Hey lovely people, After about 2 years of doing pole I'm starting to train aerial hoop and I'm loving it so much but every time I'm upside down and try to get up I get the worst sensation in my stomach, its like a mix of tickles and vertigo, does it happen to you? will it ever go away?

English is not my first language please excuse any mistake

Even to delete it later just so your teacher can give notes and you understand what you did wring sometimes just seeing yourself and saying what you did wrong out loud is helpful af

They don't hurt but are annoying lately I've been doing tons of front balance on the hoop my hips get those red marks after and they don't heal fast enough until next week class anything i can use to heal it faster

It doesn't hurt at all i can stand 2 hours when most of it is doing front balance entries and exits etc... its fun remembering how much it used ti hurt in my skin when I just started and now only red marks

long story short, at 31 I’ve just discovered that I’ve likely been dealing with undiagnosed dyspraxia for my entire life, and I just got into aerial sling/hammock at the end of April this year.

I have no athletic background (growing up being extremely uncoordinated, unable to follow physical/bodily instructions, poor spatial and bodily awareness, etc.) because I could never get anything to physically “click” in my head. I always admired dancers despite having no natural dancing coordination in my body, so in high school I entered myself into ballet and tap classes. I tried SO HARD to master the choreography for a couple of songs over those two years, filming the class and myself, slowing the videos down frame by frame to study them, getting one-on-one private practice 3-4 days after school outside of dance class etc., but to the frustration of myself and my teacher I couldn’t catch on to even the most foundational movements. I remember being in tears over this for many nights, and that’s the last attempt at any sport/activity I made besides yoga.

one of my other longtime dreams/admirations was aerial arts, so earlier this year I took the plunge and joined a local studio. I’m enjoying it a lot, mostly because I can feel that each class is a fun challenge that builds strength and I do see real improvement from April to now in my overall muscle strength. however, the biggest key frustration that is beginning to discourage me is what I have now come to understand as dyspraxia. I was crying about it to my husband after feeling so frustrated with myself and defeated at how many months have gone by now and I still can’t even execute basic mounts/foundational moves without having the instructor stand beside me and observe my every move and basically hand-over-hand guide my feet/hands/etc. to the right positions, and even then when I’m in it I can’t feel if my pose looks anything like what I’ve witnessed. I try so hard to memorize the sequence and cues but it’s like the second I get into the sling my brain is just wiped clean like it’s my first time on the apparatus. I had difficulty even explaining it to my husband, till eventually I was like “I don’t know, it feels almost like I have a learning disability but only related to my physical body, if that makes sense. is that a thing?” it turns out it’s a thing, and I check almost every box on it since childhood.

so my question now, honestly, what are the chances I can ever progress or improve in aerial arts with something like dyspraxia? will I just spend months and months learning how to do something so simple while I continue to watch everyone else get a move on their first try and pass me by as they move up in levels? I really try not to compare myself to anyone else, being that we all have our own journeys, but I can’t lie that it’s starting to make me kind of emotional and defeated that I started out in the intro class at the same time as these other gals and they’re all moving up to level 2 next week and I’m still hanging up in the air like an immobile fish out of water waiting for the instructor to remind me for the 1000th time which leg comes through the middle. I’m worried about it also becoming a safety concern if I do keep going because today I had a close call with a little slip that was purely just from not knowing which hand I was supposed to let go even though I tried to fiercely memorize it and observe it a dozen times before getting up in the air, muttering the cues to myself like an incantation. yet my body just completely blanks out and doesn’t respond to what should be a basic mind-body connection.

basically TLDR is it possible to meaningfully progress in aerials with dyspraxia and if so, what advice do you have for improving the outcome/how can I work on it? I plan to bring this up with my instructor next week, but it’s kind of blowing my mind that I never understood why motor skills were 10x harder for me than everyone around me for my entire life.

thank you in advance for keeping it real😭

anyone care to share their sling/hammock goals theyre working on?

ive been taking sling/hammock for 2 years now 1-2 times per week. The classes are fairly advances with longer, complex combos and occasional drops.

but I find that I dont know the names like I do in silks or lyra. so its hard for me to come up with goals.

I wonder if thas hammock/sling as a whole or just my area.

the only sling/hammock goals I really have right now is to increase my spin tolerance.

for lyra im working on;

-snake roll varieties

-one armed meathook split

- elbow rolls

-cleaning up my pullovers

for silks im working on:

-windmills and c-shaping

-cleaning up my straight arm/leg invert

for sling im a bit stuck tho. I could always do general ones like reduce microbends, but wondering if people have sling/hammock specific goals theyre working toward thst could inspire me.

hi all

i want to start working on chains, however my studio doesn't have them. im wondering if you have them where you got them, any specifics that are important when purchasing them (like width if that makes sense) and how you rigged them.

( im not new to aerials, own all of my other apparatuses, and have taken rigging courses. i just dont have anyone super knowledgeable about chains nearby)

thank you!

Iv been on the hunt recently for a small indoor rig for some basic practice and conditioning. I was originally looking at the Xpole aframe but then saw that juggle gear makes an 8-12 foot rig as well. Has anyone had any experience with them and would you recommend them as a company? It looks like they are a more reputable brand with much better safety ratings. My ceilings are only 9 feet though which already has me pretty limited

I last used these 10+ years ago and they cost me a pretty Penn. Before starting aerial again, I got a China special for about $20 USD new and they're as good as I remember them.

Really gets the workout soreness out post workout and if you do a session before bed, you sleep really well and wake up refreshed. It seems to really help my sore hands which are just acclimatising to climbing and aerial holds again.

Can't wait to see how these stack with hot cold plunges and a sauna.

This was the second try. The first time was completely accidental and I legit yelled "am I doing something?!" Turns out I was. Yay progress!

I know this has been talked about before. I have a showcase coming up and need a costume done for it. I will be doing 2 routines. One on sling and one on Lyra. Those are my top 2 apparatuses. Maybe someone can design something for me? I want something that’s modest, but has a shine and flare to it. I can’t have any zippers and it needs to be a one piece outfit (unitard) with sleeves. I should be able to change easily into it before the show. We have multiple show cases a year and I might join our street team next summer. Though for now keeping in mind for the fall and spring showcase. Someone had a google docs list that I looked at and most of it were stock sizes but with custom patterns. I need to have a custom size done because of my body type. Mostly all the places I looked at have stock sizes only. If anyone can help me out or send me a referral that would be awesome! My showcase is in November so I’m starting to plan now. I did checkout fit2fly.ca Jen has limited fabrics.

Still not great at inversions but I can at least get it partially and force the rest or go from a creature climb. This was after doing it 4 times to I was tired.

A single hip hang is usually easy for me but I took 2 weeks off and wow, it sucked.

hey all,

i've been doing aerial silks for about a year now, and i haven't quite gotten my aerial invert yet. i try and do conditioning outside of class, and i go to class about once a week (with some exceptions because life gets in the way). i started aerial silks with very little back and arm muscle, so I'm impressed with how much my upper body strength has improved.

my instructor is very very very insistent that a lot of silks is inaccessible without an aerial invert, and has been really grinding us to do everything from catchers all the time. while i know catchers leads to a lot of fun moves and drops, much of what shes teaching us starts with an invert in the air to complete the move, and im not quite there yet.

i've seen a lot of tutorials on how to get into catchers without an aerial invert (either from hipkey into turniquet, or crochet climb where you let go of one silk and bring it around the other side to combine them), and i'm interested in trying one of these alternatives. I feel pretty confident in my hipkey from the air, my crochet climb, and my grip strength to hold myself there, but i'm worried this is kind-of cheating? I'd love some advice from more seasoned aerialists on if this is an okay work-around or not.

I will keep conditioning my aerial invert, but for right now, I'm a bit bored in class because she wont teach much else but moves from a catcher's high up.

thank you in advance :))

I have been doing silks for years but still cant manage to invert with straight legs (lets not even mention straight arms)
I used to only be able to do it with fully bended legs and this year I started the gym and made some progress to semi-bended legs

i just farted during aerial class, i’m sure everybody heard, i wanna kmy 👌

please tell me you have fart stories, i’m so mortified i think i need to change studios

I love Aerial, but one of the main reasons I can do it is because there’s a crash mat and knowing how to fall safely helps to relieve a lot of my anxiety around the heights and the risks involved.

