Industry Standards
2024 saw a bunch of uproar about industry standards.
I want to share my own frustrations about the pole industry - Specifically the instructing aspects of it. There are many things that need to improve within the industry, many of these go above and beyond the scope of this blog.
I have recently gone full time into teaching pole & movement.
To my fortune, this summer I have been approached by a few studios & gyms to teach in their premises. Since having worked in several studios in London, I am aware that all studios have different rules, varying rates & requirements.
My first approach is always to ask more questions.
What are your rates?
How many people is maximum capacity?
Do you offer a Freelance Contract?
What are your studios perspectives on SW & Stripping as the roots of Pole Dance?
These are just some of the questions I dig for when approached by a new pole dance studio.
I am incredibly lucky and grateful that I work for two studios that offer both a freelancer contract, a fair wage for my time, as well as being SW run businesses. These are the studios that have made me believe that there CAN be a better standards for the pole instructing business.
Many students are unaware of the rates their instructors get paid. Considering Pole is actually quite an expensive hobby to get yourself into, you’d think that the person you’re going to learn from gets a decent rate per hour for teaching you, especially when there are 6+ students.
You’d assume wrong if you thought instructors get paid loads.
On average, instructors get paid between £10 & £35 per class. Depending on the city, depending on the amount of students, and on the studio.
I have worked for a studio in which there were 10+ people in a class, all paying £18+ for that class, and I was getting £20 for the hour.
This stuff gets under my skin.
When an instructor has several years of teaching experience, attracts regular students and fills their classes, you’d expect that the instructor would get fair portion of what the class brings in.
I have all too often seen & heard about studio owners get greedy.
Don’t get me wrong, I have compassion for studios trying to make a living too which is not easy in this unstable political & financial climate. I understand that there are unmentioned costs of renting the space, electricity, marketing etc. But all too often I have heard studios get greedy and on top of that make their instructors feel like the studio owns them.
My recent annoyance I’d like to share is with a huge franchise gym that provides pole dance services, as well as other traditional sports within aerials, martial arts, yoga etc. They may rhyme with gymlox. They reached out to invite me for an interview.
I was initially pleased with the request, but I wanted to dig further. I went through all my questions and in light of the answers I became more and more frustrated.
They pay £35 per hour to teach up 15 mixed ability students.
Sometimes having 4 people per pole.
They told me that instructors are expected to teach separate beginner, intermediate & advanced combos within the hour.
Now to me, this sounds absurd for a few reasons.
First of all - up 4 people per pole?! Can you imagine paying money and spending time to essentially get on the pole twice?
Second of all, to teach 3 seperate combos to the same group, having no teacher assistants means that my attention would be completely split up, and students would not be getting the individual attention they want & deserve. It’s not impossible, but its not an practical way of teaching or learning.
Teaching mixed ability classes is a CHALLENGE as an instructor. There are so many things to consider & deliver, not just skilled based, but also motivation and emotional support based.
I have personally seen students get demotivated when they are in mixed ability classes. Especially when beginners see people at intermediate plus level. A mental & emotional complex can build to making them feel like “why can they do that and I can’t?” Because they have been doing it for a year longer than you!
Practice makes you better.
Good coaching can make this journey smoother.
But when you have up to 15 people in class, all with mixed ability, mixed motivation & mixed attitudes to skill learning. It is a challenge to navigate both for instructors and students. It is far too demanding of the instructor to deliver these classes to a good quality for everyone involved within a mere hour.
If someone chooses to teach this way, wonderful. However, the level of teaching skills that is required should also come with the appropriate pay.
Now £35 per hour may sound like a lot, but stay with me on this
An instructor spends 1-3 hours (unpaid) preparing for a class (depending on the type of class, depending the energy levels of the week etc), takes the time & money to travel into the studio. On top of that, a person can only teach for so many hours before physical & mental exhaustion kick in.
When the 1-hour class earns over £150, the instructor getting £35 of this seems very little. Especially when the instructor does 80% of the work when it comes to the class. We may not deal with the booking, website stuff & promotion, but most of everything about running the class, its content & keeping the students coming back is on the instructor.
Sometimes this includes promotion of the classes too. As self-employed instructors, we are also sometimes expected to promote our classes to ensure bookings - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless the whole promotion expectation is on you.
Now I understand that places like this franchise gym have membership based subscriptions, which means less per class takings. But they have the money to invest in good advertising & promotion to keep an ever going influx of new students.
This is a corporation earning over £15million per year.
Appropriating all types of sport disciplines. A white man owns the business and profiteers off traditional arts & movement practices, expecting their instructors to do the upmost & and pay very little.
This just does not sit right with me.
It stinks of capitalism and exploitation of students & instructors alike.
In my reply to them, I declined the offer. I told them I do not believe that this is my type of workplace and that I believe it is places such as these that lower the industry standards.
The industry standard is to get some sort of “qualification” such as an online xpole teacher training and then you’re good to go.
People become instructors when they barely understand the discipline within their bodies. I know this because I was one of these people. I was a student for 4 years before I became an instructor. I’m grateful I waited that long. I have heard of people doing pole for 6 months before wanting to be instructors.
Whats the rush?
Yes, we learn from experience, and it took me time to be a better mover and a movement teacher. I’m still actively learning.
I took on professional coaching & further learning opportunities as an instructor so I could better understand what goes into skill acquisition of my students. Which was also out of my own time and pocket.
Much of the studios I’ve worked & heard about from fellow instructors, do not encourage their instructors to do continuous professional development. I think this is mostly due to studios not having the capacity to pay for it, and it may feel too cheeky to ask their instructors to pay out of their own pocket to learn new things.
I believe that places like the franchise gym & other exploitative studios take on inexperienced instructors and give them absolutely no support or guidance on how to be better teacher. Instead, as self-employed folk, we’re responsible for taking it all on the chin and trying our best to deliver classes to humans that trust us to know all there is about the discipline for minimal pay in return.
In my personal opinion, I think places like the franchise gym lower the industry standards by expecting too much of their instructors provide no additional in person support when the classes are huge, underpays the instructors, and creates a ineffective & potentially unsafe learning environments.
I have experienced & heard of studios doing similar tactics.
Being a full-time instructor is near impossible to survive on. As no one asked, here is a small list of some of the qualms I have with the pole instructing industry. I say these from my own lived experiences as well as the chatter amongst fellow instructors.
Pay can be minimal, as mentioned above
Overcrowding in a studio - anything more than 2 people per pole is greedy in my opinion.
if classes get cancelled - even an hour or two before- we do not get paid.
We are not paid for the time it takes to plan the class.
Studios relying soley on instagram for promotion. There needs to be investment in a variety of advertising techniques.
Some studios expect instructors to self promote our classes to a studio that pays bare minimal. I think there should be equal split of promotion between the roles, where the instructor promotes their classes on socials AND the studio investing in paid advertising & getting the word out to bring influx of students.
No contracts, meaning the owners can change their policies & terms of conditions at any time they please and expect you to be cool with it.
Dodgy contracts - I have seen a few about which sent shivers down my spine. If you are offered a contract, read it! You are well within your right to point out things that stink and have them amended or taken out. Don’t sign something you feel is wrong, if the studio is adamant on weird rules such as ( but not exclusive to) owning all your creative copyright materials- don’t sign the contract.
Studio owners thinking they own the instructor, making them become exclusive to the studio. In return, they have you as self employed with no benefits such as sick pay, holiday pay & pay as little as they can along with not providing a contract.
Studios expecting self-employed instructors to find cover for their classes even when you’ve booked a holiday in advance.
Teacher assistants as a way of learning to become a instructor is rare. A lot of times you’re just thrown in the deep end and told “good luck” by the owners.
These are some of the reasons why instructors try to explore online platforms to reach more people and get a better share of the pay coming for their time in order to survive.
However, there are studios out there that really do try their best to pay the instructor a fair wage, offering contracts and providing support where needed.
If you’re a student, try to not spend your hard earn money on gyms and studios that are exploitative, feeding into the capitalistic machine. Support your favourite dancers by taking classes with them online or in person, sharing their content, write reviews, tell your friends, book 1-2-1s.
For the instructors, ask yourself how much you’re getting paid vs how much the studio take for your class. Do you have a contract? do you demand a freelancer contract when you join a new studio? Does the contract seem fair and clearly states what both, instructor & studio, are responsible for?
If you’ve been teaching for a while and have a good student base, do ask for higher pay?
Are you in a position with your skills that you can expand your teaching to another studio to see what the waters are like elsewhere?
By demanding better standards & calling out exploitative studios we can raise the industry standards together.
This is just my opinion and rant.
What are your thoughts? Do you have any stories about your experience working for studios or gyms?
