Bruise control

Bruises after a week of pole dancing every day and trying new moves

Once you start pole dancing there is no easy way to avoid bruises, unless you’re made of tougher stuff that the rest of us.

Most are relatively harmless and will simply fade away after a matter days, especially if you try some of the bruise taming tips shown below.

Sometimes it’s more sever, so if you haven’t got full range of movement of the limb where your bruise appears, the bruise is a really dark colour purple and covers an area bigger than the palm of your hand, there may be more extensive muscle damage.  This isn’t likely to happen often, but when it does it’s best to go and get checked by doctor.

When you keep practicing moves the number and size of the bruises will reduce, so keep going because they won’t be there forever.

Different pole dance tricks lead to different shapes, sizes and positions of bruises, so next time you’re out and about take a look to see who has bruises like you and ask them if they’re a pole dancer too!

Although people are often embarrassed about their bruises I think we should embrace them and simply refer to them as ‘pole kisses’.

If you have any bruises caused by pole dancing, or anything else, there are a few things you can do to reduce their severity:

Ice

Apply ice over the area for rotations of 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off.  Don’t put the ice directly on the skin, wrap your cold compress in a tea towel.  You can keep a lump of Play-Doh in a lock-bag in the freezer; it’s a great compress that you can mould to any shape and re-use.

Arnica cream and tablets

The Arnica herb helps your body to dispose of the blood that causes the dark colouration.  If you rub on cream be careful not to press too hard – or you may do more harm than good.

Maintain a healthy diet

Keeping up your fresh, uncooked veg and fruit intake will help provide your body with the nutrients it needs to repair the damaged capillaries.  Foods high in vitamin C  (oranges, red berries, red capsicum, cabbage), vitamin K (dark greens, e.g. broccoli, spinach),  zinc (Oysters, red meat, eggs).

Shredded raw potato

Mmmm…. I’ve been advised that applying this immediately to a bruise for about an hour can reduce soreness and discoloration.  If anyone’s had success with that please share your story and any pictures you may have.