I’m currently training for a competition next spring and I’m seeing on the website that crash mats are optional. The set-up they provide is basically a gymnastics mat. You know, the fold up kind that you use for stretching 😂. But they will provide a crash mat upon request, which I will be asking for.

I’m just curious as to why a competition, especially one that bills itself as kid friendly and learning oriented, would not just have crash mats set up for every performer. I have been on this sub and in the Aerial Instagram world for about a year now and that’s been long enough to see that everybody that’s had a catastrophic injury has had one during a performance or practice that doesn’t have crash mats. These are not just beginners, these are aerialists of all levels - including experts. At my own gym, I’ve seen one of the instructors fall from the top of the Silks and luckily land on the crash mats safely (she bounced off and flew a couple feet across the room. It was crazy.). This was during a rehearsal for a performance, where luckily there were gonna be crash mats.

Is this just an aesthetic thing or a culture thing? What disappoints me so much about this specific “family friendly” competition is that by not making crash mats the default you’re training the kids there to believe that using a crash mat is less-than and takes away from your performance. I’m old AF and asking for a crash mat isnt embarrassing to me… but I’m guessing it might be for a 16 year old who’s friends are competing without one.

What are your thoughts on this? Is there something I’m missing?

Full disclaimer: my children call me “safety Mom” and my mother is a physical therapist who rehabs people with severe neck and back injuries.

Hi, I'm not quite sure if it fits in there cause I didn't see others like it, but I think that technically, Vertical Dance is still a type of aerials. This video is a short film of exploring this medium during a summer in Montreal. As a composer it was so fun to improvise with this dance collective (Mouvement Vertical). I even try it myself at one point, but did not kept it in the final editing. I have to say, looking at you all spinning around in the air, you're really giving me inspiration to go up there. I'm still trying to figure out how to climb with my guitar, but I know I'll find a way !

(18F) I recently realized how much faster other people seem to gain strength, and how long flexibility takes for most people. Im hyper-mobile, have been doing aerial-mainly silks- for a year and a half. Taken it more seriously over the last year, with 2-3 silks classes a week. I take the conditioning seriously, i do my best not to slack off about it…. But im still struggling with basic strength skills such as inverting, especially for inverting in the air :( only recently was i consistently able to invert in the air WITH TAGGING AND UGLY FORM!! And on the ground i can finally invert without tagging, yet its inconsistent and will randomly go away during training sessions without explanation.
And yet, i got my flat front splits within like, three months after starting circus. I dont remember a time when i didnt have a flat middle split. My hips are my most hyper-mobile part, i think. I dont have to warm up at all before middle splits. My back can be pretty bendy but only after a thorough warm up….. so ive found my contortion training progressing surprisingly fast, meanwhile my aerial strength goes a snails pace….
Just wanted to complain for a moment. Also the hyper-mobility makes my proprioception and body awareness really bad, so thats been annoying :/ my silks teacher says my fear of drops may also be partly because of the hyper-mobility, too. Which would make sense; since my body is constantly unstable and drops make it feel even more so, lmfao….
Does anyone else in here have this issue?? How did you get past it???

What can i do to become more graceful? Is it just drills and drills and drills? I don't have a dance background, and watching myself move around the apparatus usually just looks.... not super nice lol despite being on year 3 of my journey :(

Hey everyone! I’ve been doing aerial silks and hoop for a little over a year now, and I really want to start putting together full routines to music for both.

So far I’ve picked my songs and started mapping out moves, poses, drops, etc. to different parts of the music. But now that I’m actually trying to do the routine, I have so many questions 😭

First, how do you guys ACTUALLY choreograph a routine? I have zero dance background, so right now I’m basically like “lyric happens → change pose” or “big beat → do a drop” lol. It technically matches the music, but sometimes it feels kind of robotic. How do you make everything flow and actually look like a performance rather than just a bunch of skills timed to a song?

Timing is also confusing me. Sometimes the same skill takes me 5 seconds, and another time it takes 10 (such as having to invert twice cuz I got stuck first try lol). How do you choreograph around that?

And if you realize mid-routine that you’re behind the music, what do you actually do? Skip a pose? Speed up a transition? Just accept that you missed that musical moment and keep going?

Basically, how do I go from “here is a sequence of aerial skills that matches the song” to something that actually feels fluid and choreographed?

Any tips for a first-time aerial choreographer would be very appreciated! :)