#circus strong

I learned that I can base moderately well and have the strength to base people that are taller and weigh more than me.

My earlier performance life, I assumed I could only be a flier and I allowed myself to only allow myself to fall into that niche. Early on this season, they tried pairing us up to learn basic partnering. In a moment of boldness, I tried both the basing and the flying portions and found success on each. Fast forwards to the end of the season, I was full on lifting people a foot taller than me and at least 30 lbs heavier with relative ease (the basing position makes a difference, so I’m not deadlifting them...yet).

I’m going to work on my upper body strength a lot this summer with handbalancing training, so we’ll see where I’m at during auditions. I’d love to be able to lift a person above my head.

5-15: Static trapeze. Good class; as per usual, hip flips and hands to legs, good progress on both including really high hip flips that worked. Also tried to do toe hang, but never fully succeeded, and tried a new trick called card trick where the base is in a front balance, flyer comes under and through to lift legs up to the bases shoulders, and then you can sort of roll around. Sort of got it in the basing position, couldn't really get the flyer role. We will have to try again.

5-16: Cyr wheel. Breakthrough on monkey roll (don't put full weight on first foot, which lets you push on the second foot), progress on arrow, and then played with the usual.

5-17: Flying trapeze. Overall meh class, maybe because it was hot, maybe because I was tired, maybe just the usual variance. I think I have to again take a break on the star due to the hip, but I revisited uprise and it was in a pretty good way.

5-18: Rest. Let's not talk about it.

5-19: P90X3 Complex Upper. Why is this one so brutally hard? It's just five exercises repeated four times, but it always just takes it all out of me. The exercises are slow-mo chin-ups, plyo push-ups, jumping lunges with weighted shoulder press, w pull-ups, and push-up to bird-dog crunch (in plank, raise opposite arm and leg, bring together into a crunch, bring back out and down, push-up, switch sides). Near the end my pull-ups were assisted and I succumbed to holding a plank near the end of the bird-dog moves, but we made it through.

5-20: Stronger: Fire. Nicky Hollander's month one HIIT, which is pretty fun. Usual HIIT format for him of a minute of a move, 20sec lower intensity isometric hold, 30sec of the move again. Things like burpees, crab walks, roll-up to sprint, and renegade rows sans weights. Good level of intensity without being too much.

1-23: Static trapeze. Not our best session, to be honest. It was again just the two of us, which is always nice, but we were both super tired and everything felt like a struggle. Still, did some interesting new things (transition from hip basing bat hang to a catch lock/single knee hang, and a washing machine with the base and flyer switching who sits on the bar and who is in a front balance between the other person's legs), played more with hip flip which is a cool trick, did a drill with pops that was helpful (though I was annoyed that pops felt like they backslid), and did some falls to legs.

1-24: Rest

1-25: Focus T25 Beta Dynamic Core and flying. I still think that this one is pretty weird. That aside, it's a nice one for a morning workout because ab workouts are easier for me. Fun flying class; mostly worked on the swing in various ways and caught the gazelle. For conditioning we did pull-ups, cherry pickers, and hollow body rocks. Also, again it was an intensive warm-up, too.

1-26: TRX class at Reformation Fitness. Read my review here.

1-27: Focus T25 Rip't Circuit. I do like this one a lot. We had to get up early to do it because of an aerial show in the evening.

1-28: Focus T25 Upper Focus and open hang. We were able to rig the bar pretty high, which was exciting. We did normal in hands stuff, some skin the cat/pop practice exercises, mount to pullover on feet prep - though it was too high for me to feel comfortable just going for the pullover sans spotting - sequence of mount to sleeping beauty to twisty scorpion roll to lieback to lupe, and a successful tic-toc mount (first attempt in months) to a bit of the wedding sequence (ah, muscle memory). The floor was very crowded, so cyr was a bit limited, but I did waltzing and elbow hangs and switches, and spinning in front of the wheel. Upper Focus was good; I always forget how much cardio it has. I did go up in weight in some areas.

1-29: Focus T25 Core Speed and cyr wheel. I really like Core Speed; it's the usual speed format for T25 with rounds and two blocks. It's a good workout, too, since it throws in some burpees (including a one-arm burpee sequence). Cyr was okay. I had some good arabesques and some good elbow tucks. Half-twists felt funny, but had one good one. Started waltzing in front of the wheel, which feels weird but actually came along well in the brief time I did it. Switches were okay but not great. Started some work on corners, which was mostly frustrating. I'm finding that the way it is being instructed/described just is not working for me at all. All in all, I'd say I'm pretty frustrated with cyr wheel right now, and I'm not really sure what to do about that.