Public Network for Contortionists

Weeks 2 & 3

Squeezing two weeks worth of training into one post and I apologize for that--I'm having a hard time juggling work, training, taking care of my bunny, cleaning the house, online time, studying Japanese, spending time with my boyfriend and family, etc, but I'll find a good balance soon, I'm sure. ^_^ Anyway...

Contortion
Week 2

After learning about my tight knees the week before, I had been attempting to stretch my knees at home every night by suspending myself between two yoga bricks and placing a 5-pound dumbbell on either side of my knees. I had also been trying to pay extra attention to keeping my hips square while doing front splits. In class we warmed up as usual and then the teacher and an assistant began doing assisted hamstring (?) stretches. This is the stretch where you lay on your back with one leg on the ground and the other lifted, one person sits on the leg on the ground and holds your hips down and square while the other person takes your straight lifted leg and pulls it down toward your chest (I'm assuming this is to stretch your hamstrings, but I've only felt the pull in my knees so far since my knees are tighter than my hamstrings ^^:). Since they could only stretch one person at a time, another assistant began working with the rest of us on front splits. I was able to do a full split on both sides even after she squared up my hips, so she started me working on oversplits--I placed my front foot on a stack of dance mats (I believe it was just one of the 4-ply mats folded up, if I remember correctly), she squared up my hips and I sank down; we held this position for one minute on each side. This is another big difference between this training and my at-home training: at home I had not even begun working on oversplits and if I had started, I most certainly would have started with a smaller degree of height (maybe one yoga brick, haha), but this much larger increment did not hurt me. I'm not trying to condone pushing yourself farther than you are able and hurting yourself, but it is interesting to note that you can probably go farther than you think you can. When it was finally my turn for the assisted stretch, the teacher commented again that my knees were tight and that I would need to stretch them again today. I told her that I had been trying to stretch them at home and she said that it would take quite some time because tendons take longer to stretch out. So I went back on the rack for 5 minutes. I've decided that the sandbags we're using in class must weigh about 20 pounds total, so 10 pounds on either side of my knee, which is more weight than I've been using at home. I'm hoping that if I get a sandbag of similar weight to use at home, I'll be able to make more progress with my knees than I am currently. After the assisted stretch, we did splits against the wall. We followed that with a stretch that I'm having a hard time with because of my balance. The goal is to stand up straight and, holding the heel of the target leg, lift the leg straight as high as possible. I had a bad car accident in 2001 and ever since then my balance has not been what it should be. Because of this, I have to practice this stretch supporting myself with my opposite hand against a wall. I need to figure out some way to improve my balance. Anyway, I was able to get my leg high enough in this stretch that the teacher told me she wanted me to try a variation. This involves bracing myself against the wall with the hand that I was using to lift my leg in the other stretch, taking my opposite hand above the bracing arm to grab my foot and pull it up and behind my shoulder. This is a real challenge for me, but more for balance reasons than flexibility. >_< Following this we did the same assisted straddle stretch, assisted shoulder stretches, wall shoulder stretch, etc as last week. We then began working on our backs, which we hadn't done as much of the week before. We warmed up our backs a bit with some kicks followed by a seal stretch (upward-facing dog). The teacher walked around doing an assisted stretch with a long rod. Basically, you lay on your stomach and the teacher stands over you facing the same direction; she holds a short metal rod (I use a broomstick at home for this stretch), which you grab with both hands (both hands touching each other in the center of the bar, arms straight) and she slowly walks backwards, pulling you into the stretch. As she walked around stretching people, we worked on our bridges. I've not mastered getting into a bridge from a standing position, so I started on the floor. ^^; She commented that she thought I was flexible enough to walk my hands back to my heels, which I did. She then spotted me as I, unsuccessfully, tried to straighten my knees and not fall backward over my shoulders. ^^;
Next we worked on chinstands and elbowstands. Everyone in the class who has the flexibility gets into their chinstands by rolling into them. I tried this a few times without much success. My body flinches when I try to foll into it and the couple of times that I managed to override the flinching instinct I either smacked my chin on the floor or gave myself whiplash, haha. So that's one to keep working on. I commented, though, that I practice my chinstand on the couch at home and no one seemed to know what I meant, so I was asked to demonstrate. So I picked out a stack of dance mats (about two 4-ply mats high) and rolled into my almost-there chinstand. The teacher pressed on the tops of my thighs a bit to try and get my feet down, but that was a bit painful, so she stopped. She told me to change my arm position, but that other than that, it was fine to practice my chinstand this way. Of course, I will eventually need to be able to roll into it as well.
After all this stretching, we did some conditioning, which I hate because I already do so much of it for aerial. It's necessary, but ouch!!

