Pole Niggles & Bouncing Boobs – Meet Simone, The Pole Physio
Us pole dancers are glamourous, heel wearing, booty popping creatures, that can uniquely showcase a hybrid ability of strength and sass. However, along with the most luscious hair flick or the flattest jade split in all the land, we start to find our bodies creaking louder than a haunted house.
Before you start to accept the Tin Man way of life, I might know someone more delightful than Dorothy to jump in and give your life the oil that it needs – meet Simone Muscat, The Pole Physio.
Simone has been a physiotherapist for almost 9 years and began her pole dancing journey 5 years ago. Bursting with knowledge and passion for both industries, Simone brings a unique perspective to physiotherapy with her ability to understand what wacky pole move might have led you to her consulting rooms in the first place. Patient, down to earth with a good handful of humour, let me introduce to you the woman putting the fizz back into physio!
Becoming a Pleaser wearing Physio
In the last 9 years Simone has worked as a physiotherapist with many sporting teams, individual athletes as well as consulted in private practice. She studied her undergraduate degree at Melbourne University and last year completed her master's double degree in Sports Physiotherapy and Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy she tells me excitedly. “Basically, that gives me the ability to work at the highest level in sports and musc’. I can now travel with the Australian Olympic team and I can also work in emergency departments around the country,” says Simone.
So what led her to discover the wonderful world of pole dance? “I was really attracted to pole from the strength and the dynamic movements. Watching the girls and doing my own little YouTube video stuff, just searching and going ‘this is amazing I really want to end up there!’ and I was just so attracted to that experience, I signed up one day at Pole Divas,” Simone reflects.
Simone has worked with both the state and national women’s hockey teams, even travelling with them to 2 world cups. She has also worked with the Carlton Football Club in both their AFLW and VFL sides. “That just finished up at the end of last year, so now I have way more time to dedicate to pole which is exciting!” says Simone.
Females in sport
A pole dancer, a hockey player and a footy player all walk into a bar... And what do they all have in common? Well not too much in regards to injuries as they are all very different sports, however in Simone’s experience there is a similarity. “The really interesting and common factor is that they’re all women with the sport’s that I’ve dealt with, so the hormones can, for lack of a better word, ‘wreak havoc’ on us at different points during our menstrual cycle, and can make us more susceptible to injury at different points during the cycle.” Simone tells me.
If you are a female pole dancer you may already be well-acquainted with the extra heavy feeling of our bodies or super sensitive skin that sneaks up on us about a week before our periods. But how much do our menstrual cycles affect our pole ability?
Simone explains to me that over our menstrual cycle our hormone levels fluctuate, with oestrogen spiking just before the 14 day mark. The higher level of oestrogen around this time leads to a much higher pain threshold, meaning this is a good time to work on all those horribly painful grips. The spike in oestrogen is also shown to dramatically increase strength. Some studies have shown it can increase quad & hand grip strength by 11% compared to other times in the cycle, meaning this is also a great time to work on heavy strength training.
“The point of your cycle you’re actually able to produce more strength is between days 6-14 in the follicular phase. In that stage of the cycle there’s been anecdotal reports of some women even producing up to 2-3 times more force!” Simone tells me, as my mind explodes. "So as women we have a nice little super power and it’s our menstrual cycle! It’s definitely something that I as a physio have at the back of my mind when I’m working with an athlete and try to get them working hard on strengthening during this phase.”
We may have super strength for a few days of the month, yet females are more prone to different types of injuries when compared with men, one of them being ACL injuries. “The downside of the cycle is that your ligaments are at their ‘weakest’ just before the mid-section of your period due to a sudden increase in oestrogen, so that’s when you’re at highest risk of injuring your ACL or any other ligament.” says Simone.
However, as Simone explains injuries are very unique to the individual and unique to the type of sport they are doing. Yet another thing that does divide the sexes is boobs. Yep that’s right, our lovely lady lumps or for a more anatomical description, the soft tissue on a women’s chest. So let’s talk boob bounce...
