Hook your inside leg around the front of the pole.

Tips: Positioning of the inside leg is key in this trick - if your knee is too high (above your hips) the lines won’t look nice, and if your knee is too low your hips will be too close to the pole and won’t be able to achieve the necessary points of contact. Your knee should be below your hips, with your thigh at roughly 45 degrees, and your hips should be behind the pole if you look from the side.

Release your inside arm and reach forward, sliding your shoulder to past the pole.

Press the back of your shoulder against the pole.

Internally rotate your arm and feed your hand through the gap between your hips and the pole and place your hand on the thigh of your inside leg.

Engage the shoulder of your outside arm to support some of your weight, then lift your outside leg off the ground.

Keep your chest proud (don’t let your shoulders roll forward), squeeze all your contact points and carefully release your top hand. The pressure on your inside arm can be quite intense here, take your time to get used to this grip!

Bend your outside leg behind you and reach for your ankle with your outside hand. Grab the inside of your ankle with your hand, thumb facing the ceiling.

Press your ankle into your hand to extend your back leg as much as your flexibility allows.

Engage the shoulder of your outside arm to support some of your weight, then lift your outside leg off the ground.

Press the outer thigh of the inside leg hard into the pole, carefully straightening the inside leg.

To exit the shape, re-hook your inside leg.

Let go of your outside leg, regrip the pole above your head with your outside arm.

Place outside leg on the ground, unwrap inside arm to dismount.

For another spin pole trick at the beginner to intermediate level, check out the Ballerina tutorial.