National pole sports athlete Lim Ji-ho, 15, was diagnosed with hyperhidrosis at a hospital in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, in 2019. Pole sports is a sport in which athletes use their strength and flexibility to perform various movements on a 4-meter-high brass pole. To be considered successful, the athlete must remain in the air for at least two seconds. You have to win the battle against gravity and sweat to get a good score.
“I heard a rumor that ‘Botox injections will stop sweating,’ so I stuck needles all over my palms, but it didn’t work,” said Lim Ji-ho at the VMA Pole Dance training center in Yongin on February 2. “I was more urgent because I was about to compete in the world championships for the first time.” There are sweat suppressants, but there is no perfect solution. There are also antiperspirants, but they’re not a perfect solution. On days when she wore too much, she was actually dehydrated and had trouble executing her technique.
“It’s not just hyperhidrosis,” says Kim Jin-hee, 41, president of the Korea Pole Sports Association. “Jiho has longer arms and legs than others, which is not a good physical condition for pole sports.” “He has overcome all these weaknesses by working several times harder than others and has developed a stronger mental strength than anyone else. I expect him to grow into a more and more perfect athlete in the future.”
Lim broke the Korean record (previous high of 32.5) with a total score of 59.0 at the 2021 Korean Championships as a Novice (10-14 years old). No one has ever scored higher at the men’s senior (adult) level. Lim also finished fourth (51.5 points) in the women’s novice event at last year’s World Championships in Lausanne (Switzerland), also the highest finish by a Korean athlete across gender and age groups. She was just 0.6 points behind bronze medalist Karolina Mleynková (Czech Republic – 52.1 points).
Lim first got into pole sports as a hobby in 2018, but the following year, after watching Kim Soo-bin, 16, appear on a TV program as a “pole sports prodigy,” she began competing in earnest. “When I saw her do the ‘aysha’ move, which involves holding onto the pole with both hands and lifting both legs, for more than 10 seconds, I was motivated to do it better,” says Lim. “At that time, I couldn’t hold the aysha for even a second. “I couldn’t hold aysha for a second,” he recalls, “and from that day on, I was hanging from a pole in the schoolyard, focusing on aysha training all day long.
“Now I can hold Aisha for half a day,” says Lim, who will be competing in the junior (15-17 years old) category at the World Championships in Kielce, Poland, on October 25. Lim’s training mate, Park Ki-eun (13), will also be competing in the Novice category.
Park finished 21st out of 30 athletes at last year’s World Championships with a score of 38.8, but has been praised for her rapid improvement since then. Park is so flexible that she was able to master the “eagle” (a technique that involves lifting one leg backwards while hanging from a pole and catching it with the hand) in two weeks, a skill that usually takes more than a year to learn.안전놀이터
“When I say ‘I do pole sports,’ not many people understand me, but when I say ‘pole dance,’ they understand me, and that makes me want to be recognized as an athlete,” said Park. “I want to win a medal at the World Championships to promote pole sports.” In 2017, pole sports gained associate status with the General Association of International Sport Federations (GAISF) and is in the process of becoming an Olympic sport.
“I hope to win the gold medal at the World Championships and wait for pole sports to become an Olympic sport. I’m confident that if pole sports are included in the Olympics, I’ll be able to win.”