jamimah no I live in Philadelphia, but Chicago is a short plane ride with cheap flights so I competed there last year as well

Susan Papp Mlodzienski, Ashley-Nokomis Travis, and I are all performing at PSO Liberty this weekend!

Sue and I are also probably doing PSO Chicago November 9-10, which rumor has it Stephanie Tallant will be there for my birthday 😂😂😂

The haters: "Sue can't do splitty moves"

Sue: 🤸🤸🤸

To me the set up looked really good!!! There's 2 things I noticed that are making it harder and I think it has to do with you grabbing your foot to try and get in the position.

1. When you tried to pull your foot to your shoulder with your hand you can see your top hand slips which tells me that you're focused more on the bottom arm. When I do it my top arm is essentially pulling my chest towards the pole (and thus towards your legs) rather than thinking of pulling the leg towards your body with the bottom arm. I actually pull so much that my top arm is bent

2. By grabbing the foot that bottom shoulder is essentially in a neutral position when it should be super internally rotated, almost thinking like you're trying to point the top of your shoulder towards the pole so that your bottom hand can point down.

My set up might be different from Steph's bc I haven't watched her videos, so let me do it real quick and post a video of my set up trying to show the pull of the top arm and internal rotation of the bottom that I do.

STATIC GIRL HERE. I like the way spin looks for certain moves, but hate the way it feels 😵‍💫🤮

Stephanie Tallant I LITERALLY KNEW YOU'D SNEAK IN THE FLYING COBRA VIDEO 😂😂😭😭🐍👀 but I actually have started incorporating the band tied to the pole exerercise that's at the end sometimes for my shoulders if I'm feeling spicy, but that's the part of the video that I dread the most 🫠which is prob why I can't do a needle 🤪

Angela Zhang it sounds like we're probably in a similar spot in our needle journey bc I also have a relatively straight back leg capezio/libellula now, but I have a bent leg eagle/cocoon!! 🙃here's a pic of where my needle is at without using a wall or pole, as a reference (which is basically straightening the back leg) so you can gauge if my advice applies. At the beginning of the year I could only grab my foot with one hand, and I now do the straight back leg exercises with the intention of trying to grab with both hands as my opposite shoulder/back seems to be my limiting factor. Its a SUPER intense video for me though so I can only do it 1-2x a week max, or my body might start to protest. 😬glad to have someone else working towards their needle to keep me motivated and honest!

I'm currently working towards getting my needle as a New Year's resolution!!!! I'm also a former dancer however I never even had a scorpion, so I feel this post in my bones. I personally LOVE doing the first 4 videos of the backbend flex, particularly ending with the cocoon one and those are my go to for weekly back/shoukder flex training for my needle. Steph just made a brand new video that I'm obsessed with that I've found super helpful for progressing my needle to straightening the leg (added it here). I've honestly been only sticking to these videos bc cocoon/eagle are the most similar to a needle, and straightening the back leg is what I want to do for a needle 🙃I only do each video once a week all the way through due to time but, will incorporate parts through out my warm-ups during the week depending on what im working on.