Week 3

The girl who had been teaching us had to go back to San Francisco, so we are now training with another girl and the same assistants as before. This other girl is not herself a contortionist (like our other teacher), but she has been teaching cirque arts for quite some time and is going off of the notes left her by our other teacher. So, class was a bit different this week, needless to say. We did a lot more warm-up than we are used to doing to start out with. She then started with the assisted hamstring stretches and we were told to work on our splits on our own. I asked if I could stretch my knees first. I was thinking that in the assisted hamstring stretch all I ever feel is my knees (my hamstrings don't get any stretch out of it), so maybe if I stretched my knees beforehand, I would get a little more out of the assisted stretch in the hamstring department. So, I stretched my knees for five minutes, as usual, and then I worked on my splits a bit on my own, but I didn't work on my oversplit because I thought we'd be doing that with the assistant like last week. I was wrong. Haha, oops. Here's the killer for me, though: in my assisted hamstring stretch, yes I got further than the past two weeks due to stretching my knees beforehand BUT I still only felt the stretch in my knees, which means that my hamstrings are really loose (YAY) and my knees are really tight (BOO). Oi. Even the teacher was like, "I don't understand people who's hamstrings are really loose and their knees are really tight. But, once you get your knees stretched out you'll be like... whabam!" Haha... so... blah. We followed this with wall splits and the same standing stretches as the week before. This week we did our assisted straddle stretches differently. I guess this method is for less flexible people because it's more controlled. The teacher commented while stretching me that I was very flexible and could probably be stretched on the mat (i.e. the method we'd been using for the past two weeks, haha). Anyway, with this method, the person being stretched sits with their back against a wall in a straddle position (be sure to round your back toward the wall--you can make sure you're doing this by putting your hands on your shoulders); the two people doing the stretching sit down facing the other person placing their feet on her knees, and then they slowly push her legs further into a straddle making sure to stay even. We pushed until the person being stretched said to stop and then held the position for 30 seconds; then we pushed slightly more and held that position for 15 seconds. I'm not a big fan of this stretch because I think I got more out of the other method, but it may be a good method for beginners or those who are very tight. We followed this with assisted shoulder stretches (the assistant commented that she barely had to press on me and that I just sink into the positions, which is a good thing I'm guessing) and shoulder stretches against the wall. We then started work on our backs. We did the same stretch against the wall that we did the first week (we forgot it last week) and then walked ourselves down the wall from that position into a bridge, pressing our chests against the wall. We then worked on bridges and chinstands. I'm still a bit freaked out about the rolling into a chinstand thing and the new teacher didn't really seem to want to instruct it and was getting annoyed that I wasn't practicing it, so I just started trying to get into a chinstand from a bridge position. I got tips from a more experienced girl in the class and the assistant stretched my back with the rod method and I gave it another go. I got farther than before, but still nothing. A little bit frustrated, I decided to try my couch method on some of the dance mats. I thought I heard the teacher telling the assistant that she didn't like that method, but she didn't say anything to me and the assistant told her that the other teacher had okayed it, but I didn't want to cause problems so I just stopped. Some girls who aren't very flexible in the back were working on kicking up into elbowstands against the wall, so I joined them, but wasn't very successful in my attempts. T_T The new teacher ended the class with some serious conditioning which just about killed me, lol; I'm way out of shape it seems.

Aerial

Since I'm a beginner, I've spent the majority of my time on the static trapeze. BUT, I have gotten a chance to work on the fabric a little bit and it's so exciting! Even just climbing the fabric is so difficult! I have a new-found respect for super amazing fabric artists (which is not to say that I didn't already think they were totally awesome). So far I've practiced climbing a few times and I've learned how to do a single foot-lock. Climbing the fabric is so much more difficult than climbing the web because A) it's a lot thinner than the web, so there's less for your feet to grab; B) the web has more grip to it and the fabric is pretty smooth; C) the fabric stretches a lot--I was not prepared for that. By now I've learned quite a few tricks on the trapeze, but I wouldn't say I've mastered any yet. I'm still struggling with upper arm & ab strength, but I'm working on it. We do a lot of conditioning after class and I'm getting to the point where my body can handle additional conditioning (besides stretching myself all over the place) outside of class. I'm having great fun and I can't wait until I actually start to master some of these tricks.

Tags: aerial, class, climbing, fabric, foot-lock, silk, tissu, trapeze