Yeah the Girls!
Simone has written a wonderful blog on the importance of wearing the correct bras and/or crops while exercising, and let me tell you – it’s an eye opener! So just how much do the girls whirl when we exercise and will this lead to further injury?
"Boobs are a big one for us, that’s what makes us uniquely female (well there’s many things that make us uniquely female but boobs are one of the things) and I had a really cool experience a few years ago,” Simone begins telling me. “I met a researcher up in NSW, she is Australia's leading researcher on breast injury and she really changed my perspective on a lot of things!”
Simone met Dr Deidre McGhee (Physiotherapist & researcher from the University of Wollongong) during the time she had just started taking intermediate pole classes. She describes it as a particularly bouncy time, as the warm ups had become more cardio focused with a lot of plyometric movement. “There was a lot of bouncing happening! And I am quite... I guess gifted,” she says laughing. “I was like ‘OMG they’re like hitting me in the face’ during warm up and I was holding them at certain points! It’s not anyone’s fault, it was just I wasn’t wearing the right bra.”
Being a smaller girl with a bigger bust, Simone knows of the frustration encountered when trying to find a good fitting bra, for a reasonable price that is actually PRETTY! So she was excited to meet with Deidre who has extensively researched the importance of looking after your breasts during exercise.
“She’s done a lot of research in this and she was saying that boobs can move anywhere up to 8cm if you’re a B cup! That’s just during very light exercise. It got scarier, because boobs have been recorded to move up to 21cms and then a lot of girl's experience breast pain as a result of it. Those girls aren’t necessarily the bigger busted girls either – I think it was a quarter of the girls who were A cup breast size were reporting breast pain. A lot of girls are stopping exercise because of the breast pain, that actually reported it as a barrier to getting into exercise,” says Simone.
Along with pain, there’s also the embarrassment factor – no one wants to be the girl who has to hold her boobs during a warm up, and pole dancers have enough going on with controlling limbs let alone having a lady leap free! “Been there, done that, many times!” laughs Simone. “I guess I have that personality where I can laugh it off but a lot of the girls can’t and they would see that as a barrier for them to actually get back into class.”
Just like Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth, Simone describes a sports bra as a female’s piece of trusty equipment. “Regardless of whether it’s pole, or whether it’s hockey, footy... we shouldn’t have equipment specific barriers to sport for women. This for us is our equipment – our bras are our equipment. Just like your stilettos are part of your equipment, your Dry Hands is a part of your equipment. We definitely need to make sure we’re using the right tools, and our bra is the most important,” says Simone. “It’s so important because otherwise we risk straining all the ligaments and soft tissue in our breasts, and this will cause irreversible damage with repeated exposure. But you can still wear pretty bras, it just means that maybe you wear a crop top or whatever you’ve got on for your dance part, but on top of that for warm up you might have [a sports] crop on first.”
But before you busty ladies hang up the Pleasers forever, pole dancing actually helps keep the titties tight. “We’re actually lucky, pole helps us in so many ways,” says Simone. “So many girls can attest to the fact that when they’re doing tricks training their boobs ‘shrink’. Yes and no – it’s not their boobs actually shrinking, it’s their pecs getting stronger.” She continues, “So when our pecs are getting stronger, they actually perk us up and at the end of the day you’re better off having pecs than just a whole bunch of soft tissue, because it’s not going to have the same strain on ligaments. We’re really lucky pole really helps us with that – other sports don’t really have that same sort of advantage.”
(If you would like to read Simone’s blog on bouncing boobs during exercise and learn more, click here.)
While we both laugh about how many times in an interview one can perk up the girls while explaining it all of this, it’s so refreshing speaking to a physio who understands women and how that might affect our performance in sport.
“There’s all these different components that comes into it, regardless of male, female, genetics and so forth,” Simone tells me. “I think it always comes down to the individual and their makeup as to what their risk of injury is and where (in the body) they’re more prone to injure. So that’s what we as a physio look at. We take the person as they walk through the door in all their individuality and go ‘okay well yes you don’t have as much range with your hip, but your shoulder’s really quite flexible and this may put you at a higher risk of this injury and so forth.”
