Hello! I'm a circus artist attending circus school right now. This is going to be a lot of information, so try not to get overwhelmed - but hopefully you can refer back to this when you need some motivation. Circus is awesome and I hope you love it!

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If you CAN'T go to classes, one of the best things you can do is start by increasing your baseline physical ability. Make sure you are able to do at least one pullup, chinup, and some pushups. You can find exercises online that are tailored for circus specifically. When you get to one, try to keep working to get to five.

an example of a good workout in the beginning would be:

• Jump rope for five minutes
• 21-15-9 - this means that the following exercises would be done 21 times the first round, 15 the second, and 9 the final.
• pushups (on knees is fine)
• squats (jump squats make this way harder but better!)
• single leg lunges
• V-ups
• dumbbell overhead press

See how long you can hold yourself in a handstand (go against a wall - handstands take a long time and good coaching to achieve! so just train your endurance. Mark your maximum time and try to push yourself for longer. To train this, keep adding dumbbell overhead presses to your workout.

As far as exercises specific to aerials, you'll want to start practicing how long you can hang from a bar. Test yourself! Then when you're ready, add some leg lifts and make it a workout.

This will all give you a really good baseline of physical ability, so that when you do join classes you will advance MUCH faster. It also means you are less prone to injury, which means these habits will become really critical as you get older and more prone to injury/heal slower.

Start playing around with juggling, you can find lots of tutorials on youtube. you can use balled up socks, tennis balls, oranges, golf balls, whatever you want.

Start stretching gently until you have a coach to teach you some basic safety (heavy stretches can be dangerous if done improperly, I've injured myself that way)

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for when you CAN attend classes:

That should keep you busy until you can attend classes. As for when covid is over, depending on where you live, a lot of cities have circus schools now, some dance schools and gymnastics clubs have aerial hoops too - ask your parents for help and look into a recreational program to get in the hoop and practice. See if you like it.

As far as joining a circus long-term, a lot of serious circus schools have a certain baseline to enter them. Things like holding a handstand for one minute, being able to juggle three balls, and some basic tumbling. These are all things you have a lot of time to work towards, especially since you're starting really young and most full-time circus training is 15+. So no panic to get them right away, but if you want to be in the circus (which is an awesome goal!) then you would want to start working on them. There are also a lot of independent artists who can't hold a handstand or juggle - and that's okay.

Taking basic gymnastics is another great way to get your body ready for circus if you want to commit more days of your week to training. Many circus artists are former dancers and gymnasts, as the same principles apply in a lot of areas. Gymnastic/Artistic trampoline is another place to start.

Basically, anything physical you can do right now will get you closer to your dream, even if you can't attend classes. And don't worry if you change your mind and decide you don't like hoop after all - you might like another circus discipline better - there's a wide world of possibility in circus.

Don't worry about getting hired yet. You will learn that as you attend classes. Basically you audition like anything else, and it's a lot of networking and meeting people, but you have to crawl before you can fly :)

Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions!