POLLING OUT x

The art, sport, and fit

By Julia Siedlano

ust look at Anastasia Sokolova, made famous when she

appeared on Ukraine's Got Talent in 2012, and you'll know that
pole dancing is an art. Sokolova’s performance almost made me
cry—and that was just through YouTube. The strength, flexibility,
coordination, and training required to be a professional pole dancer
are the same as with any other dance or sport. Jessica Lyn, founder,
director, and head instructor at AVA Fitness in New Westminster,
offers high-level training, both for those looking to have fun or
those looking to be BC’s Pole Fitness Champion.

Driving by 6th Street one day, a pole dance studio caught my
eye. Intrigued, I called, made an appointment, and ended up ina
small class with an enthusiastic and talented instructor. Lyn has
been pole dancing since 2007, and now it’s pretty much her life.

“Right now I’m teaching about 16 hours a week, and then I have
my own training on top of that which varies,” says Lyn. “It can go
from about four hours a week to 20 hours of extra training when
I’m booked for a performance where I have to come up with my
routines and things like that.”

When she’s not in the studio, she’s working on programs,
new classes, her website, and anything else involved in running a
business. Designing all her own marketing materials, Lyn says the
job is more than full-time. “But no complaints,” she adds.

Lyn got her start taking pole dancing classes while living in
the UK. “I was one of those students that was, like, once a week,
probably for a year and a half. I took breaks here and there as well
so I wasn’t fully, fully committed, but it was something that I loved,”
says Lyn.

While on vacation in Vancouver, she missed her training
routine and decided to take a class. “I went to a local studio and I
was really shocked at the level that they were teaching. For someone
like me who had been doing it for a year and a half, almost two years
at that point, I was wanting to go to a more advanced class and it
really wasn't, so I was kind of disappointed with it.” Lyn asked the
instructor if she could play on the poles for an hour. “So I stayed
and one by one all the instructors came into the studio and they
[had their] jaws on the floor, eyes bulging out of their head, they
were like ‘Oh my god, you could totally teach us, ... and that is what
kind of made me think, ‘Oh, I probably could.”

When she went back to the UK, Lyn got certified and started
teaching the next week. “In the UK it’s very regulated... even to
teach basic classes you have to have your certification. It was never
like that [in Canada], but it is now.”

Three months after getting certified, Lyn moved to Canada.

“I ordered my poles, they arrived even before I did... I just knew
when I came back that this is what I want to do—this is all I want
to do. So I moved here in December 2009 and in February I started
classes.”

Renting spaces in local gyms, Lyn began teaching on her own.
“I had two poles and I'd go into the gym, I’d set them up, I’d do the
class, I’d take them down, I'd pack them away, I’d put them in my
car, and I'd be on my way. And I did that for, I’d say the first eight
months.”

Lyn then settled for a while in a small personal training gym in
Port Moody until her classes got too full. “We were having wait-lists
for classes and we were saying no to people—and I hate saying no to
people... it was at that point that I really knew it’s time to open our
own space.”

“We opened up here in October 2012, so we’ve been here just
over a year and we're already looking to expand. We're outgrowing
this very quickly,’ says Lyn.

The curriculum is expanding along with the clientele. Lyn and
her fellow instructors are developing a curriculum for aerial hoop,
to start in spring. AVA Fitness also offers boot camps, aerial yoga,
flexibility training, core conditioning, spinning pole classes, and