How Physios can help Pole Dancers
Just like Bonnie and Clyde, Sonny and Cher or Chuck and Blair, you may find a physiotherapist becomes the perfect partner to your pole training. Not only does Simone help you when you are injured or working on rehabilitation or injury prevention, she can also assist with preparing your body for new pole tricks!
“There [are] girls who are seeing me because they have a goal and they’re not currently achieving it, or they have thought about it and they’re wondering the way to best go forward. So a lot of these girls are for example beginners and intermediates who are trying to get their straddle, forward straddle and aerial straddle for the first time. They might have been trying to do it for 6-12 months already and just haven’t been successful,” Simone tells me.
Recently one of Simone’s clients met with her for a back related issue which soon evolved into discussion about her struggles with pole straddles. A week after treatment with Simone, this client was straddling! Simone explains to me that most of the time it’s about knowing what muscles we need to ‘wake up’.
“A lot of the time with these girls the muscles are just not ‘awake yet’ during the movement or they’re weak, so it’s trying to get them going and pinpoint those muscles – that’s the hardest thing to do,” says Simone. “There’s no way an instructor is expected to look at someone’s straddle from the floor and go ‘oh your right adductor is not turning on – you better turn that thing on!’ that’s just not possible and that’s not their training, so that’s where my training comes in. And I can go ‘well actually your right adductor is not turning on, that feeds into your abdominal sling and as a result you are not using that properly to engage and then lift into your straddle, so let’s work on that!’,” says Simone, breaking it down.
For a lot of Simone’s clients, pole invert success has started to show from anywhere between 1-2 weeks after treatment, up to 6 weeks in the most severe cases (ie post-natal abdominal separation). While it is dependent on the person, Simone says the turnaround time can be a lot quicker than people realise.
So why might a pole dancer choose to see a physiotherapist over the many other health professions available? “Such a challenging question to answer! Personally I think that I as a physio & pole dancer I am really well equipped to be able to help pole dancers because I have a bit more of an understanding of the biomechanics, but also do a lot with exercise conditioning & high level exercise progression, that perhaps maybe other health professionals don’t do as much of. I think there’s some incredible osteos, chiros, S&C coaches etc out there that do a wonderful job and I am jealous of their knowledge with many of the different things that they specialise in (and I hope vice versa!). [Physios] just have that holistic sort of point of view and training in that we can do hands-on assessment, we can do hands-on treatment if required, but then we also know where to take it from the next stage onwards and make it specific to the sport.”
For some of us, pole dancing might be the first hobby that is ‘sporty’. While some people grew up playing ball sports or taking dance or gymnastics classes, not all pole dancers have that kind of background. An injury might be new to you and the need to see a physiotherapist might seem daunting. So what can you expect when booking in to see Simone, The Pole Physio?
“If someone came and saw me in my treatment rooms (let’s say they’ve got an injury), what they would expect first thing is for an accurate diagnosis. So I’m usually going to figure out what’s going on first and foremost. If we don’t have answers or at least a framework of what we believe is going on, then there’s no point continuing treatment because there’s no direction,” Simone explains.
“From there, there’s a range of different things that I can do. So sometimes that involves hands-on treatment. But as a profession, physios are really moving away from that now, because we know that there’s many different ways to treat a patient and that can include exercise. A lot of my patients now know [when] they come in, I’m going to give them exercise because they have found that’s actually the most effective thing for them. It’s really interesting, because they come in with expectations that you can just massage them for 20-30 minutes and they’re going to get better.” Simone continues to detail, “But the best results I’ve gotten as a physio is actually when patients have been given isolated and tailored exercise programs. That’s not saying anything about my hands-on treatment, a lot of patients say ‘I feel so much better when I get hands-on treatment from you’ but then they also step back and recognise that they are self-empowered and they can effectively treat themselves when they’re doing their exercises at home.” says Simone.
