Learning Aerial Circus Skills: Week 2

Aerial is sooooo much fun! Having felt a bit like I'd never be able to do it last week, this week I came away feeling like I could do anything given time and effort.

So I mentioned last week that I felt really cold in our beautiful church venue. What I didn't mention was that I spend the whole day before my aerial class working outdoors in the cold on our family market stall selling organic fruit and veg. I figured this didn't help muscle tension last week so this week I wore three thermal tops and thermal leggings under my normal leggings 😂 Much warmer! It was freezing on the market that day so I also adopted a policy of eating all day (well I gotta support my fellow stall holders right?......and they sell awesome food). First early lunch 11.30, cake at 1, second lunch at 3.45, aerial at 6pm. That and the layers worked well - I was warm, had lots of energy and really threw myself into it.

We did the usual warm up and a few exercises on the equipment and then tried a couple of tricks- starting with just getting up to standing on the trapeze and then moving on to 'mermaid' (in the picture above). I love this move - it's one my kids have done a lot at circus camp and I think it looks fab. I loved doing it, partly because for me at least, it involved a leap of faith. You move to one side of the trapeze, hold on with one hand and swing yourself back whilst flipping your hips round so that your legs hold you against the trapeze rope. It feels like you're about to fling yourself off into space even though logically you can see that your legs are going to connect with the rope and hold you in place. So you just have to trust and go for it and I like that feeling - hovering on the edge and then just letting yourself go - I loved it! This picture is just before I let go and was still working out where everything was going to end up. You can see the ‘you sure that’s going to work' question on my face right?!

Then we did a simple move on the hoop - just with three points of contact and one leg pointing back. Really simple but still so fun to do. Here we introduce the photo problem.......my friend & I were the only ones taking photos and it just didn't feel appropriate so we stopped. Not sure where that leaves this blog to be honest as pretty boring with no photos! Then we did that vital cool down and that was the end of week two..........or was it? I'm also learning that it doesn't just end after the session but is very much about how I feel afterwards and how muscles and body react over the week. More of that in the next blog but for this session I ended on a definite high. End of week one I was a bit deflated thinking 'wow, I can't do this'. End of week two I was really excited and delighted by what I'd achieved. I still got a cracking headache the next day (neck and shoulder tension an issue for me anyway) but otherwise my muscles were ok and didn't ache half as much as the week before - I could get the car into reverse with no pain! Amazing how quickly our muscles learn and get used to new patterns. So, until the next blog..........hang upside down if it makes you happy 😄

Thanks to my friend for taking photos for me.

Please do follow, upvote and resteem if you would like to. I have just a little hope that if enough people are interested I could use this blog to fund more aerial classes after my birthday present intro course is finished. Thank you.