Trapeze weeeee!

I took my second trapeze lesson on one cold snowy January morning. It had snowed all week and due to snow route prioritizing, the side streets were all still unplowed and knee deep in snow. I signed up for the free aerial trapeze lesson (every second Saturday of the month) at a Chicago based training facility (www.aloftloft.com). Now aerial trapeze is starkly different than the flying trapeze. Most noticeably, the bar doesn’t swing around…you do. I would call it posing in the air on a stationary bar that is quite possibly the most uncomfortable thing ever…or doing chin ups until you puke. Seriously, I couldn’t

Our first skill to learn was how to hang from the bar properly and then swing your legs back and forth. I learned that my bottom half is hard to hold up for long and that gripping the bar hard (so that I can keep said bottom up) peels quarters of skin off my palms. Yaaaaay! The leg swing thing was used in our next trick, getting up on the bar. Surprisingly, I could pull up my knees and tuck my legs enough to easily invert my body. I guess I have years of high jumping to thank for that…granted in school, we slacked off so much in track that I spent more time doing flips on the mat than actually jumping the dreaded bar.

We learned how to invert our bodies and entwine our legs in the support ropes so we could let go of our hands and pose. I did the mermaid where you plank on your side while gripping the rope with one hand. I also did the bird’s nest where I hooked my legs in the ropes, did a back bend under the bar and extended out a leg and an arm. I was basically a human hammock. Surprisingly, I took to this well (even though I complained a lot about the damn bar going up my butt). In fact, I was the only one in the class able to do the advanced moves. Yeah, I know, small victories…but it totally made my weekend. The next day though, I was so sore I spent the day curled up on my couch watching the world series of poker TV marathon.

Oh and sorry no pictures because the other students were not thrilled to take my camera while I smoked their asses!