The Pole Physio
Simone loves educating her clients, so that they leave knowing what is happening with their body and understand the game plan to get it back on track. But it’s her fascination with the biomechanics of pole dancing that makes her unique as a physiotherapist.
“I love biomechanics of any sport but particularly pole because not many people get it and that’s why I love it so much, because my pole girls can come to me and say ‘Simone I really hurt myself, I was doing a Demi’ and I am able to go ‘cool where does it hurt, what were you doing at the time, what was the transfer happening’ and I can actually pinpoint what specific muscle and the mechanism of the injury,” Simone says enthusiastically. “Whereas if you went and saw someone who doesn’t have that background and experience, and you’re trying to explain that you were upside down, that your leg was twisted like this, and you’re trying to loop... they just don’t get it - no matter what. They don’t understand the push and the pull component of it. So that’s what I really enjoy about the biomechanics and understanding.”
Being a student herself, in class Simone is not only trying to learn the trick, but her ever-inquisitive physio brain is trying to understand the biomechanics of the tricks as well. You might even overhear her and Mischka talking like excited yellow minions as they discuss 'subscap’.
“It’s like I don’t get it until I understand what internal/external rotation movement’s happening, what muscle is taking priority and I need to see things like that. And that’s just me personally, whereas no one else would be that weird and wonderful!” Simone laughs. “My physio brain can’t really switch off ever, so I’m always trying to optimise and understand the biomechanics of the movement so that way I can actually implement it in with my patients,” she says earnestly. “But I do see a lot of elite girls, and I’m nowhere near elite yet, and they're explaining the trick to me or they’re showing me a video and I can very quickly pick up the biomechanics.”
Hips, Shoulders, Hammys & Toes, Hammys & Toes... Let’s talk Pole Injuries
As a pole dancer, I know the feeling of waking up the day after class feeling like I’ve been battered and beaten more than my pancakes on a Sunday morning – and no amount of honey will sweeten this deal! So how do we know when that ‘niggle’ you feel in your shoulder is soreness from class or a potential injury about to stroll right in and introduce itself as ‘Nasty Ned’.
“That is a great question, I really love that!” says Simone. “Because in pole there is not really such thing as a niggle because that niggle will come back. It might be gone temporarily but it will come back later somehow when you are using it.” She continues with an excellent example. “So if you have a niggle in your shoulder doing a floor Music Box Dancer [aka an Ice-skater spin or Ballerina], I can guarantee you when you try to do an aerial Music Box Dancer or twisted grip Shoulder Mount that niggle will become a lot worse. But by the time it’s come back [aerially], it is not just a mild inflammatory response underlying in your shoulder, it is now potentially a tendinopathy, which means that the cells have gotten so irritated there is now changes in the tendon structure.”
Um, that escalated quickly! What do we do Super Simone?! Tell us more!
“This is where I advise people to come and see me as quickly as possible, because if we can start on the strength and conditioning at the early stages, that is the perfect time to see me when we can prevent it from getting worse,” says Simone. “But not just that, we can actually get it better; get your strength and conditioning up and get you that aerial Music Box Dancer quicker by actually having really solid and strong shoulders. You’re less likely to then have time off pole later on because you don’t flare up a shoulder injury, and you’re going to progress quicker through the levels and through your tricks.”
Simone advises to never wait for a ‘niggle’ and if it’s sore for more than 2 days to book in to see her. “Inflammation really lasts about 48-72 hours so occasionally we do something in class, you feel a little bit sore for 24-48 hours it settles down it doesn’t come back again – fine, not an issue,” Simone tells me. “But if it’s lasting for more than that 2-3 days, then that means there’s a deeper inflammatory response underlying and potentially some structural irritation, and that’s something that’s important to come see me for because it may mean that your muscles and joints aren’t working in the way we want them to,” she says.
The relationship that a pole dancer has with their shoulders can be rockier than the Andes. Simone agrees and clarifies that this is because we load up our shoulders so much – we are not just taking our body weight, but also applying pressure to the joint through whatever twisted, twirly trick we are attempting. However, she does see many other pole related injuries besides the shoulders.
