Pole Aerobics - WORKOUT OF THE FUTURE!

Pole-dancing aerobics was still under the radar when Gerri Kyhill was persuaded into going to a pole-dancing class in Los Angeles by one of her friends, who was hooked on the workout. When Kyhill finally relented, she understood the workout’s draw.
“I’ve done every kind of exercise there possibly is,” said Kyhill. “I never thought I’d get excited about anything I tried.”
During the pole-dancing class, an exercise epiphany dawned on Kyhill.
“About 20 minutes into this class I had a revelation – what I felt and experienced was like nothing I’ve experienced before. I had to open this up in New York.”
A year later, Kyhill opened her branch of Sheila Kelly’s S-Factor, a popular pole-dancing business, in Chelsea.
“We opened with a flurry of students – they just came like crazy,” said Kyhill. “We ran out of space right away, and I had to open another studio on 24th Street.” Since then, said Kyhill, every $460 session, which includes eight classes, has sold out. With space at a premium, Kyhill even started holding classes in a Jewish temple, across the street from the main studio.
In cities across the nation, regular women are getting fit with the kind of dance that was first used primarily by strippers. Word of pole-dancing classes and strip aerobic workouts has spread from Los Angeles to New York, and to places in between.
“Women are loving it – word of mouth has filled up my classes,” said Adina Cleary, who started Women’s Exotic Workout in Omaha, Neb. “I just built a bigger studio.”
Cleary teaches the classes, which draw “real women in their 30s, 40s and 50s,” she said. “These are women who are trying to reconnect with their sensuality.”
Not that it’s been clear sailing the whole time. In a Midwestern town, Cleary faces some challenges as a purveyor of pole aerobics.
“We are in the proverbial Bible Belt. People here are incredibly conservative and right wing, and I have to fight against that all the time,” she said.
When it comes to Los Angeles and New York, the socio-political atmosphere is a little more forgiving, which helped Sheila Kelly launch her pole empire seven years ago. Kelly, who had to learn some trademark stripper moves for a role in The Blue Iguana, started pole dancing to lose weight after she gave birth to her first child. Soon she was teaching lessons out of her L.A. home and realized that there was a market for it.
Now Sheila Kelly’s S-Factor has studios in San Francisco, Miami, Houston, New York, all over Southern California and, most recently, Chicago. Her workout has been the topic of discussion on Oprah, and it has been featured in magazines from Self to US Weekly to Maxim.
Though still not completely mainstream, the workout is making inroads into middle America. In Salt Lake City, Utah, 24-hour Fitness has started incorporating the workout into their fitness classes.
“It’s been absorbed into a dance class, so it’s half dance and half strip tease,” said Dave Lee, the gym’s manager. “There’re always people there for sure.”
But if Kansas City soccer moms can’t get their pole fix at a local gym – or if New York socialites are too embarrassed to hang upside-down from a brass pole in front of a small crowd of other ladies – there is an online solution that has garnered some attention: www.lilmynx.com offers dance poles for those who want to bring the workout into their homes. At $229 a pop, the poles are a little pricey, but that doesn’t keep people from springing for them.
“It’s making more money than we ever thought it was going to make,” said Lil’ Mynx founder Randy Blacker.
Blacker site offers various colors, sizes – even portable poles with carrying cases and poles that rotate. Blacker said that they’re trying to keep the site G-rated – the company has set its sites on selling the poles out of Target and Wal-Mart and doesn’t want the poles to be too closely associated with their origin.
“At the end of the day,” said Blacker, “it’s just a pole.”