Undergoing Hip Replacement Hasn't Slowed Down This 71-Year-Old Pole Dancing Champion
A 71-year-old pole dancing champ proves you’re never too old to spin circles around your haters.
All good things eventually come to an end. But undergoing a hip replacement in your 60s doesn’t have to end your days of pole dancing.
Mary Caryl Serritella caught the pole dancing bug at 57 when she took her first class. In 2023, the Los Angeles-based performer and mom became a world champion in Italy.
That hip replacement hasn’t slowed her down at all. She's not giving up on the sport she loves, no matter how many friends she loses along the way.
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Believe it or not, some have unfriended Mary on Facebook because of her passion for the pole. Those jealous witches haven’t kept her from staying at the top of her game.
"When you compete you improve. It makes you think about the level of work more intensely and you learn more," Mary told the Daily Mail.
The years of dedication and work that she put into pole dancing made her a world champion and helped her to stay focused when those so-called friends on social media turned their backs on her.
"Some people unfriended me on Facebook," she says because they can't wrap their minds around her love for the pole. "But I don't blame them, if you only have your perspective you might get the wrong idea."
Mary, who never had any formal training in pole dancing prior to picking it up in her late 50s, other than some amateur gymnastics in high school, now trains three times a week.
You won’t catch her in the gym though, and you're not going to catch her doing any stripper routines on the pole either.
She gets her workouts in at home and her routines are focused on the storytelling with characters she says are "comical or sensual in some way."
Mary Has Four Golden Rules to Stay in Pole-Dancing Shape at 71
This pole dancing 71-year-old isn’t listening to the haters who tell her she's too old. She instead focuses on the positives that come from her time on the pole.
"There are so many benefits, from the physical to the friendship. I've had a hip replacement five years ago, and it has taught me so much about how to bounce back and take care of my body," she said.
Sitting around and knitting isn’t going to teach that kind of lesson.
If you want to be up, in pole dancing shape in your 70s (and who doesn't?), this world champion pole dancer has four golden rules she lives by.
Mary Caryl Serritella's four golden rules are drink lots of water, move, be happy and have generosity of spirit and time. That's inspirational right there.
I don’t know if you're feeling the way I am after that, but I want to go out, run through a brick wall, then hop on the nearest pole right this minute. Think of all those in their 70s sitting around watching Law & Order reruns. They could be on a pole right now instead.