5th Trapeze Class

I had my 5th trapeze class last night. Our regular instructor was out, so we had a substitute teacher. He was a 61 year old man who has been involved in the circus for years. It was an interesting class. He had a different style of teaching, but I wound up learning quite a bit from him. And, he was pretty spry, too. He demonstrated the moves and everything. It was impressive. The only downside was that he talked a lot, so there was time we could have been practicing that we had to listen.

The class started with stretching and then some conditioning. He showed us these 4 count situps, which were awesome. You start on your back with your feet off the floor 4-6 inches. Your feet never touch the ground until the end of the set. Then, you crunch up (with no support from your hands) (1). Then, you extend your legs back down (2), Then, you bring you legs back up (knees bent). Your torso remains down (3). Then, you extend your legs back down (4). So, you do 10 of these 40-count situps. Other variations are to bring your legs to your left and then right shoulders for the 3rd count. So, it covers all of the ab muscles and the obliques. I'm going to incorporate that into my conditioning at home. He recommended doing some of that every day. I'm going to see if I can do 1 set of each kind.

The other conditioning was for the back. It was the superman position (so on your stomach, lifting everything up except for your belly button). But, it was holding it up for increments of time. It was a very good exercise, and I can feel it this morning.

For the trapeze work, we worked on the Angel sequence. We did that about 4 times, each time concentrating on the flow between the movements. We learned how to do the Angel straight from the Bird's Nest move. It was really cool.

Then, we learned a new sequence. We did a Front Pull-Over into a Front Balance into a Catcher's Hang. The Front Pull Over is simply a different way to mount the trapeze. In the Double-Up, our legs go under the bar, and then we can go into the Double Knee Hang. For the Front Pull Over, we simply jump/kick our legs up and over the bar. It was similar to the Uneven Bars Gymastics work that I did way back when. Then, the Front Balance was simply balancing with the trapeze just a bit away from the pelvis bones. So, the body had to be tight and not collapse, since the only point of contact is the bar and the pelvis area. Then, to go into the catcher's hang, you just V your legs and sort of fall forwards into it. It's a really cool sequence. After we did it on the low trapeze, then we took it to the higher one. On that one, we had to swing (or beat, as it's called) to gain momentum to be able to do the Front Pull-Over. I was surprised that I was able to do quite well with the beats and the pull-over. We just did 1 beat forward, 1 backwards, and then we did the front pull-over. The key is to keep the body tight.

After that, he talked to us for a while about the importance of performing the moves, not just doing them. He talked about telling a story with our bodies and how the music plays a role with artistic interpretation. He got us to start thinking about what music we want to use in our performance. It needs to be between 3 and 5 minutes. So, I'm starting to think about that. Overall it was a great class. We didn't do a whole lot in terms of practicing on the trapeze, but we gained a lot of knowledge and different perspectives. It was probably good anyway, though, since I wasn't at full strength. Hopefully, next week I'll have kicked this cold/virus and will be back to 100%.