without any kind of stiffness to the movements. It also happens to get the skin moist and warm so that you can ‘stick’ to the pole better. The pole will warm up with use once you begin doing your warm up, as well.

Tip #1: Make Sure Your Pole is Clean!

Especially if you are sharing the pole with someone, or if you’re done with your pole session for the day, it’s important to make sure your pole is cleaned thoroughly. You can do this with a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol (also called isopropyl alcohol) and a clean cloth.

The cloth should be clean and relatively soft to prevent it from scratching the pole at all. You may need to rub vigorously in areas with built up grip aid or body oil.

Keep in mind that brass poles should have a special brass cleaning solution instead of rubbing alcohol to keep it from rusting and tarnishing over time.

Tip #2: Don’t Skimp on Grip Exercises!

One of the many things you’ll find on PolePedia is a range of grip strength exercises to help keep your hands healthy and strong for the pole. Grip strength exercises not only combat grip weakness due to many of our daily habits (1) but it also keeps you physically fit and comfortable on the pole without grip aid.

While grip aid is great – especially if you have particularly dry or sweaty skin – it should be used as and treated like a crutch. The real solution to the problem is going to be treating your skin in healthy ways that it needs for proper hydration balance, as well as strengthening your baseline grip ability.