"I’ve seen from neck through to, well actually through to concussion. I’ve seen jaw related issues from pole, all the way through to ankle sprains and also big toe issues. I see so many different types of injuries but the most common are definitely shoulder, so that’s probably number one and the neck is the next one. That [internally rotated] position of the shoulder can actually irritate the seventh joint in your neck, so quite often people get neck referred pain down their arm because they’re hanging out of their shoulder – they’re not actually pulling through the arm and engaging correctly,” Simone tells me.
She continues, “Then the next one would have to be hamstring, groin injuries and hips. Hamstrings and groins would be from Semi/Demi Angel positions, your Plus Sign (I’ve seen so many girls injure a hamstring with Plus Sign – that's actually probably the craziest!). Then coming into that also the Spatchcock. It’s not necessarily flexibility that you need with a Plus Sign, I mean you do need flex, but you do need active strength so that’s what a lot of girls are missing and then when it comes to Spatchy, that’s obviously the next one up from there,” Simone tells me.
Wondering how a physio might feel about the contorted Spatchcock, I am surprised when Simone tells me it’s not the trick itself that makes her want to cry – it's a lack of correct technique, even sometimes when watching the pros.
“If someone is doing a trick poorly they’re causing repetitive strain on their body, and too much repetitive strain and not enough strength is what leads to injury. It’s what we call this ‘creep phenomenon’ where it’s just too much load for the muscle so it just decides to tear or snap. I’m not actually worried about the Spatchy position, because a lot of the time these girls have trained their pancake split to get into that, but it’s the load and the muscles not being strong enough to take that load – that's what terrifies me. That person’s going to end up with a really good hamstring or groin tear when by complete accident one day, the muscle’s taking too much load for it to handle,” Simone cautions.
Having already learned so much from Simone during our chat, I question what would be one of the main things she would like pole dancers to be aware of in regards to pole related injuries?
“I think probably the biggest thing I see is girls coming in with a shoulder injury or a neck injury and being like ‘I left it because you know my friend had the same injury 5 years ago and she told me she did this and her pain was the exact same area so my pain must be the exact same thing’ and they’re like – it’s all bursitis!” says Simone, describing what really grinds her gears when consulting.
“Every injury is different. There are very few injuries that are exactly the same,” she explains. “You can have bursitis of your shoulder yes I understand, but you could have bursitis with a tendon irritation, you can have bursitis with neck issues, so you might be trying to settle down the bursa but you still have got underlying issues elsewhere. Your biomechanics as a pole dancer is different to the next person so you need tailored exercises for you.”
"We can’t treat people like they’re recipes and I certainly don’t as a physio give recipe-based exercises. I need to modify exercises (even though they may be similar) I might give them slightly different for different people, for their injury,” says Simone. “That’s probably the one thing I want people to know – don’t treat your shoulder injury like your mate’s in class because theirs is probably different from yours, despite the pain being in the same location.”
Hold onto your booty shorts - The Pole Physio is in town!
Simone is clearly so passionate about physiotherapy and helping athletes perform at their peak. Having found a love of pole dancing herself, she is keen to help all levels of pole athletes and educate us on the effects of the incredible things our bodies achieve through pole. Simone makes physiotherapy fun and understandable!
Our interview was so interesting it was difficult to select specific areas we discussed to publish. So I’m excited to bring to you another TWO, yep that’s right, two more blogs over the coming weeks on the different areas of pole physiotherapy we talked about.
Coming to you soon...
The importance of warming up & cooling down
How wearing heels could haunt us pole dancers
The amazing thing that is muscle memory!
Recovery and selfcare
Pole specific conditioning
More beautiful biomechanics!
Until then, if you are intrigued with all this physio goodness, please follow Simone on Instagram @thepole.physio or check out her website https://www.simonemuscat.physio/ for in-depth blogs and info!
Leave a comment below & let me know what else you would like to learn from The Pole Physio!
